
OBS Studio: Open-source software for video recording and live streaming - open-source-ux
https://obsproject.com/
======
xal
I randomly learned OBS a while ago for doing some twitch streams in the
evenings. I'm so glad I did.

I run a 6,000 people company during the day and have OBS setup to push into
Google Meet. I've done townhall with live on-screen Q/A voting, hosted podcast
discussions, done PIP product reviews. I use its video record feature to react
to figma prototypes and post the MP4s in the respective channel for
discussion.

OBS is an amazing tool and its worth learning. Even simple things like adding
a compressor to an audio stream can make a huge difference to the quality. As
one of our coaches recently said "Video quality is the new presence in 1:1s".

On windows its reasonably easy to output OBS to a virtual camera for video
conferencing software through a plugin. I've posted a bounty of $10k recently
to make this a native feature and it's getting lots of traction.

[https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1242641154576965634](https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1242641154576965634)
[https://github.com/obsproject/obs-
studio/issues/2568](https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/2568)
[https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15](https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15)

~~~
mkl
Are there any existing plug-ins for virtual microphone?

I want to use OBS'S realtime noise suppression and noise gating in another app
(mainly online lecture platform Echo360). I got it working using VoiceMeeter
in what seems like a hacky way, but only with high latency so far.

~~~
blattimwind
Use Equalizer APO with a noise-reduction VST. This is _by far_ the best option
on Windows if you are concerned about latency×compatibility×underruns as a
figure of merit. It is far superior to using "virtual audio cables" and a VST
host (like Lighthost or SAVI) or voicemeeter.

It's not well known, but it really works spectacularly well compared to those
other options. For me it never has had any audible buffer underruns (unlike
Lighthost), no noticeable latency (unlike SAVI and Voicemeeter, even with
small buffer sizes), no problems regarding exclusive mode (unlike voicemeeter)
and it works with _every single_ application.

The UI is not terribly clear about this, but it can drive multiple devices
independently, simply by adding several "Device" blocks to the configuration.

~~~
noyesno
What VSTs would you recommend for improving audio quality of video calls?

~~~
blattimwind
ReaFIR works quite well and has very low latency. It's a bit fiddly to auto-
generate a noise profile due to the architecture of Equalizer APO (the entire
audio processing runs inside the Windows audio stack, so the VST panels in the
configuration editor don't have a signal). Basically you use another VST host
(e.g. Lighthost or OBS), generate your noise profile there and then copy/paste
the chunk data into the APO config file.

Some general EQ'ing on the mic also works wonders for how well it sounds, but
that's very specific to your voice and mic.

\--

Another use case of Equalizer APO where it is much better than everything else
is compressing game audio. Some games simply have audio that was designed
without regard for hearing safety (CS:GO is a strong contender for #1 here),
and this helps immensely with it.

~~~
klint
ReaFir is amazing.

------
r1ch
I'm one of the core contributors for OBS. Our website traffic has more than
doubled over the last couple of weeks due to the COVID-19 situation - when we
released the v25 update we accidentally killed our site due to a cache
stampede after purging the CDN (oops).

We're seeing all kinds of new uses, especially users who are integrating the
OBS Virtualcam plugin to do presentations and other content sharing with apps
that only support webcam input.

~~~
alpb
Thanks for maintaining OBS! Any timelines for OBS Virtualcam to be available
on macOS? It seems like several software like Snap Camera are integrating with
users in this mode, OBS could be really helpful this way in webinars that
don't happen over Twitch/YouTube.

~~~
r1ch
We're hoping sooner than later thanks to Tobi's bounty on this. You can follow
the design spec at
[https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15](https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15)
if you're interested.

~~~
vanous
It is really awesome and fast development. I am hoping it ends up cross
platform (Linux) and not only OSX specific.

------
Derbasti
OBS is amazing. Half our faculty just went all-out and spent thousands of
dollars on some commercial screen recording software.

Meanwhile I'm doing my online courses with OBS, and it works beautifully. I
have multiple scenes set up in OBS that grab different parts of my screens,
and I switch between them with simple key strokes, while narrating on my
actions as I do them.

It's a very simple, and very effective setup, and my students love it.

To me, it is immensely powerful to be able to switch scenes and narrate live,
instead of doing these things in post. This saves a ton of time, that I can
instead spend on refining my content.

~~~
aantix
By chance, do you know what software your faculty purchased?

