NVENC tries to initialise on non-NVIDIA machines and crashes on startup

[philpax]

Two people have reported this issue to me: their machines do not have NVIDIA GPUs, but libobs tries to load obs-nvenc.dll and nv-filters.dll, which causes OWL Control to crash at the login screen (e.g. before they start recording and before any config has been created).

Workaround

Go to the OWL Control installation directory (usually %localappdata%\Programs\OWL Control), then go to obs-plugins\64bit and delete obs-nvenc.dll and nv-filters.dll to stop OBS / OWL Control from attempting to load anything NVIDIA-related.

Details

Log:

2025-11-12T20:03:15.553141Z  INFO owl_control: OWL Control v1.3.1 (3a00a38)
2025-11-12T20:03:15.677987Z  INFO owl_control: Available adapters: [AdapterInfo { name: "Intel(R) UHD Graphics", vendor: 32902, device: 39745, device_type: IntegratedGpu, driver: "31.0.101.2135", driver_info: "", backend: Dx12 }, AdapterInfo { name: "Microsoft Basic Render Driver", vendor: 5140, device: 140, device_type: Cpu, driver: "10.0.26100.7019", driver_info: "", backend: Dx12 }]
2025-11-12T20:03:15.678246Z  WARN owl_control::config: No config file found, using defaults
2025-11-12T20:03:15.831730Z  WARN egui_wgpu::renderer: Detected a linear (sRGBA aware) framebuffer Bgra8UnormSrgb. egui prefers Rgba8Unorm or Bgra8Unorm
2025-11-12T20:03:15.855154Z  WARN egui_render_glow: srgb support detected by egui glow
2025-11-12T20:03:16.320429Z  INFO owl_control::record::recorder: Initializing recorder with adapter index 0 (AdapterInfo { name: "Intel(R) UHD Graphics", vendor: 32902, device: 39745, device_type: IntegratedGpu, driver: "31.0.101.2135", driver_info: "", backend: Dx12 })
2025-11-12T20:03:16.379937Z  INFO obs: CPU Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz
2025-11-12T20:03:16.379991Z  INFO obs: CPU Speed: 2304MHz
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380010Z  INFO obs: Physical Cores: 4, Logical Cores: 8
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380021Z  INFO obs: Physical Memory: 32541MB Total, 24826MB Free
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380030Z  INFO obs: Windows Version: 10.0 Build 26200 (release: 25H2; revision: 7171; 64-bit)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380063Z  INFO obs: Running as administrator: false
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380131Z  INFO obs: Windows 10/11 Gaming Features:
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380138Z  INFO obs: 	Game DVR: On
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380142Z  INFO obs: 	Game Mode: Probably On (no reg key set)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.380768Z  INFO obs: Sec. Software Status:
2025-11-12T20:03:16.382218Z  INFO obs: 	Microsoft Defender Antivirus: enabled (AV)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.382397Z  INFO obs: 	Windows Firewall: enabled (FW)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.383201Z  INFO obs: OBS 32.0.2
2025-11-12T20:03:16.383223Z  INFO obs: ---------------------------------
2025-11-12T20:03:16.383246Z  INFO obs: ---------------------------------
2025-11-12T20:03:16.383257Z  INFO obs: audio settings reset:
	samples per sec: 44100
	speakers:        2
	max buffering:   1044 milliseconds
	buffering type:  dynamically increasing
2025-11-12T20:03:16.410672Z  INFO obs: ---------------------------------
2025-11-12T20:03:16.410687Z  INFO obs: Initializing D3D11...
2025-11-12T20:03:16.410692Z  INFO obs: Available Video Adapters: 
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411003Z  INFO obs: 	Adapter 0: Intel(R) UHD Graphics
