Recording ETS 2 1.40.3.3s using VFW compression crashes the game

Hi there again, long time - and very satisfied - user of MSI AB. I've been using MSI AB for monitoring / capturing - no overclocking - on my old Intel Core i3-2350M / AMD HD 7610M 1GB DDR3 without any major issues (including having the OSD and capturing in Euro Truck Simulator 2 using the same settinngs), but recently got myself a new laptop (specs here) and trying to record in Euro Truck Simulator 2 2 1.40.3.3s using VFW compression crashes the game. I know some things are in development, some others are not officially supported when it comes to MSI AB, but I was wondering what could be the cause of this issue, so I could, if possible, try to fix it with your help.

On my old system (the working case), I used MSI AB 4.5.0. Now, on my new system, I use MSI Afterburner 4.6.4 Beta 3, because of the new things that were added recently (i.e. regarding Ryzen processors and various other features). The latest beta works well in all areas that I tried it on, except VFW compression recording in this specific game (didn't install other games yet). If it matters, I mainly use VFW Compression : x264vfw - H264/MPEG-4 AVC Codec [Defaults; Preset = Veryfast; Zero Latency; Log Level = None] when recording, but ever since I noticed the ETS2 crashes happening when I press the recording hotkey on that configuration, I discovered that the External Plugin: NVIDIA NVENC H.264 [Preset = Balanced; Target Bitrate = 5 Mbps; Low Latency Encoding] works very well, without issues, doing hardware encoding as a bonus. I'm puzzled as to why the problem happens, since, when enabled, Game Bar works fine, and so does the VFW real-time encoding using XviD in my Avermedia TV tuner software, so I don't think it's a codec configuration problem. The video capturing works without problems when the system is in desktop mode, by the way, irrespective of the type of compression used.

Some files that might help in identifying the culprit here (MediaFire link containing an archive of my MSI AB / RTSS profiles, as well as the game's crash log). I would probably continue to use the external hardware encoding compression since it is lighter than the VFW one on the new system, but I would be interested in finding out why the VFW compression fails in this case nevertheless. Also, if anyone else can confirm that having similar specs works in this game when attempting video capture, that would help as well, since I would know that the problem is on my end.

A big thanks to Unwinder / MSI for the massive gift of providing users with such a great piece of software for free and for continuing to add support for more systems / specs - I'm monitoring / recording stuff both in desktop and 3D mode using the MSI AB + Rainmeter combo:

 

VFW isn't a compression.

 

I meant all of the encodings under "VFW Compression : ..." in MSI AB fail to capture video for me in that game. Some encodings, like the 264vfw - H264/MPEG-4 AVC Codec or the XviD one crash the game, some produce a 15 KB or so video result without crashing anything. I should also mention that after my first crash, I noticed that MSI AB didn't produce any video output file irrespective of encoding (although it did output recorded video before, i.e. after I installed it and configured it), so I uninstalled the latest beta, installed the latest stable version (which exhibited the same behavior), uninstalled that too, installed the 4.5.0 version (knowing from my old system that capture will work, although it didn't support my current CPU), uninstalled it and installed the latest beta again. After that, MSI AB did produce the video capture output, but the crash issue in this game remained.

This is a clean Win 10 21H1 + programs install, by the way, although I do install a good amount of software, so it is possible some other software I installed after MSI AB somehow affected the latter's ability to record properly using VFW codecs. I just need to know where the problem lies so I can take appropriate measures, because currently there are just too many possible causes for this, like some weird MSI AB beta bug (unlikely, but a possibility nevertheless, which is why I posted this here), the game itself, some of my specs not being yet supported in MSI AB, some other software I installed or their settings, the notorious Windows system, etc. Narrowing down the possible culprits would help a lot, as I can manage things from there, I just need to know "the face of the enemy", so to speak...

 

you're not trying to record 264vfw or xvid into a mkv i hope.

 

No, of course not. The container is an AVI one.

 

Yeah, no problem about that - as I said, I can manage things from there, all I needed to know is where to look for the culprit. Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply and provide some hints that could help me in finding a solution to fix this - I'll eventually get to the bottom of it, for sure. Thanks again for this piece of software, it's one of my favorites.

 

Okay, so your hint regarding the matching bitness was excellent, and coupled with gedo's more direct advice here, seem to have solved the issue, albeit after I uninstalled both K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 16.4.0 and MSI Afterburner 4.6.4 Beta 3, and installed the older K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 14.5.2 and MSI Afterburner 4.6.3 Stable/Final. I believe reinstalling those newer versions like before will not change the working status of the approach (or affect recording in other games), which basically involves checking Use The Dedicated Encoding Server option in MSI AB's settings.

In other words, it was a system configuration related reason, like you said, though it didn't involve other applications or their settings (which were perfectly fine, with both the x86 and x64 versions of the said codec being already properly configured) but rather MSI AB's own settings. Sure, that was on me to correctly configure the application, but I had no idea that I had to do that, considering that older MSI AB versions on my older laptop worked just fine without this particular box being checked.

I guess one learns something new every day - I'm just happy I didn't have to spend days to uninstall / reinstall / reconfigure a bunch of other things (including Windows!) to get it working. The advice I got in this forum proved critical to shorten the time required to solve this issue. Have a great day!

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EDIT: I had the contents of this post saved in order to test whether reinstalling the newer versions above works, so I went ahead and pasted it although you arrived at the same conclusion about the same time All is good now, just using your (and gedo's) workaround till the next beta - it works without issues after I reinstalled K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 16.4.0 and MSI Afterburner 4.6.4 Beta 3, by the way. Thanks for pursuing and investigating this further, looking forward to newer MSI AB versions, they will definitely be even better with such a dedicated developer - I know it must be difficult and tiresome to balance the software for every configuration out there, but you're doing a great job!