~~~
geerlingguy
Probably any of the education-specific tools that are maintained similar to
enterprise software platforms, where they add 'online video tutoring'
capabilities to check off a feature/table-stakes box, but it has a painful UI
that makes OBS look like a dream to use, and adds an extra few thousand
dollars to the school's bill every year.

------
jameshe
I use OBS Studio with OBS-VirtualCam [0] to attend virtual lectures & hold
meetings for my team. I've found it to be incredibly convenient because you
can control nearly everything with scenes and the audio controls.

Before meetings start, I can broadcast music and display announcements, and
then without having to hit a jarring "End Screenshare" can switch to my webcam
and start a meeting. Live demos and presentations are another scene with the
desktop/window/browser and webcam. 100% would recommend.

[0] [https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-virtual-
cam](https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-virtual-cam)

~~~
aarongolliver
how are you getting desktop audio (music or whatever) to get sent to your
meetings? I didn't see how to expose the audio output from obs as a
"microphone" or whatever to video conferencing software. I ended up hacking my
setup together with voicemeeter but it's pretty sloppy and error prone.

~~~
aantix
Loopback?
[https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/](https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/)

~~~
Seirdy
Pipewire [0] (the successor to PulseAudio) attempts to streamline this process
for Linux. I've been messing with wf-recorder [1] for my screen+audio
recordings, and might try to get it to spoof a camera input so I can get any
program attempting to connect to the webcam to instead turn into a screen-
casting tool.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire)

[1]: [https://github.com/ammen99/wf-recorder](https://github.com/ammen99/wf-
recorder)

------
fuball63
OBS is commonly used for video game streaming, but it's a great tool for any
scenario where you need to take live audio and video from different sources
and display them at the same time or transition between them.

I've been using it to make a corny music interview show with my local musician
friends during the coronavirus shelter in place. Whereas a lot of my fellow
musicians are streaming from their phone, I'm able to connect a mixer to my
computer and stream the show with really good audio quality.

~~~
ehsankia
The B in OBS hints at streaming, but it's also fantastic for purely recording.
It's honestly surprising how lacking that space was before OBS. I remember
using FRAPS/Taksi a bit, and stuff like Camtasia, but there were all pretty
awful to be honesty and definitely not free or open source.

~~~
fuball63
I really like using the recording feature to do sound checks. We go through
all of our checks, then I watch the video locally in VLC. That way I'm certain
when it goes live it'll sound the way it's supposed to.

~~~
ehsankia
I wish more people would do this. Or maybe OBS should have some (opt-out)
warnings for when your audio is either unbalanced, too low or too loud. I seen
way too videos or streams with bad audio levels.

------
geerlingguy
I've been using OBS for a couple months for live streams on YouTube (see
[https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/ansible-101-jeff-
geer...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/ansible-101-jeff-geerling-
youtube-streaming-series)), and I have had rock-solid reliability, using an
external mic interface, an external camera (displayed PIP), and sharing one of
two displays during some instructional sessions.

One thing to keep in mind, though—unless you have a dedicated video card, and
it's supported by OBS (the list of supported cards on macOS is very thin),
your CPU has to do all the compositing and compression, meaning you need a lot
of CPU to be able to manage the streaming.

On my 2016 MacBook Pro 13", it barely has the horsepower to do a stream and
also run processes that I'm explaining (e.g. manage some VMs, run some
database operations, etc.). I had to turn down the compression method to
'ultrafast', which is lowest quality (but still pretty good with 1080p
output), and I also use SwitchResX to set my shared display at 1080p 1x
resolution (instead of 4K/2x resolution).

~~~
fenrirthviti
OBS core team member here, just a quick clarification on this post. OBS will
not run without a supported GPU for compositing; that is always handled by the
GPU running on OpenGL (for macOS and Linux, we use Direct3D on Windows). The
available encoders, however, might change based on the available hardware.
Hardware encoders are, generally, much faster and lower impact on system
resources, but may have lower quality per bitrate as a trade-off.

~~~
geerlingguy
Ah, thank you for the clarification, TIL!

------
lvh
If you're running a modern Linux desktop you're probably running Wayland, and
screencasts on that have long since been a complete pain in the neck with per-
compositor "solutions" that mostly don't work quite right. Fortunately someone
who works on Gnome wrote the obs-xdg-portal plugin that should fix this, at
least for Gnome and hopefully soon for wlroots and KDE once they fully support
the underlying portal API. Until then, the easiest way to get screencasting
working is just to run in X11.

