Remember that time when I told you that I finally figured out what the problem was on my stream? And that I knew how to fix it? Yeah, I was wrong about that last part.
I still know that the root issue has to do with the encoder. I bought a graphics card to solve the initial problem of me overloading my CPU by trying to stream and record through x264. Right now, I still stream on x264, but I run the local recording through NVENC, which goes through the graphics card. This eases the burden on the CPU to keep the stream steady.
However, I’ve come to realize that recording through NVENC caused the new de-sync issue. Roughly an hour into every stream, the encoder overloads, causing the video to stall for a moment while the audio keeps going at its regular pace. By lowering the settings on my graphics card, I’ve been able to minimize the effect when the de-sync occurs. Sadly, the problem persists, even after dropping the quality of my local recordings to a low point I’m comfortable with. I no longer believe that I can resolve this issue through software.
After scouring through message boards and YouTube guides, I couldn’t find one other person with the exact same problem I was facing. That said, after further research and speaking to my IT friend, I decided to move forward with the next hardware upgrade.
I bought a solid-state drive.
If the encoder is overloading, it’s quite possible that the encoder couldn’t write fast enough to the hard drive. It’s possible that this particular issue was there before installing my graphics card, but it was just being overshadowed by the CPU overloading. Solid-state drives are considerably faster than traditional hard drives, which “in theory”, could resolve the de-sync issue.
I’m not 100% sure that it will address the issue, and I’m not relishing in the idea of spending even more money on my PC at this point in time, but putting a solid-state drive should improve the performance of my computer overall. At the very least, it should make saving large video files a less time-consuming exercise. Hopefully, it’ll address the streaming issues as well, and possibly allow me to record at an even higher quality.
Fingers crossed that this will be the silver bullet! The faster I can get away from resolving technical junk, the quicker I can get to making a great stream!
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In Third Person 