OBS (Open Broadcast System) - Any tips to cure 'black Screen'?

[Roblex]

I have made several films using OBS but suddenly I just can't get it to record anything but the black screen. I do the recommended thing of spawning in, alt-tab to OBS, starting the preview, back into game then back to OBS. Once it showed black screen but when I went in, stayed longer and out again it was OK but 95% of the time I can only get the black screen whatever I try.

Has anyone worked out a foolproof way to always make it work? Karaya, you seem to use OBS a lot; is there a trick to getting it to work?
If someone out there gets consistently good results perhaps they could walk me through exactly what they do e.g. you start OBS before CLOD or after spawning in? Do you select a fresh source each time? (I never used to and had no problems)

[DUI]

Generally, the tricky part with Open Broadcaster Software is to match the correct Cliffs window/task - so that it does not record the menu screen but the ingame screen.

I have no idea about your specific issue but also experience every now and then that only a black screen is recorded. You probably already know Karaya's OBS tutorial, don't you?

[JG4_sKylon]

I have made several films using OBS but suddenly I just can't get it to record anything but the black screen. I do the recommended thing of spawning in, alt-tab to OBS, starting the preview, back into game then back to OBS. Once it showed black screen but when I went in, stayed longer and out again it was OK but 95% of the time I can only get the black screen whatever I try.

Has anyone worked out a foolproof way to always make it work? Karaya, you seem to use OBS a lot; is there a trick to getting it to work?
If someone out there gets consistently good results perhaps they could walk me through exactly what they do e.g. you start OBS before CLOD or after spawning in? Do you select a fresh source each time? (I never used to and had no problems)

I had the same problem. Though i even installed/deinstalled i did not get OBS to work again.
Maybe i should try now with my new rig and clean Win7 install. Using Shadowplay instead.

[1lokos]

Same problem here (Win7/64) - but start last week.

- New AMD/ATI Omega driver installed.
- Some Windows update installed.

Sometimes record the game menu only, sometimes black screen (with sound), sometimes OK...

Record OK on Battleground Europe.

[Roblex]

Generally, the tricky part with Open Broadcaster Software is to match the correct Cliffs window/task - so that it does not record the menu screen but the ingame screen.

I have no idea about your specific issue but also experience every now and then that only a black screen is recorded. You probably already know Karaya's OBS tutorial, don't you?

Yes I have watched that more than once but he does not have the problem. He is obviously familiar with the problem or he would not recommend that you test it with 'preview' first but he does not offer any advice on what to do if the preview does not work

[JG4_sKylon]

The problem occured after a Windows update, so i guess there is again a naughty KB file.

[Roblex]

I may have found a solution!! FRAPS almost halves my framerate so I searched the internet again and found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqth52gMBpg which claimed to work on any fulls screen game

What he suggested was basically to have both 'Monitor Capture' and 'Game Capture' running then after starting the recording you left-click on the Game Capture and open the properties then leave it open while you return to the game I tried this and all I recorded was the monitor screen then a black screen :-( Then I tried unclicking the Monitor Capture, starting the recording, opening the Game Capture property box and going back into the game. It worked! It also works with 'Preview Stream' so you can check it is all OK before starting a recording.

[hnbdgr]

Sorry to necro this, I'm having the same problems with OBS - having used it successfully about a year ago... I can no longer record the game just a black screen. Does anybody have any guaranteed tricks with OBS?

[klu.peete]

Its a shit program. .

[Roblex]

Did you try my suggestion? It works for me. Turn on recording then right click on the source and open 'properties' and leave that open while you go back into game and out again. Leave that properties box open while you play.

[Karaya]

Its a shit program. .

No, it is not and I suggest you be more respectful towards the developers who are making the program for free in their spare time.

As for the black screen issue:

Did you guys try to make a global source out of Cliffs? You have to make sure that you are ingame and in flight, ALT-TAB out, create a global source of the "Launcher.exe" and add that to a scene. Has worked perfectly fine for me thus far. There were huge issues with cliffs and OBS a while back when the hooking of the recorder into the game wasnt working well but recently I havent had any issues whatsoever with the programm not wanting to record ingame scenes!