(Ask me about ffmpeg raw GPU buffer capture one day; running a bunch of codec
code as root is always exciting.)

OBS Plugin: [https://gitlab.gnome.org/feaneron/obs-xdg-
portal/](https://gitlab.gnome.org/feaneron/obs-xdg-portal/)

For GTK: [https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-
gtk](https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk)

For KDE: [https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-
kde](https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-kde)

For wlr: [https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-
wlr](https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr)

~~~
axlee
Does Wayland do anything better than Xorg? Every time I see it mentioned, it
is about how it does not support this or that core feature of Xorg (e.g
multiple displays with custom pixel densities/scaling, screen sharing apps
being broken, etc...). What is Wayland's reason for existing?

~~~
pkulak
I'm kinda new to Linux as a desktop, and thus went straight to Wayland, so
these kinds of comments from ol'-timers are super interesting to me.

I run a Wayland desktop, and I start it by typing it's executable from the TTY
after I log in. No fuss, no muss.

Everything works great, except there was this one game I wanted to try out
that's a Windows .exe and needs to run in Wine and I couldn't quite get it to
run in Wayland. So I installed xorg-server and an X window manager. Tried to
just run it from TTY and it complained that there was no X server running.
Okay, turns out I need another program to start X, then start my window
manager, as a kind of desktop chaperone. Finally get that worked out, try
running my game, and the screen tearing is a nightmare. So now I have to run a
compositor in there as well to be an intermediary in the already extremely
complicated X protocol. And since X needs to run as root (I think?), half the
time I try to start it, I get odd permissions errors, or it tries to use the
wrong TTY. As someone going the _other_ direction, I can't fathom how anyone
puts up with X.

The good news, is that after it did it's initial setup and install in X, the
game now seems to run fine in Wayland. :D

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The screen tearing isn't caused by X. It's a faulty video driver.

~~~
imtringued
You had decades to fix the faulty video drivers for X11.... Meanwhile they
work on Wayland since day one.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Meanwhile they work on Wayland since day one.

So how's that Nvidia support coming along?

------
bnycum
If you are looking for a more robust solution Streamlabs OBS[1] is more
popular in the livestreaming community, it's OBS on steroids. It is also open
source, and just released a beta on Mac like this week.

[1]: [https://streamlabs.com/](https://streamlabs.com/)

~~~
ShamelessC
Is this a fork of OBS or another project.

If it's a fork, why not work on the OBS project to implement these
enhancements there? Is there backlash to that sort of thing from the OBS
maintainers?

~~~
ihuman
I think one of the reasons why is because Streamlabs sells premium add-ons
[https://streamlabs.com/goprime](https://streamlabs.com/goprime)

~~~
ehsankia
That aside, I think it specializes OBS in a way that is too specific for OBS,
which tries to be more generic. I think they both have their place, but
personally I use OBS for recording videos and SLOBS adds no value for me.

~~~
joking
I didn't know about slobs, but the idea of a "theme store" maybe would be
something worth to explore on obs, It actually could be a revenue stream, just
like wordpress, where the core is open source but you have several theme
stores.

------
acidburnNSA
Love it. I've been using it on Linux with v4l2loopback to get it into things
like Skype, zoom, jitsi, and teams. Really slick.

For quarantine levity, this combined with live audio effects possible with
JACK rack like voice changers and echos is hilarious. Maybe today's a good day
to try that out on the engineering managers meeting.

~~~
preek
That sounds like a great setup. I use OBS for recording and PulseEffects for
some features like a noise gate. However, the latter doesn’t work well for me.

Do you have some docs you could share on the setup you describe above, please?

In any case, thanks for sharing your setup so far!

~~~
acidburnNSA
I have a video about the JACK Rack setup at least from a while back but
haven't written anything about the OBS/v4l2loopback stuff. It's probably a
good time to write something like that up, eh?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igca1qT8Sjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igca1qT8Sjs)

------
archon
I started using OBS when our church moved our services to live streaming due
to the pandemic. Our mostly non-technical volunteer media team has had zero
issues using it to stream to Facebook or a self-hosted Restreamer instance.
Easy to use, straightforward interface. I'm sure we'll keep using it for
streaming even after the pandemic is over.

