OBS Studio Browser Source --disable-gpu-compositing

disable-gpu-compositing.md

To pass the --disable-gpu-compositing CEF flag to OBS Studio's Browser Source plugin, you'll need to add it to your OBS Studio shortcut.

Windows

1. Locate your shortcut to OBS Studio.
2. Right click the shortcut and hit "Properties".
3. Add the following to the end of the "Target" field. Be sure to put a space before it: --disable-gpu-compositing
4. Launch OBS Studio via this shortcut, and try out a Browser Source animation to verify that it does indeed appear smoother.
5. OBS Studio updates usually delete and re-make this shortcut, so you may need to repeat these steps after every OBS Studio update.

FAQ

• What does this do?
  • It can greatly improve the apparent framerate of some OBS Studio Browser Source graphics.
• Why does this work?
  • I'm not entirely certain. The theory is that the process of passing textures to/from the GPU in Browser Source is somehow not optimal.
• Does this work on the original OBS?
  • Yes, but not quite as well. You may have more luck with --disable-gpu (as opposed to just --disable-gpu-compositing). In my experience, --disable-gpu does make OBS1 Browser Source significantly smoother, but not perfect.
  • To add the --disable-gpu flag to OBS1:
    1. Go to Settings > Browser and click on the "Runtime" tab.
    2. Under the "Core" heading, set CommandLineArgsDisabled to False.
    3. Click on CommandLineArguments, then click on the small button with three dots that appears on the far right.
    4. Paste --disable-gpu into this box.
    5. Click "OK" in all the open menus and restart OBS1.
• Will this hurt my performance in other ways?
  • Possibly. Adding this flag forcecs all the CEF compositing to happen on the CPU, which could negatively impact performance. You'll need to test things out and see if this flag is right for your setup.

Thanks

Thanks to Osiris on the OBS Project forums (@osirisnld on Twitter) for the discovery.