[1lokos]

Although work OK in CLOD there, now way to record DCS World... only audio.

[JG4_sKylon]

No, it is not and I suggest you be more respectful towards the developers who are making the program for free in their spare time.

As for the black screen issue:

Did you guys try to make a global source out of Cliffs? You have to make sure that you are ingame and in flight, ALT-TAB out, create a global source of the "Launcher.exe" and add that to a scene. Has worked perfectly fine for me thus far. There were huge issues with cliffs and OBS a while back when the hooking of the recorder into the game wasnt working well but recently I havent had any issues whatsoever with the programm not wanting to record ingame scenes!

Too bad it´s still not working for me. Tried Roblex tip, doesn´t help either. Always black screen!



Found a fix for me:
Before configuring OBS i changed video settings in Cliffs. Instead of full screen i selected window mode, then set Cliffs launcher as global source. Finally the preview showed ingame footage.
Set back to full screen, OBS black again. I set video to "pseudo" to get full resolution and full screen, OBS works with it.
I had to deactivate VSync because i had a disturbing horizontal line and change some settings, but at least it works now.

[Roblex]

Too bad it´s still not working for me. Tried Roblex tip, doesn´t help either. Always black screen!

I set video to "pseudo" to get full resolution and full screen, OBS works with it.
I had to deactivate VSync because i had a disturbing horizontal line and change some settings, but at least it works now.

How weird. I discovered my 'Fix' no longer worked for me either so I tried 'Pseudo' and now it works every time. When did I discover this? About 24 hours ago. I was wondering whether to post it but thought I would make sure it works every time. You beat me to it.
I also upgraded to the new version. I did not want to change before because I knew I had managed to get it working on the old version and never got the latest version to work at all. I am loving the fact that now it buffers a specified amount of video so I can choose to record something long after it happened. They say you can set it to however long you want but don't recommend using as long as 30 minutes in case you run out of RAM and have to write to disk which would cause a major hit on performance. I am using just two which should be long enough for me to say 'Wow I actually got a kill' and save it. Anything longer than 2 minutes and I am probably dead You can either just dump the last X minutes to a single file or start recording everything until you tell it to stop but starting X minutes in the past. You can also overlap the dumps i.e. save a two minute buffer to disk one minute after you last did it.

I am sure there is a reason why 'Pseudo' is not recommended but I am not seeing any problems yet.

[JG4_sKylon]

Hey Roblex,

could you please provide some info about which shortcuts you use for this buffer/recording.
I have no idea which shortcuts have to be configured and what exactly they are doing

[Karaya]

Yes, switching to windowed or fullscreen windowed mode always works flawlessly with OBS but AFAIK at least in Cliffs it comes with a performance hit.

Another thing to try is to use a hotkey for game capture recognition instead of a fixed global source:

-) Add a scene
-) Add a game capture to that scene
-) Instead of specifying an application go for "Use Hotkey" and set a key for it

Then for actual recording do a preview, go to the game, press the hotkey, then ALT+TAB out. It should show a frozen image of the game in the preview window!

[Roblex]

Yes it confused me for a little while.

1) The first two shortcuts are for starting & stopping a live stream; I dont use those as I don't broadcast live while flying.

2) The next two are to start & stop recording. Quite straightforward. It will start recording what is on your screen from when you ask it to start until when you ask it to stop.

3) The next two are to start and stop recording into a buffer. You should have already set the length of the buffer in SETTINGS->BROADCAST SETTINGS - Mode:File Output Only. Nothing that goes into this buffer will be saved unless you tell it to (see Option 4 )

4) The final two are the confusing ones. You must have started recording into the buffer before you use these (see the line 3 above)
'SAVE REPLAY BUFFER' will take whatever is in your buffer and make a video of it. If you have set the buffer to 2 minutes then it will make a video of the two minutes of action that happened *before* you pressed the hotkey but nothing beyond that point.
You can still press it again at any time to record a later section two minutes long.
'RECORD FROM REPLAY BUFFER' will use the buffer to start recording from 2 minutes *before* you pressed the hotkey and keep recording until you stop recording at the end.
Another way of looking at it is that it is the same as if you had chosen option 2 two minutes earlier.