~~~
chirau
What's your setup if you don't mind me asking?

~~~
geerlingguy
I know I've been getting a number of questions around livestreaming for
churches lately (since I used to do that a lot more in the past), and I've
been gathering my thoughts in a blog post here:
[https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-livestream-
masses...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-livestream-masses-or-
other-liturgies-on-youtube)

It depends mainly on the budget, but with Easter coming up (probably _the_
major day in many (if not most) Christian churches), it seems many groups are
scrambling to find a way to get a decent quality stream set up in time.

Many groups on the lower end of the budget scale are using an iPhone on a
tripod (but the audio is terrible). Medium range you have one or two cameras
plugged into a laptop with OBS, and you can get audio from the church's sound
system. High end many places already have PTZ camera systems installed, and
they just need someone to control the video system during the event.

------
gregfjohnson
I've found OBS Studio to be brilliant. I needed to capture and livestream the
screen of a small embedded Windows box. I purchased an HDMI-in/USB-out HD
capture device. Plugged the HDMI side into the little Windows box, and the USB
side into my linux box. OBS Studio recognized the new "HD Capture" virtual
device, and captured the live video off the other system. I could save to a
file, livestream, etc. No driver issues or problems. Just amazing.

------
darzu
My team loves OBS! We’ve been using it to live stream “learn to code” sessions
for kids 4-5x daily after the world went into lockdown.

Shameless self plug: [https://makecode.com/online-
learning](https://makecode.com/online-learning)

------
e8johan
We just ran the entire foss-north conference virtually using OBS. Not a glitch
during 4 days. I started documenting the setup here:
[https://github.com/e8johan/virtual-conf-
resources](https://github.com/e8johan/virtual-conf-resources) .

------
LambdaB
If you are looking for self-hosted desktop streaming with OBS via nginx and
RTMP, you might find some insights in my recent blog post:
[https://bitkeks.eu/blog/2020/03/desktop-video-streaming-
serv...](https://bitkeks.eu/blog/2020/03/desktop-video-streaming-server-obs-
studio-nginx-rtmp-hls-videojs.html) The nginx module also supports DASH
encoding, which can be delivered by dash.js - I have it in production, but not
yet updated the article. Next I'll try setting up SRT.

~~~
alfg
Also check out [https://github.com/alfg/docker-nginx-
rtmp](https://github.com/alfg/docker-nginx-rtmp) for a Docker setup with a
template to output HLS.

------
adamfeldman
I've been trying to find a way to easily use my green screen outside Zoom.

Have been tinkering with OBS:
[https://www.rightpoint.com/thought/2017/12/19/improving-
your...](https://www.rightpoint.com/thought/2017/12/19/improving-your-video-
meetings-on-skype-with-green-screens), [https://streamshark.io/blog/chroma-
key-software-live-streami...](https://streamshark.io/blog/chroma-key-software-
live-streaming)

I'm looking for an actively-developed macOS virtual webcam tool, as CamTwist's
website is showing a PHP error, and their Mac software doesn't seem to be
notarized: [http://camtwiststudio.com](http://camtwiststudio.com).

~~~
mistersquid
Last week, HN's front-page featured "Proposed bounty for adding virtual
camera" [0] that ended up generating an RFC. [1]

You might find some encouraging and helpful information there, if you haven't
seen those links already.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22682022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22682022)

[1]
[https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15](https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15)

~~~
adamfeldman
Thank you!!

------
technofiend
I've been using it to create videos of an infrastructure provisioning product.
One of the most useful things so far is being able to record a process that
may take 15 minutes to fail but only has an error for a few seconds before
clearing the screen, rebooting, hanging, etc. Much easier to rewind and grab
the failure from a stream than to hang poised over a keyboard waiting to bang
print screen at the precise moment needed.

~~~
LegitShady
...shouldnt you just log errors as you go and check the log?

~~~
technofiend
Absolutely. However this isn't my code and it can fail in strange ways with an
ephemeral error message. If I can't change the code, this is my workaround.

