Solved! ShadowPlay videos freezing and pixelating just after halfway point.

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Frag Maniac

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I just completed my gaming PC overhaul with an EVGA 1080 SC. GPU works great with my 8700k, 16GB Corsair LPX 3200, and ASUS Prime Z370-A. In Far Cry 5 it even stays under 65c at load with stock fan profile with max settings, save for motion blur Off. The display driver is working fine as it keeps a nice 60, min, ave, max FPS at both 1080p and 1440p VSR.

The only problem so far is this freezing and pixelating with ShadowPlay videos just after the halfway point of playing them back. I'm only using 50 Mb/s setting with 1080p and 10 minute duration. I've only tested Shadow Instant Replay mode so far.

Others are experiencing this problem too, dating back since before 2018. I am using the latest WHQL 391.35 driver made for Far Cry 5 too. I've read that others having this problem say it only happens in Instant Replay mode, and not in manual record mode.

I have tried using different capture directories, and "In Game" vs 1080p res options. Switching to 1080p vs In Game at first I thought fixed it, but all it did was push the freeze point from 7 min to 9 min on a 10 min clip. What I noticed when I switched to my SSD for dir was the replay cache did not reset to 0kb after exiting game like when using a HDD dir. I had to end task on Nvidia Container processes, which were keeping it from being deleted.

I'm wondering since the Nvidia Container process latches onto the replay cache sometimes, if there's a memory leak in one or more of them. There are a total of 7 Nvidia Container processes that run. Three are 32 bit. The replay cache is only used for Shadow mode, not manual record mode.

Has anyone else here had this problem and maybe know of a fix for it? One person said enabling Desktop recording in ShadowPlay fixes it, it didn't for me. Nor did turning off Game DVR in the Xbox App, which anymore is done holistically in W10. I have also tried turning off Indexing on the capture drive (another claimed fix), and am about to test the results of that.
 
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My pc got so much nicer just shutting down the Microsoft Store. It's supposedly a background app when you are in full screen mode, but the constant net checking causing lag while gaming online was annoying.

Karadjgne

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My pc got so much nicer just shutting down the Microsoft Store. It's supposedly a background app when you are in full screen mode, but the constant net checking causing lag while gaming online was annoying.
 
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Frag Maniac

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Thanks, will try that, but really looking for input specifically on people's experience with Instant Replay capture in ShadowPlay. I'd like to know whether or not others have this freeze and pixelation issue playing back the clips. Also like to know if anyone has found a working solution for it.

Will try disabling Microsoft Store through Group Policy Editor though. Quite frankly the only reason I don't already have it disabled is I was playing through Gears of War 4 a few times. Not sure I want to finish on Inconceivable mode though. At my age Insane mode is good enough I think.

 

Karadjgne

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I use WinAero, takes all the guess work out of messing with the group editor for the store and quite a few other tweaks.

While you are correct, I don't have first hand knowledge of the instant replay, most issues with what's on the desktop are caused by what's in the background, and thats usually Xbox, the store, AV, backups etc not behaving as they should.
 

Frag Maniac

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OK, I already had Xbox app's Game DVR disabled, because now W10 does that through the apps page instead. It seems to be just holistically anything to do with Game DVR in W10 now. However, when I tried disabling the Microsoft Store app via Group Policy Editor, the Instant Replay clip I saved after that would not play at all.

I use MPC-HC btw to play back clips, and it is very MKV compatible. I've never had a problem with it not being able to play back ReLive or ShadowPlay clips. I also saw a folder placed in the capture directory called Microsoft or Windows Defender Security, something to that effect. So this seems to be the culprit.

Now I haven't done thorough testing yet to see if this is only a problem with Instant Replay and not manual replay clips as others have said, but I get a feeling Nvidia ties just Instant Replay clips to Microsoft's services to facilitate quick (or social media tied) streams and uploads. They tend to treat the Xbox crowd like a social media cash cow, and that includes PC gamers using Xbox gamepads.

Anyways, just spoke to Nvidia again to inform them of this, and they added it to my support ticket, but they asked me to send them a sys info file, and I said I would include a DxDiag file as well. They also wanted me to try playing back the clips in GeForce to see if it's a problem there as well.

There's no way in hell it makes sense that you'd have to have the Microsoft Store app enabled just to avoid corrupting Instant Replay capture clips in ShadowPlay though. So I'm not sure whether that's intentional, or an oversight on Nvidia's part. I DO use Spybot Anti-Beacon to further disable all W10 telemetry, but I doubt that is causing this, because it doesn't automatically disable the MS Store app.

The reason I used GP Editor to disable the MS Store app is because it's easy to do and easily reversible, and doesn't require installing a 3rd party tool that just takes up unnecessary space and resources.

 
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