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27.2.3 is out! Also, need to vent for a moment.
🕑 Added 2022-03-03 05:12:55 +0000 UTCWe just released 27.2.2 and 27.2.3, which fixes that nasty little preview freeze and stream disconnect, as well as a virtual camera issue on Windows. Let's briefly go into what the heck happened here, because quite frankly, I need to talk about this to somebody.
27.2.1 wasn't quite the end of the issues for 27.2. I'd solved that nasty issue where the entire computer would just freeze up by making a workaround to whatever driver or operating bug was occurring; but apparently that wasn't quite the end of the 27.2's issues. After a while, we began hearing reports that people's previews were freezing, and their streams would disconnect. What a nightmare. The preview would visibly freeze up, the stream would disconnect, and then you basically wouldn't be able to shut down the program without a hard shutdown.
I have been so incredibly stressed out by this update.
Do you want to know how this happened and how this passed our testing? It was due to a floating point rounding error that **only** happened if render lag was occurring for the user, i.e. if your scene data was so complex that rendering took just long enough to cause frames to duplicate before sending it off to the encoder. Every single user who reported this had an incredibly complex scene collection, and needless to say, this completely bypassed all of our testing procedures.
So again, we had a very kind user who sent us a dump of their program while the preview was frozen, and we realized the problem. There was a floating point rounding error that would only happen under very specific conditions where it would round down our frame timestamp, then because it was rounded down, it would cause another calculation of the frame count to get set to 0, and because it was set to 0, it would cause an infinite loop in our encoding process. With that dump file, I immediately spotted the problem, began working on the patch (I had made an initial fix here), and then rcdrone noticed that there was a better way to fix this and fixed the rounding error (here), which also improved performance of this calculation, and then he also introduced another fix to prevent that infinite loop from ever happening again (here). He is a saint and a god-tier programmer.
We released 27.2.2, and then to make things worse there was another minor issue with virtual cameras on Windows where they wouldn't render properly that required an extra patch, so I again halted auto-updates, and made a 27.2.3 a day later.
This update has really just been one of the most stressful updates we've had to deal with, and in spite of all of all of our testing procedures we still managed to get issues. It just goes to show that no matter how thorough you think your tests and testing procedures are, that things can still leak through.
OBS is over a half million lines of code at this point, so I suppose these sort of things will inevitably happen, but in either case, if anyone experienced any of these issues, I am terribly sorry, and would just like to say that these types of programs are very complex, and that we're always working around the clock to make sure these critical issues are fixed ASAP.
Thank you to everyone for their continued support and understanding. Without all of you none of this would be possible.
And I would like to emphasize again that I am so incredibly grateful to all of our contributors who in spite of all of the issues we have to deal with, are some of the best people I could ever have the pleasure of working with.
I think I'm going to sleep for a week now. Hope everyone has good streams! If you ever have issues, please always make sure to to visit our discord server and let us know.
Comments
Lain
You might want to drop by forums or our support channel on discord to tell us about it. Definitely sounds a bit unusual.
johannes
somehow 27.2.4 has the font size on a 4k/225% display reduced to un readable. Is this a glitch?
danie hulett
Perfect demonstration of being a "simple user" : I had already several times gone that far, saw the details of the 27.2.4 update---- yet somehow missed the button at the end, outside the text box, which clearly says Update! (which of course works just fine.) Thought you would enjoy this "simple" chuckle.
Lain
In the Help menu you should see an item to check for updates which you can run any time.
danie hulett
So much love (!) pouring into a digital space -- a deep surprise to everyone. And I want to upvote "stunning", even though I am a simple user, the excellence in the product is....well....stunning. QUERY on Release 27.2.4 ------ Where can I check for this new Version is what is running? (I have General Settings marked to automatically check for updates.)
You all made an incredible program. We thank you and get some sleep lol.
Owlnonymous
Appreciate you and your team.
xMdb
Just for this story I thought I'd support the project. Cheers
I appreciate your hustle!
It’s frustrating when any tool crashes, but my community and I know that some things are unavoidable. You can’t predict everyone’s setup. When it happens, I may curse the skies, but I never curse you and your team. I hope you know how much we appreciate your tool and your team. So very much. Thank you for your hard work!
Your tool helps me so much, that´s why I`m here. Thank you, hopefully more YouTubers will check in. Awesome support, when I do my VR Stuff with your help.
Martin Matějka
Hehe this is precisely the reason I quit development and started to make videos :D. GJ guys, thank you for your effort!!! OBS with all its posibilities really tends to tempt to make really complicated layouts lately. When I used to stream DnD, I had four cameras in one scene with another lower tens of other elements. Now I sometimes stream a show about mead and have higher tens of elements :D (names, info, sponsors etc). So yeah, we really testing the limits here :D
Massive well done for all your efforts!! You are a certified legend ✌️
z
Enjoy your rest, sorry it's been stressful
3stadt
Hey Jim, I'm a programmer for over 20 years now and just let me say this... you and your team are like a flock of unicorns us mortal beings can just look up to and admire. I'm thankful for your existence and grateful for your work. There's nothing to be said, what you and your team created is just stunning. The stability and feature richness of OBS is absolutely outstanding - don't let anything dull your sparkle, not even a bug that escaped your watchful gaze. Thank you and your team for OBS and thank you for caring. You are awesome.
We all appreciate your hard work! Thank you for your diligence in chasing these problems down.
Max Z. Sánchez
Thanks for the hard work!
It's easy to be a programmer when you can just spend all your time coding fun new features. But to be one of the coders who is willing to spend a week stressing out hunting down bugs like this that can be so hard to find, just to help solve problems that other people are having.. That's a level of dedication and service that is rare. Thank you for what you do.