------
jcelerier
OBS is a very nice example of developping & distributing a Qt app to Mac /
Windows / Linux with rad performance.

~~~
AbuAssar
Telegram is the best Qt cross-platform app i used

~~~
mappu
Although Telegram is QML, not Widgets - I think they should be compared as
different categories.

~~~
jcelerier
Nope, Telegram is widgets
([https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/search?q=qwidget...](https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/search?q=qwidget&unscoped_q=qwidget))

------
jimhefferon
College professor here. This software has been a big help in the current
situation. Applause for the developers!

(Anyone know how to fix that it changes red to blue and blue to red, when
grabbing Firefox? I'm using Ubuntu MATE, Bionic Beaver.)

~~~
superhuzza
Give this a shot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnLtc63XJQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnLtc63XJQ&feature=youtu.be)

~~~
jimhefferon
Well, I'll be damned. Thanks.

------
lucastech
OBS is great! Huge thanks to everyone who's maintained it over the years.

As a side note, I'm trying to figure out how to do live streaming with less
intense CPU requirements. My use case is effectively trying to use a Macbook
Air to stream high quality video (720p, 30fps). Is there any way I could
stream the video raw and encode it on a VPS somewhere? Or is there just a very
real hurdle of needing a beefy CPU for any live streaming?

I've looked at WebRTC a bit, but can't seem to find much in terms of how to
broadcast it in a 1 to many (like Twitch, Vimeo, etc) when using WebRTC.
Mux.com at least allows you to do that if you have an RTMP source stream, but
I can only find web based libraries that require Flash to stream.

Is there some HTML5 camera broadcasting solution that I'm missing? Some kind
of VPS software for turning WebRTC into RTMP? I'd appreciate any direction I
can get on this!

Thanks

~~~
mmcclure
I'm actually working on a blog post on the state of streaming live from a
browser! WebRTC is...a bit of a monster, especially if you want to broadcast
one-to-many.

I've been hacking around with using the MediaRecorder API and piping that
through WebSockets to a server that publishes via RTMP. It's definitely rough,
and browsers de-prioritizing requestAnimationFrame callbacks when the tab
isn't in focus kills things, but it's promising. It runs shockingly well on a
Glitch instance for what that's worth.

You need a Mux ([https://mux.com](https://mux.com)) stream key for the demo,
but you could quickly edit it to use any RTMP URL: [https://mmcc-next-
streamr.glitch.me/](https://mmcc-next-streamr.glitch.me/)

------
xwowsersx
Is there some news with OBS or just sharing this wonderful piece of software?

------
yesimahuman
OBS is really great, but beware the latest version has some serious crash
issues on Catalina. Seems related to password managers and HTML forms with
password inputs. Had my stream crash over and over until I stopped using my
browser during the session.

~~~
r1ch
This is triggered by secure input causing issues with the hotkey code. We're
aware of the issue and should have a hotfix out soon.

------
sireat
Big fan of OBS!

I've been using OBS to stream to Youtube and record locally at the same time.

It's been over 400 videos now ever since Google Hangouts killed Youtube
integration last August.

Why did Google kill integration between their properties, who knows?
([https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/google-is-killing-
yo...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/google-is-killing-youtubes-
hangouts-on-air-this-year/))

With OBS streaming is dead simple just enter your Youtube API key and off you
go.

If you are on a laptop with integrated AND discrete video cards there can be
some issues with OBS recognizing the correct GPU.

------
thomascgalvin
I use OBS to record training videos for our engineers. I used QuickTime for a
while, but jumped ship when QuickTime crashed and ate an hour-long session,
with no recoverable backup.

------
dfee
There’s one feature of OBS that’s missing for me, and that’s recording sources
to separate files. I believe this is called “multicording”, and it something
I’ve only found in paid software, like screen flow.

Here is the multi year discussion in the OBS forums:
[https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/recording-sources-to-
se...](https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/recording-sources-to-separate-
video-files.61173/)

~~~
stephen_g
The main big one for me is similar - not recording but being able to stream to
multiple servers.

We can do things like run nginx with nginx-rtmp-module as a proxy, but then
you have to put stunnel or something in front of it for Facebook because
nginx-rtmp-module doesn't support rtmps (and development seems completely
stalled).

~~~
rlyshw
I've been looking into building a containerized FFMPEG stream routing solution
but haven't been able to think of a good use-case. What is your alternative
destination after Facebook RTMPS?

~~~
stephen_g
We’re just trying to stream to YouTube and Facebook at the same time.