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411015Z  INFO obs: 	  Dedicated VRAM: 134217728 (0.1 GiB)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411020Z  INFO obs: 	  Shared VRAM:    17061040128 (15.9 GiB)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411025Z  INFO obs: 	  PCI ID:         8086:9b41
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411045Z  INFO obs: 	  HAGS Status:    Disabled (Default: No, Driver status: Unsupported)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411478Z  INFO obs: 	  Driver Version: 31.0.101.2135
2025-11-12T20:03:16.411967Z  INFO obs: 	  output 0:
	    name=
	    pos={0, 0}
	    size={1920, 1080}
	    attached=true
	    refresh=60
	    bits_per_color=6
	    space=RGB_FULL_G22_NONE_P709
	    primaries=[r=(0.589844, 0.349609), g=(0.330078, 0.554688), b=(0.153320, 0.119141), wp=(0.313477, 0.329102)]
	    relative_gamut_area=[709=0.666619, P3=0.491412, 2020=0.352555]
	    sdr_white_nits=80
	    nit_range=[min=0.500000, max=270.000000, max_full_frame=270.000000]
	    dpi=120 (125%)
	    id=\\?\DISPLAY#BOE08A2#4&15eeee3&0&UID265988#{e6f07b5f-ee97-4a90-b076-33f57bf4eaa7}
	    alt_id=\\.\DISPLAY1
2025-11-12T20:03:16.413075Z  INFO obs: Loading up D3D11 on adapter Intel(R) UHD Graphics (0)
2025-11-12T20:03:16.453312Z  INFO obs: D3D11 loaded successfully, feature level used: b000
2025-11-12T20:03:16.453332Z  INFO obs: DXGI increase maximum frame latency success
2025-11-12T20:03:17.680410Z  INFO obs: ---------------------------------
2025-11-12T20:03:17.680434Z  INFO obs: video settings reset:
	base resolution:   640x360
	output resolution: 640x360
	downscale filter:  Bicubic
	fps:               60/1
	format:            NV12
	YUV mode:          Rec. 709/Partial
2025-11-12T20:03:17.680574Z  INFO obs: NV12 texture support enabled
2025-11-12T20:03:17.680587Z  INFO obs: P010 texture support not available
2025-11-12T20:03:17.681402Z  INFO obs: ---------------------------------
2025-11-12T20:03:17.721215Z  WARN obs: [CoreAudio encoder]: CoreAudio AAC encoder not installed on the system or couldn't be loaded
2025-11-12T20:03:17.758329Z  WARN obs: Skipping module 'C:/Users/hp/AppData/Local/Programs/OWL Control/obs-plugins/64bit/libEGL.dll', not an OBS plugin
2025-11-12T20:03:17.758645Z  WARN obs: Skipping module 'C:/Users/hp/AppData/Local/Programs/OWL Control/obs-plugins/64bit/libGLESv2.dll', not an OBS plugin
2025-11-12T20:03:17.796475Z  INFO obs: [NVIDIA Audio Effects:] NVIDIA denoiser disabled, redistributable not found or could not be loaded.
2025-11-12T20:03:17.796747Z ERROR obs: Failed to get NVVideoEffects.dll version info size
2025-11-12T20:03:17.797252Z  INFO obs: [NVIDIA VIDEO FX]: FX disabled, redistributable not found or could not be loaded.
2025-11-12T20:03:18.033560Z  INFO obs: LoadLibrary failed for 'nvEncodeAPI64.dll': The specified module could not be found.
 (126)
2025-11-12T20:03:18.033642Z  INFO obs: NVENC not supported
2025-11-12T20:03:18.033660Z  WARN obs: Failed to initialize module 'obs-nvenc.dll'

It will immediately crash after failing to initialise.

What's weird is that this only happens on a few systems: all other non-NVIDIA systems seem to truck on normally. This leads to one of two questions:

• What's convincing OBS that it should try to load these DLLs?
• If they're unconditionally loaded, why do these DLLs work on other systems without NVIDIA?

[philpax]

b891573 puts OBS crashdumps in the logs, which should make it much easier to track down the cause of these issues. Using this, I've determined that win-dshow.dll crashes on a user's machine and have summarily removed it (we don't use it), and have encountered a win-wasapi.dll crash on the same user's machine which we can't easily resolve. (Something to do with a corrupt mutex.)

Hopefully, the next time we have a NVIDIA crash, we can track down why and fix it.