OBS Instance Crashes When Running Multiple Instances with SRT/VLC Sources on macOS

Operating System Info

macOS 14

Other OS

No response

OBS Studio Version

31.0.3

OBS Studio Version (Other)

No response

OBS Studio Log URL

https://pastebin.com/bfBrquHg

OBS Studio Crash Log URL

No response

Expected Behavior

I expect to be able to run two OBS instances simultaneously, each receiving an SRT stream through VLC Media Source and relaying to Twitch without crashes. Both instances should remain stable during extended streaming sessions.

Current Behavior

One of the OBS instances randomly freezes and becomes unresponsive during streaming. This happens unpredictably while receiving SRT signals via VLC Media Source. The issue manifests as a gradual freeze rather than an immediate crash. First, the signal transmission to Twitch is interrupted, causing the NotLikeThis emote to appear on the stream. The OBS interface appears to be still running, as the last transmitted bitrate value remains visible at the bottom, but the preview image/video is completely frozen. When attempting to interact with the application by switching scenes, only the button color changes but no actual scene transition occurs. When clicking the Exit button in the bottom right corner, the program completely freezes, showing a loading cursor. At this point, the program requires force quitting via the Dock's "Force Quit" option. After restarting OBS, everything works normally again for some time before the same issue recurs. No specific errors appear in the log file immediately before these freezes that would indicate the root cause of the problem.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch a first instance of OBS Studio 31.0.3 on Mac Mini with M1
2. Set up a VLC Media Source with SRT stream input
3. Configure output settings for Twitch streaming
4. Launch a second instance of OBS Studio with "--multi" command line argument
5. Set up another VLC Media Source with different SRT stream in the second instance
6. Start streaming on both instances
7. Continue running the streams for an extended period (the issue may take several hours to appear)

Note: The crash doesn't happen immediately but can occur randomly after several hours of continuous streaming. The issue is intermittent but happens consistently enough to be problematic for production use.

Anything else we should know?

System resource information at the Start of two OBS instances:

• Memory usage: 6.44 GB of 8.00 GB physical memory is being used
• App memory: 2.54 GB
• Reserved memory: 1.42 GB
• Compressed memory: 1.97 GB
• Cache: 1.52 GB
• Virtual memory swap: 0 bytes
• CPU utilization: System at 6.94%, User at 17.53%, with 75.53% idle
• Running 561 processes with 2,784 threads

A Docker instance is also running on the system, which switches to the Low scene if the SRT signal is poor. This happens independently for both instances, as independent streams are running on both.

Start by reviewing the linked OBS log and reproducing the two-instance setup: OBS Studio 31.0.3, macOS 14 on an M1 Mac mini, VLC Media Sources receiving SRT, Twitch streaming, and the --multi argument. No source file or test is named; done means identifying the freeze cause and confirming stable extended streaming in both instances.