[ATAG_Lolsav]

This might interest others: To get it recording properly i need to start the program as "Admin" (right click icon of OBS). Doing it that allows me to get image, if not its a black screen with audio.

[Roblex]

This might interest others: To get it recording properly i need to start the program as "Admin" (right click icon of OBS). Doing it that allows me to get image, if not its a black screen with audio.

I have a shortcut to OBS and in that shortcut I have specified that the program must run as Admin (Right click on shortcut -choose 'properties' - choose 'Shortcut' tab - click 'Advanced' - tick 'Run as Administrator' )

[ATAG_Lolsav]

Roblex if you know what "TeamViewer" is im almost tempted to go virtually there, to your pc, and check out what the heck is going on. Ball on your side.

[Roblex]

Roblex if you know what "TeamViewer" is im almost tempted to go virtually there, to your pc, and check out what the heck is going on. Ball on your side.

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[ATAG_Lolsav]

I believe you, but something else must be wrong then.

[Roblex]

Lolsav, Did I misunderstand what you were saying? I thought you said that as long as you run OBS as 'Admin' then it works. That is why I explained how to make it easier to always run as Admin.

EDIT:
..or is the confusion that you thought I was still having problems? I have OBS working fine since I started using 'Pseudo' mode.

[1lokos]

-) Add a scene
-) Add a game capture to that scene
-) Instead of specifying an application go for "Use Hotkey" and set a key for it

Thanks for the tip, create a new scene solve my problem with DCS.

CloD, BOS and Battleground work OK with the previous made scene.

[JG4_sKylon]

-) Add a scene
-) Add a game capture to that scene
-) Instead of specifying an application go for "Use Hotkey" and set a key for it

Then for actual recording do a preview, go to the game, press the hotkey, then ALT+TAB out. It should show a frozen image of the game in the preview window!

Run as admin, followed above steps....still black screen... gnaargh

[HerrBaron]

No, it is not and I suggest you be more respectful towards the developers who are making the program for free in their spare time.

As for the black screen issue:

Did you guys try to make a global source out of Cliffs? You have to make sure that you are ingame and in flight, ALT-TAB out, create a global source of the "Launcher.exe" and add that to a scene. Has worked perfectly fine for me thus far. There were huge issues with cliffs and OBS a while back when the hooking of the recorder into the game wasnt working well but recently I havent had any issues whatsoever with the programm not wanting to record ingame scenes!

Sorry to bring back this 3-yr-old thread, but Karaya, can you please tell me what you mean by a "global source"? There's no source of that type in the list of sources when creating one in the interface.

Thanks!

[Karaya]

The new OBS Studio doesnt have that anymore, the comment is valid for the older Classic version though.

[HerrBaron]

The new OBS Studio doesnt have that anymore, the comment is valid for the older Classic version though.

Thank you for the reply, Karaya! Much appreciated!

[56RAF_phoenix]

I've just got obs-studio working with DCS.

For me, the tricks are:
start it as admin, as Roblex says;
add a Game Capture source with "capture any fullscreen application" set;
right-click on the Game Capture source to get a menu and drop down to "Full Screen (Projector) source", then "Display 0: 1980x1024";
start DCS and get to what you want to record;
alt-Tab to obs-studio and hit "Start Recording";
when finished, alt-Tab to obs-studio and hit "Finish Recording".

Running as admin puts the video files in admin.

I hope this helps after the dire Shadowplay registration fiasco.

56RAF_phoenix

[ATAG_Flare]

Another case of serious thread reviving going on here.

I've got the black screen again. Was working when I last recorded a few months ago but now it seems to be bust, I can only get a black screen in fullscreen or pseudo, game capture or display capture. On newest version of OBS Studio.