Hey everyone!
Just wanted to very quickly inform you that the first few episodes of the new The Outer Worlds series do contain frame stuttering issues. Well, I say the first few, it’s actually the first 7-8!
This has been caused by OBS, and not through my PC. In layman’s terms, when capturing in OBS, the input file goes through several processes before it is saved as an MP4 file. The first is scaling. When playing games, my resolution is 3840x2160, otherwise known as 4k. OBS scales down this resolution to a more manageable size before encoding it. In the case of the first episodes of The Outer Worlds, this was scaled down to 1920x1080 (which is the resolution I upload in). As it turns out, scaling a video uses a lot of processing power, which on its own would still probably be manageable. However, OBS then has to encode the now scaled down video into a file that can be read by editing software.
Encoding is a dark art I’m yet to even attempt to understand, but from what I can work out it’s basically storing the file data in a way that can later be interpreted by different types of editing software. All my video files are saved as MP4s, meaning the video and audio is encoded into a single file. This is where I think the issue has been caused, as when you try to scale down a video and encode it at the same time it causes OBS to run into the “media encoder overload” error which has occurred several times during my recording sessions.
This isn’t even taking into account the frames per second (fps) or the bitrate (Kbps) that OBS works with. The first two videos of the series were recorded in 60fps, a first for the channel. This was the first setting I changed when the encoder was overloaded, instead capturing at 30fps. The default bitrate was 4500Kbps, which I then lowered to 3000Kbps. I believe the bitrate relates to video compression, which again uses a lot of processor power. I thought that a lower number was better, but that’s not the case at all. In truth, I was just trying random things based on very quick Google searches, and the real solution (at least the one that’s worked so far for me) is very counter-intuitive.
What has in fact worked is to increase the resolution to remove the need for scaling, then increase the bitrate to match. Episodes 9 & 10 have been captured in full 4k resolution at 30fps and 12000Kbps and so far look to have solved the stuttering issue. The next experiment will be to increase the fps to 60 and see if this makes the game look smoother. By increasing the values, you are actually removing the need for OBS to use processor power, as there’s no scaling needed. In terms of the game running, this has no effect as the game only needs a single core in an 8-core processor. But for capturing, this means the file can be instantly encoded straight from source rather than having to go through a scaling process first. This in turn has lead to a much smoother video file, which means a higher quality upload.
I will also be editing and rendering the videos in 4k from now on, as this will mean a much higher quality, which I feel this game deserves. The file sizes are much higher now as the resolution has pretty much doubled, but if it means a better end product I’ll be happy.
I wanted to write this more as a way to ask you to stick with the opening few episodes. I have seen the stuttering for myself and I know it can be annoying, but I’m really enjoying this playthrough and now I know the issue is fixed I can confidently say that it’s worth sticking with the old episodes.
Thanks for reading guys, and until next time I will see you soon!