Actually, ffmpeg is the other solution I was looking at playing with on the
weekend.

~~~
rlyshw
FFMPEG is a great tool for any IP video streaming workflow. You can easily
define multiple outputs. Check out the live streaming guide:
[https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide)

I just haven't yet found a good way to export active stream status from the
CLI out to other interfaces for the tool I'm working on.

------
sorryitstrue
One thing I wish you could do is have two different copies of an input - in my
case, I wanted a video stream input (webcam) where I apply one set of filters
to it for one scene, and a different set of filters to another scene. Seems
like filters are globally applied to the instance, and you can't have two
different scene elements with the same video input device.

~~~
fenrirthviti
You can use groups to accomplish this currently, but it's not the most obvious
thing. Just create two groups, and add the shared source to each group, then
apply your filter to the group itself. Scene-specific filters and other scene-
specific features is something that is on our to-do list, but very tricky at
best.

------
bonestamp2
Is there anyway I can make it pretend to be a webcam so I can use the output
as a "camera" source for skype, teams, etc?

~~~
dashesyan
Yes there’s OBS Virtual Camera and there’s NDI tools

See the setup section here:
[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebca...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebcamVideoCallsToTheNextLevelWithOBSNDIToolsAndElgatoStreamDeck.aspx)

~~~
jsilence
Zoom on Windows 10 does not seem to recognize the obs-cam virtual camera.
Unfortunately.

If anyone has a solution for this, I'd love to get a hint.

~~~
r1ch
Their latest Windows version has some weird DLL blacklist which blocks the
ffmpeg DLLs used by the virtual camera. I made an inert version of the DLL[1]
but this will break screen sharing due to a set of digital signature checks
Zoom does before screen sharing.

[https://twitter.com/R1CH_TL/status/1243734261628383232](https://twitter.com/R1CH_TL/status/1243734261628383232)

------
megraf
Your icon is very close to the BDSM icon! example:
[https://i.pinimg.com/236x/20/5e/5f/205e5fa719e6063ed5c3cfba8...](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/20/5e/5f/205e5fa719e6063ed5c3cfba881988bd
--dom-pride-flag.jpg)

~~~
Krustopolis
Wait, a sexual fetish has its own icon?

~~~
blattimwind
Got a flag as well

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM#Symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM#Symbols)

------
notsgnik
Can't manage to record my desktop, only get a black screen instead. Can't
manage to find a fix, even 3 years latter while not being the only one...

I know it's free... Still, to me, after couple years of sponsorship it should
have fixed itself... (specially with hardware as common as mine.)

~~~
r1ch
This is a common problem with laptops due to the multi-GPU power saving setup
most laptops have, we have a thread at
[https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/laptop-black-screen-
whe...](https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/laptop-black-screen-when-
capturing-read-here-first.5965/) which explains how to fix it.

------
gw
Did anyone report that bizarre OBS bug that Jon Blow ran into while streaming
a week ago? It was pretty entertaining...

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/575151695?t=00h00m25s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/575151695?t=00h00m25s)

~~~
deathanatos
I wish they would have explored what some of the commenters noted: does it
happen when you position OBS such that it has to recursively capture itself?
(The feed contains a picture of the feed which contains a picture of the feed
which …)

It seemed like some positions, it would handle 2-4 recursions okay, but the
positions where it had to do infinite recursions were the ones that the frame-
rate plummeted.

~~~
dodgepong
Recursion would have nothing to do with it. Recursive capture does not add any
load, it just looks weird.

------
AdrianB1
It may be just me, but I don't find the project's main page clear and
intuitive; the first screen capture looks scary and there is nothing in that
page that suggests (shows) the software is easy to use. Maybe it is easy to
use, it's just not showing it.

~~~
somehnguy
I don't think many people would describe OBS as 'easy to use'. I think that
typically comes with the territory of very powerful software like OBS though.
Steep learning curve and all that.

------
jononor
Using OBS to record and stream interactive tutorials for customers, teaching
machine learning for audio. Works super to use v4l2sink plugin for Linux to
emulate a webcam and put it into any standard videochatting software. Thank
you!

------
SN76477
Used it with windows for years.

I use it to record my screen for training my outsourcers.

Works great and is simple.

------
jscheel
I absolutely love OBS, and use it consistently three times a week for
streaming my church’s worship services. It’s an amazing tool, and I’m really
thankful for it. That said, if you want to stream on macOS, be ready for some
friction. I believe they are working on some issues with updating to metal,
which should help quite a bit. Right now, studio mode will drop your FPS by
half because OBS doesn’t disable v-sync properly, and window capture is really
buggy. If you are wanting to commit to streaming, you may have better luck on
a pc right now.

------
AlchemistCamp
Even though OBS was initially aimed at streamers, it's also what I use to
record all the YouTube videos I make for
[https://alchemist.camp](https://alchemist.camp)

It's surprisingly flexible and there are plugins for almost everything. If you
want to display keypresses, you can. If you want to add a layer and have both
your video camera and screen incorporated, you can. If you want a layer to
show keypresses, like I did when recording a video on VIM, you can do that,
too.

