Doom 2016 64-bit only records a few frames, then loops it indefinitely. [still broken] Also, screen tearing in various games. [solved]

[Michael S]

I've been using FBX for a while, off and on, and so far it's been pretty good. I've recorded Alien: Isolation and Borderlands 2, and everything works pretty well.

But then I tried recording the 2016 DOOM game, x64 version, and ran into a rather odd bug. The software records several frames of animation, then continuously adds those frames to the video feed instead of recording new frames. Audio plays back fine, but I essentially have no video, just a screen capture from when I started recording.

There's a video here on YouTube showing the bug.

The same thing happens when I record with Fraps. Radeon ReLive doesn't even try to record anything but the first frame. So it's not just FBX having an issue with Doom.

I tried running the x64 Vulkan version, but there's no overlay (because Vulkan is not supported). There is no 32-bit version of Doom, while Isolation and Borderlands 2 are only available in 32-bit.

I initially thought this might be a 64-bit issue, but didn't have many games to test on. After further testing, it seems the Doom issue is isolated to Doom, and Talos Principle 64-bit is working as well as Borderlands 2 32-bit, but both have a weird new issue which is also present in Doom in the couple frames it records.

(Solution to the screen tearing was to switch to AMDh264Encoder codec, instead of AMD VCE codec. Software codecs also work.)

I get really wonky screen tearing on the top half of the screen during playback regardless of in-game vsync or framecap settings. You can see the effect here on YouTube. Here's a still frame as rendered in the clip editor (the lettered areas should line up top to bottom):

In Doom, one of the recordings has a block of green on the top third of the screen during the first frame. I'm wondering if the screen tearing I'm seeing is because something about the top third to half of the screen is recording at lower framerate than the bottom of the screen.

This screen tearing issue was not present in my previous recordings, so I'm not sure what happened, but it's now affecting Borderlands 2. You can see in both this YouTube video (from 31 March) and this YouTube video (from 2 April) that I was recording Borderlands 2 without any screen tearing as of two weeks ago.

Talos Principle also has the weird issue that it's recording at 29 fps instead of 30 fps, even though I'm rendering at 100 ish fps and should be able to maintain 30 fps during recording.

(Is there a way to directly imbed YouTube links on this forum? Just pasting the link doesn't seem to work like some forums, and I'm not seeing an "embed" tool in the interface here. Similarly, I'm not seeing a way to set my image to 50% or something so it's not taking up so much screen space.)

[Michael S]

I've updated the post above to include new information.

It's not a 64-bit issue, since the problems with Talos Principle are also affecting Borderlands 2 now, and Talos Principle otherwise records fine.

And the screen tearing issue is present in Borderlands 2, which didn't have these issues two weeks ago.

[FBX Recorder]

Thanks. The developer has taken a look at the logs. It seems to him like a possible video driver problem. Can you update the drivers, and if this doesn't fix it, try a different encoder - the Intel Quick Sync one if you continue to get issues with the AMD ones.

Please let us know if any of these fix it!

[FBX Recorder]

Just as an additional note - FBX doesn't support Vulkan so you'll need to be running the game in OpenGL mode.

[Michael S]

As far as I can tell, my graphics drivers haven't received any updates for Windows 8.1 since 2017. Screenshots of my Radeon stuff are at the bottom of the post for all the driver info.

The encoders available in FBX are:

Hardware Encoders
AMD VCE
AMDh264Encoder

Software Encoders
Lower quality, lower CPU usage
Better quality, higher CPU usage

Switching to anything but AMD VCE fixed the screen tearing issue. Not sure why I didn't think of that on my own.

I don't have anything explicitly labeled "Intel", but I tried all four encoders, and had the same issue with Doom in all cases. I discovered that Doom's Vulkan mode has to be enabled from the in-game menu rather than just launching the Vulkan executable. I switched to Vulkan (no overlay) then back to OpenGL (still buggy) just to test.

I tried Radeon ReLive, which records Borderlands 2 and my desktop, but it can't record Doom either. Same with Fraps. So it's not explicitly an FBX issue.

Various information about the hardware and software for my graphics card. BIOS is from 2016 (which is when I bought it), and the software is from 2017. The version on my system is 17.7.1, which matches the newest software available from the AMD website.

From the AMD website:

Radeon Settings tabs as current on my computer. Overview, Software, Hardware.

Software update says there's nothing new:

[FBX Recorder]

After some investigation we noticed that Radeon drivers for Win8.1 are way behind their counterparts for Win10 which are much newer (v.19.3.2). This may be the cause of your problems. We tested this game on different hardware, and FBX is quite able to make a proper video.

However, your specs show that you have i5-6600K cpu which includes an intergrated GPU. Perhaps FBX is not able to find the appropriate encoder because the GPU may be disabled in the BIOS. You may try to enable it, install drivers and see if FBX finds 'Intel Quick Sync' hardware encoder.