Hey everyone. (tl;dr at the bottom)
I've been using OBS to record footage from my PC for over 5 years now. I'd got my settings perfect and had been smooth sailing. However, after disconnecting and reconnecting the cables to my PC, OBS started to rapidly degrade and I was faced with an encoding error when I stopped recording.
Long story short, I experimented with a bunch of stuff and ended up reinstalling OBS to it's newest version, while keeping my old settings intact. I even screenshotted my settings and replicated them as closely as I could. However, since the reinstall, recording any gameplay footage creates a .mp4 with inconsistently choppy footage (it does not effect the footage I record directly from browsers though). The preview is not choppy.
I've done a lot of forum searching and setting changes (changed video encoder from NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (deprecated) to NVIDIA NVENC H.264, changed Preset to P5 and below, turned Multipass from qp to sp, changed my scene to just have one Display Capture, "optimised" the OBS application in the NVIDIA App (changed simple and advanced encoder to NVIDIA NVENC H.264), scanned PC with Malwarebytes to see if there was any malware (there wasn't), and changed FPS from 60 to 30 (it was better, but not a lot)). My OBS already runs on admin mode. I haven't updated my drivers, but I'm always extremely hesitant to do that as I've found it always creates new problems elsewhere on my PC whenever it's trying to solve another problem, and I end up having to roll them back. They were also updated within the last few months, so they're not extremely outdated.
I know my PC can record this footage, as before I disconnected and reconnected my PC's cables, I recorded the exact footage that my PC now struggles to record with no problem.
I've managed to fine tune it to where it can record some stuff, but really struggles with other stuff.
Unsure if related (since this issue only effects recording gameplay), but my Game Capture and Window Capture are black screens too. I use Display Capture, so it doesn't affect me, but I'm unsure if it might indicate another problem that also effects how my recordings come out.
Further context: I'm recording Yakuza 0 footage with a freecam mod. Before moving my PC it recorded all of it fine. Afterwards it was choppy on both non-freecam gameplay and freecam gameplay. I've managed to get it to run fine on non-freecam gameplay so long as I don't look at the sky, which tanks the recording.
Anyone know what's up?
tl;dr - OBS has been good for recording for years until I unplugged and replugged my PC cables, then suddenly OBS can't encode Display Capture for games well anymore. I end up reinstalling OBS, but encoding is still bad for games on Display Capture. I try a bunch of solutions but they only make it a bit better. Manage to get it the best it can be but still produces choppy footage, so I came here to get help.