~~~
StavrosK
By the way, if you want to pre-record keystrokes for demos/presentations/etc
and still make it look like you're live-typing, I made a thing:

[https://gitlab.com/stavros/itsalive](https://gitlab.com/stavros/itsalive)

~~~
AlchemistCamp
Thanks, but I like to just type and talk as I go.

------
jgrauman
I love OBS, just started using it a couple weeks ago. I am using the
v4l2loopback plugin on Linux to output the video to Zoom. Is there a way for
it to output the sound similarly to be used as an input in Zoom for Linux? I'm
using a blackmagic decklink mini recorder as input, and Zoom won't accept it
as a mic, but OBS does. I've tried a bunch of hacks with pavucontrol, but
nothing will let me accept the OBS output as an input into Zoom. Does anyone
have any ideas?

~~~
jgrauman
Nevermind, this fixes it from elsewhere in the thread. Thanks!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22754216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22754216)

------
JeremyNT
OBS is amazing. I've used it to record canned demos and presentations for a
year or so now, and it just works great on Linux. I even use it to record
demos of a wip or partially working feature that I'm working on and attach the
video to issues in our gitlab instance to request feedback from stakeholders.

Its feature list is really impressive, but it's great for this kind of simple
use case too. Be sure to give it a try and many thanks to the maintainers!

------
asutekku
I try to love OBS but even the simplest thing (sharing a portion of your
screen) requires tons of fiddling to get it work (you need to get the right
area with sliders instead of just drawing it on the screen).

