OBS diagnostic issues

Full troubleshooting articles with symptoms, fixes, verification, and rollback.

Plugins

Script or plugin script error breaking scenes

Lua/Python scripts or plugin scripts throw errors that break sources or hotkeys.

Encoding lag

Skipped frames due to encoding lag

Stats show skipped frames caused by encoding lag, producing stream stutter with a healthy network.

Poor quality

Soft or blurry output from scaling choices

Output looks softer than the canvas because of scaling filter or mismatched resolutions.

Capture failures

Source captured but invisible from transform or crop

Capture is active but the source is off-canvas, zero-scaled, or fully cropped.

Stream disconnections

Stream disconnects intermittently

The stream connects then drops repeatedly.

Virtual Camera

Virtual Camera fails to start

Start Virtual Camera fails or other apps cannot see OBS Virtual Camera.

Virtual Camera

Virtual Camera shows the wrong scene

Other apps see a different scene than expected from Virtual Camera output.

Color & HDR

Washed-out HDR game capture

HDR games look grey or washed when captured into a standard SDR stream.

Webcam

Webcam flicker or auto-exposure pumping

Webcam brightness pumps or flickers under lights.

Webcam

Webcam in use by another application

OBS cannot open the camera because another app holds the exclusive device.

Dropped frames

Wi-Fi packet loss dropping frames

Wireless streaming shows bursty network drops and micro-stutter.

Black screen

Window Capture black for browsers and apps

Window Capture of Chrome, Discord, or similar apps renders black while the real window is fine.

Windows permissions

Windows Game Mode interfering with OBS

Windows Game Mode or related Game Bar features worsen capture/encode scheduling for some PCs.

Windows permissions

Windows permissions and admin capture quirks

Running games as admin while OBS is not (or vice versa) breaks capture.

Encoder overload

x264 saturating CPU cores

Software x264 encoding holds CPU near maximum and introduces skipped frames.

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