Choppy videos after ending recording. Been trying to fix for 14 hours, HELP ;-;

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Mutantpugs

New Member
Here is my log file from a recent recording: https://obsproject.com/logs/XyZPGJZwWk1SgwLO

The videos in the playback viewer on obs and when I'm recording gameplay work just fine (cpu usage is like 10%, clean 60 fps, it's not laggy at all), but it's when I view the videos in my files that they look like they're 15 fps and the resolution has been scaled down a lot.

I am just trying to record some simple gameplay on my 2025 MacBook Pro M4 but every recording comes out choppy and laggy. I have tried every single cpu option available and found the Apple VT H264 Hardware Encoder is probably my best bet. For my encoder I've been using CRF at the quality of 80%, but again I've tried all the other options there too. My bit-rate is 18,000 when using CRB but that still doesn't work. My resolution is 1920x1080 and I'm even downscaling it to try and fix the lag but NOTHING IS WORKING.

I'm thinking it may have something to do with how my videos are being exported? They all look like they're in 15 fps when I play them back after I stop the recording for some reason, my computer doesn't lag at all and my cpu usage is very very low when I record so I don't know what could be causing it honestly. I don't know what setting I need to change on my Mac or OBS, I have tried everything it feels like. My output frame rate is 60 fps but I don't know what could be causing my exported recordings to be looking like that?

I'm actually losing my mind because I know Macs can record games just fine. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong, please help me!!
 
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realh

New Member
I have the same problem. It can't even maintain what looks like 15fps consistently; there is stuttering. I consulted Gemini and ChatGPT; I know they're unreliable, but they both say the same thing, which is that Apple don't provide 3rd party apps with low level access to the display framebuffer. They have to use ScreenCaptureKit, which Apple describe as "high-performance"; they're lying. I think part of the problem is that you can't change the actual framebuffer resolution in system settings, it just changes the scaling; it doesn't seem to make any difference to OBS' performance. ScreenCaptureKit is badly bottlenecked at reading the display. I tried a couple of other 3rd party apps; one of them didn't work at all, and the second was just as bad as OBS.

The hardware is capable: even a Macbook Air 15" M3 can record the whole screen at native resolution at 60fps, but only if you use Quicktime, because it has access to parts of the system that aren't available to 3rd parties. Obviously this is limited; you'll have to do your own cropping and scaling afterwards, livestreaming probably isn't possible, and you have to mess around with blackhole to mix the mic with the game audio.

This isn't OBS' fault, but they really should have ditched MacOS support instead of wasting developer effort on a useless platform.
 
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