Encoding overloaded! Consider turning down video settings
Skipped frames and the encoding overload warning mean the encoder cannot keep up with the frame rate you asked for. Reduce the work or move it to different hardware.
Published
What the symptom means
OBS produced frames faster than the encoder could compress them, so frames were skipped. The Stats dock counts these as skipped frames due to encoding lag. This is a compute problem, not a network problem.
Reduce the encoder's workload
- Lower the output resolution. Going from 1080p to 900p or 720p cuts pixel count substantially and is the single most effective change.
- Lower the frame rate. 60 fps to 30 fps halves the frames the encoder must process.
- Use a faster preset. On x264, move toward veryfast or superfast. On NVENC, move from P7 toward P5.
Move the work somewhere else
If you encode with x264 and the CPU is saturated by the game, switch to the GPU's hardware encoder (NVENC, AMF or Quick Sync). If you already use the GPU encoder and the GPU is at 100 percent from the game, the fix is the opposite: cap the game's frame rate a few frames below your monitor's refresh rate so the GPU has headroom to render the OBS composition and run the encoder block.
Reduce what OBS has to render
- Remove duplicate captures of the same window or display in different scenes.
- Turn off browser sources you no longer use, and refresh ones that leak memory over long sessions.
- Reduce the base canvas resolution if you are compositing from a very large canvas down to 1080p.
- Check the graphics driver is current. Encoder performance regressions and fixes both ship in drivers.
Confirm the fix
Run your busiest scene for ten minutes and watch the Stats dock. Skipped frames should stay at zero, not merely grow slowly. A counter that climbs at any rate will produce visible stutter over a full session.