I guess it’s once again the same old story. In theory, it is a wonderful piece
of open source software, but because of the lack of competent designers in the
OSS-scene, the UX is awful for casual and first-time users. For pro-users,
however, it is perfect.

~~~
fenrirthviti
You can hold alt+drag the red bounding box to crop easily. Screen-region
select is on our to-do list, but hasn't been a high priority as it's
technically already possible to get the same end result, just not as simple.

------
Tepix
Related: The NDI HX camera app for iOS is currently free (instead of 22€) -
with the OBS NDI plugin you can use your iPhone or iPad as a low-latency
webcam for OBS. [https://apps.apple.com/de/app/ndi-hx-
camera/id1477266080](https://apps.apple.com/de/app/ndi-hx-camera/id1477266080)

------
john_cogs
Some of my teammates at GitLab are coordinating the Cloud Native Summit online
event. They intend to use OBS + Zoom (and possibly Restream). If there are any
resources you recommend for setting up OBS + Zoom + Restream for (mostly) Mac
users, I'd love to share with the team. For context, the event will feature a
mix of keynote and panel-style conversations.

------
zo1
If anyone is wondering how they can use this with something like zoom, I found
this really handy blog post about it:

[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebca...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebcamVideoCallsToTheNextLevelWithOBSNDIToolsAndElgatoStreamDeck.aspx)

------
binarymax
Just started using it last week, and we'll be using it for our first virtual
meetup next Thursday!

It's a great project, but the area that would make it absolutely amazing would
be a better layout UX. It requires lots of clicking around to get things lined
up and sized properly. Some UX practices from existing layout systems like
inkscape would go a long way.

------
movedx
Love OBS.

I have a Sony A6000 going into it via a Elgato HD60 S. A Rode NT-USB
microphone and a green screen my brother made me (big, solid, wooden... it's
awesome.)

OBS has enabled me to create super high quality training videos and also
provide excellent remote working video conferencing capabilities. I can
basically do remote pair programming with this thing... it's amazing.

------
pontifier
I started using it about 2 months ago, and I've got to say it's quite amazing.

It was much easier to start than I expected. Like copy and paste a code, then
one button to start streaming on twitch.

Creating multiple views, and adding cameras was also very easy and intuitive.

It's one of the best pieces of software I've used in a long time.

------
jpdb
I have interacted with the guy that started OBS a few times because he's a
member of a community I am in. He's an extremely intelligent person and
definitely deserves some positive attention. If you use OBS and find value in
it you should definitely consider donating, I know it goes a long way.

------
ru552
I use OBS to record live streams of conferences so I can go back and watch
them later. It's pretty great.

------
mrlala
OBS is simple enough that my 6 year old can record minecraft videos with it
and work out any little quirks.

------
ko3us
OBS is awesome and it’s helped with my company to grow. We build plugins and
overlays for OBS to make it super easy for streamers to reward their audience.
Shameless plug check out get.incent.com/Ingage and get free reward overlays.

I think the community effort to grow OBS has been awesome.

------
jventura
I had to move my classes online, so I've been using OBS for recording videos
(mainly me talking while I go over the slides ~ 15-20 minutes).

The only thing I would like to see fixed on macOS would be that my students
could see the mouse pointer. Beside that, I think it works quite well.

------
voicedYoda
No joke, i was working with colleagues just yesterday on real time closed
captioning, and started googling for a few ideas for Google's cloud speech
recognition API. OBS was the first few hits, so i started learning all about
this amazing tool just yesterday.

------
noufalibrahim
I don't use it for streaming but for recording screencasts and it does an
excellent job there. I'm sure if I dig in a little, I'd find more features
that would my videos better but even the default settings (on mac and Linux)
work very well.

------
zelphirkalt
I must say, I had a rather mixed experience with OBS. I've used it before to
do some streaming too, but it definitely has some issues with instability.

The example (anecdote, if you will) I remember right now: There is apparently
a way to mess up your settings, so that OBS crashes. No error or anything in
the UI visible. But then your config is messed up, so when you restart it, it
immediately crashes again. You cannot fix it, unless you delete the settings
files or reinstall the application.

It should not be possible to ever reach a situation, where you can make an
application crash, by only accessing the settings it provides. It should warn
about invalid settings or disable settings, which cannot be used, because of
settings or reset the settings to something valid or ... But in OBS it's
possible to basically mess up the whole application using its own settings UI.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
Is this a brand new service or did they release recently because of COVID?

Never heard of them before.

I have been searching for open source projects to help bring my local yoga
studio online for the past few weeks and this looks promising!

~~~
fralewsmi
OBS has dominated the livestreaming working for a while now (e.g Twitch)

------
timClicks
I'm curious how large the development team is. There is an impressive
community around OBS but seems to be many more requests for help rather than
helpers.

~~~
dodgepong
There's one full-time developer, about 5-10 regular free-time developers, and
about 5-10 free-time support helpers.

------
Ididntdothis
Just found this a few days ago for doing a screen recording. Works really well
but the UI could maybe use a little cleanup to make it easier to use.

~~~
kawfey
As a seasoned user, I love the UI. But also I'm a seasoned user.

It is a highly complicated software, but it's extremely flexible and
surprisingly reliable for all things streaming and screen recording. A dead-
simple mode might suffice but if you do anything with streaming or recording
it's worth it to learn the deeper idiosyncrasies of OBS.

------
strongbond
I'd (seriously) like to see how it stacks up against Camtasia, which I've just
discovered in my new job that I have no budget for.

------
jonathankoren
I have a topic adjacent question.

If OBS is a good mixer, what’s a good open source video editor? Or can OBS do
edit prerecorded files as well?

~~~
jfkebwjsbx
I use Blender's, but requires knowledge of how things work.

------
ktzar
I tried this a while ago and didn't find the option, is midi supported to
trigger scene changes, fadings, etc...?

------
turdnagel
Love OBS. Does anyone know if there is a way to use the hardware encoder with
a Radeon GPU on Mac?

------
suyash
Any tips on how to integrate OBS with Zoom Presentations and make use of OBS
features?

------
zamadatix
Only thing I've liked more is vMix but that costs quite a bit.

------
simonmales
We use it to stream product demo's to Workplace (Facebook product).

Works great!

------
hkiely
How does this encode the video?

------
gbea42d4
This is a great app.

------
romanovcode
Is there anything like this that works with WinXP?

------
puggo
This is old software, old news. Why is it here?

