About OBS Encoding Overloaded Issue
OBS refers to Open Broadcaster Software. It is one of the most popular streaming and game recording programs which provides various presets and customization settings. As a bsr entrümpelung powerful and free video editing tool, it has great support and is compatible with Twitch.
However, when you are streaming screens or games on OBS, you might encounter encoding overloaded issue with an error message: Encoding overloaded! Consider turning down video settings or using a faster encoding preset.
This error indicates that your computer cannot encode your video fast enough to keep the settings you have made before. When you get this error, your video will freeze or periodically stutter.
OBS Studio encoding overloaded issue might happen due to low disk storage, high screen resolution, and other factors. But you don’t need to worry. You can follow the methods in this guide to fix OBS encoding overloaded by yourself.
Method 1: Reduce Output Resolution
The CPU usage in OBS is largely determined by the output resolution, because your OBS encode the screen of the game you are streaming in real-time. The higher resolution you choose to encode the game, the more CPU will be used. So, you can try reduce output resolution when OSB encoding overloaded.
- Open your OBS Studio and click Settings at the bottom right side of the screen.
- Switch to Video tab of the left pane. In the right pane, click Output (Scaled) Resolution and choose a lower resolution parameter from the drop-down list.
- Click Apply and OK.
Method 2: Lower Frame Rate
The frame rate determines the number of frames captured from the original game video. It is a factor that affects your GPU usage. If you are capturing frames with a high frame rate, your GPU might be unable to render the game/video you’re streaming.
Reducing frame rate to 30 or even lower won’t affect the quality of the video significantly, but can give the encoder enough room to deal with the video. Just do as follows:
Step 1: Launch your OBS and go to its Settings.
Step 2: Click Video tab and select Common FPS Values. Then, choose 30 or less from the listed values.
Step 3: Click Apply and OK to confirm the change.
Method 3: Change Encoder Preset
By default, the video encoder used by OBS is x264. There are different presets involved in its operation and you can set any of these presets to balance the CPU usage and the video quality. The default encoder preset is very fast which offers the best balance in most cases.
The presets indicate the running speed of the encoder. If you set a faster preset, less CPU sources will be uses and thus reduce the video quality.
So, you can set a faster preset to fix OBS encoding overloaded issue.
- Open OBS and go to its Settings.
- Choose Output settings in the left pane.
- In Streaming section of the right pane, make sure the Encoder is set as Software (x264) and check Enable Advanced Encoder Settings
- Click Encoder Preset to open its list and choose superfast or ultrafast to reduce CPU cycles.
You can try different presets as your needs. After that, you can check if choosing a faster preset solves the issue for you.
Method 4: Free Up Space in Drive
Aside from RAM, OBS also requires space on the hard drive for operations including writing temporary configurations and output files. Your OBS won’t stream any kind of video if there’s no extra space (5-10 GB at least) on the drive.
To free up the space on the drive, you can perform disk cleanup. Just open File Explorer, right-click the drive you want to clean and choose Properties. In the pop-up window, switch to General tab and click Disk Cleanup. Then, follow the onscreen instruction to clean your drive.
If you cannot free up the drive by disk cleanup or you don’t want to delete any data, you can choose to extend this drive. MiniTool Partition Wizard is recommended here for you. Here’s how to use this utility to free up your drive:
Step 1: Launch the program. Right-click the drive with few free spaces and choose Extend from the context menu. Also, you can choose Extend Partition under Change Partition in the left pane after highlighting the drive.
Step 2: In the Extend Partition window, choose the partition you want to Take Free Space from, and move the slider to determine how much free space will be allocated for the partition you want to expand. Then, click OK button.
Step 3: When you back to the main interface, click Apply button to execute the pending operation.
Now, you can restart your computer to see if the error message disappears
Method 5: Disable Game Mode
If you are a game lover, you might have turned Game Mode on for the best gaming experience. However, the Game Mode might channel all the CPU resources to the game, leaving few CPU for OBS. Of course, this will lead to OBS encoding overloaded and the failure of streaming.
To fix this error, you should disable Game Mode in Settings.
Just press Windows + I to open Settings and go to Gaming > Game Mode. When you get the following screen, turn off the switch of Use Game Mode in the right pane.
Bottom Line
OBS encoding overloaded is really an annoying problem, but you can fix the problem simply using the methods introduced in this post. For more information and solutions on the problem, you can check this post.
