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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 releas

by r1ch 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    It is really awesome and fast development. I am hoping it ends up cross platform (Linux) and not only OSX specific.
- codetrotter 7y ago
  Woah, I was gonna ask if anyone knew when Display Capture was gonna be possible on macOS Catalina again, but when I opened OBS now, I see that it's actually possible in version 24.0.6 that I am running. Guess I must've overlooked it until now the last few times I looked for it, lol. Anyway. Does anyone have any recommendations for settings to use in order to avoid lots of frame dropping and OBS making other applications sluggish when I try to stream to Twitch? I'm using a MacBook Air Retina 2018 model with an external monitor connected to it.
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  Check out CamTwist in the meantime - that has a virtual camera on Mac, and I enjoy using it to flip my video upside down (because I live in New Zealand). Also for typing large-text subtitles over the image, which was great for my late grandmother. I'm not affiliated, and it's free. http://camtwiststudio.com/ http://camtwiststudio.com/
  - alpb 7y ago
    My problem is more like OBS does everything I need, but I need to use OBS as a camera in Zoom or Hangouts, but I suspect CamTwist isn't as feature-rich.
    - pavel_lishin 7y ago
      You can pipe OBS through Syphon into CamTwist.
jordigh 7y ago
OBS is amazing and I love everything about it. Thanks for maintaining it. Are there any paid developers working on it? Does the project make money?
- dodgepong 7y ago
  Currently the lead developer (Jim) is the only paid developer, and he's able to work on the program full time thanks to a few large sponsorships. That said, we'd really like to be able to pay more people, as the program has many development needs that could really use attention. More detail about sponsorship/donation opportunities can be found here: https://obsproject.com/contribute https://obsproject.com/contribute
  - gempir 7y ago
    This makes me so sad. Thousands of streamers make millions of Euro from their great software and so few of them contribute back.
    - boredpudding 7y ago
      Twitch, who makes as much as the streamers, is a sponsor though.
  - voicedYoda 7y ago
    Repost this comment as a standalone so it can get more attention than a buried comment!
  - uxcolumbo 7y ago
    Just thinking out loud. I haven't used it yet, so maybe this already exists, but maybe think about adding something to the app itself to remind people to contribute financially, similar to how Wikipedia is doing it. Maybe count how many times someone is using the app (local count) and when the count is high then show a little something, short message and call to action to donate.
ehsankia 7y ago
Huge thanks to you, jim and everyone else involved. It truly is easy up there as one of the greatest open source success stories.
libraryatnight 7y ago
You guys are awesome. I've been using this for a long time to stream, record whatever I want from my computer, and it's always been fantastic. Keep up the great work and thank you.
sulam 7y ago
Happy user of OBS here. Thanks for all the hard work.
jjeaff 7y ago
OBS is awesome. I love being able to switch scenes on the fly. But I have one suggestion that would save a lot of embarrassment for a lot of people. Tldr; There needs to be a master audio level display or at least some sort of master indication whether a stream is getting an audio signal or not. Or at the very least, audio sources should be muted by default in new scenes. We have an Intro screen scene that just displays our logo and some background movement with a message that we will begin soon. We started the live stream and then muted the mic on the audio inputs and then, for good measure, muted the physical mic. We then proceeded to chat and get things ready for the presentation, etc. Little did I know that OBS includes -all- audio sources on every scene, by default, unmuted. And though I had muted our regular mic, the webcam's built-in mic was on and transmitting. We didn't see the green audio level animation or even the listing for that input either, because it was at the bottom of the list of audio input sources where you have to scroll down within that box to see it. Luckily, we didn't say anything too embarrassing, but it was embarrassing nonetheless.
- fenrirthviti 7y ago
  This is something we want to do, but there are some complications both in the design of the program and getting the UI balance between "normal" users and users familiar with professional equipment/DAWs. There's been some proposals, but we haven't reached a consensus yet.
  - noyesno 7y ago
    Would it be possible to create a big "mute all audio" button with an OBS plugin?
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Something as simple as sorting the unmuted audio to the top of the audio source list when you start streaming would be helpful.
  - mycall 7y ago
    opt-in "Mute is Default" option
brian_herman__ 7y ago
Thanks I use obs all the time at work for recording stuff keep up the good work!
anonymoushn 7y ago
What CDN are you using? I worked on a feature at Cloudflare that prevents this scenario and is on for all users.
- r1ch 7y ago
  Fastly have kindly sponsored us with free CDN service. They have a tiered caching feature called Shielding that ended up being our solution - it just needed turning on.
  - anonymoushn 7y ago
    I see! I didn't mean tiered caching. I meant, if a thousand clients simultaneously request a cacheable resource from the same colo that lacks the resource, only one request should make it to your origin, and the response should be streamed to every client. This is possible in Fastly but IIRC it depends on what combination of http and https your client and origin connections are using. Thanks for making OBS!!
buttersbrian 7y ago
Can we just get the 'color picker' option that exists on windows when you are using chrome/color key feature for 'green screen' effects? Not having that on Linux when it exists on windows is frustrating.
pjtr 7y ago
OBS is very good software, thanks for working on it! Recording the screen works much better than any other screen recording software I tried. For this use case the preview can be a bit confusing. If the resolution does not match (because of OS 200% scaling for example) going to the settings each time to adjust it is a bit cumbersome; the interactive resizing handles in the preview somehow never helped me. Sometimes one of the reset zoom context menus helps. Also the "Window source" would be awesome, but is a bit cumbersome to set up every time, and doesn't capture things like menus unfortunately. It's probably really difficult to improve these things, so they work automagically for dummies like me that know very little about OBS and use only a tiny feature set, without taking making things worse for power users, which are probably happy with things as they are.
dhimes 7y ago
Thank you. Although I've moved away from it, it's excellent.
thaniri 7y ago
It's so cool to see you in the mainstream and not hidden on teamliquid! r1ch hwaiting!

by r1ch 7y ago

alpb 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  It is really awesome and fast development. I am hoping it ends up cross platform (Linux) and not only OSX specific.
codetrotter 7y ago
Woah, I was gonna ask if anyone knew when Display Capture was gonna be possible on macOS Catalina again, but when I opened OBS now, I see that it's actually possible in version 24.0.6 that I am running. Guess I must've overlooked it until now the last few times I looked for it, lol. Anyway. Does anyone have any recommendations for settings to use in order to avoid lots of frame dropping and OBS making other applications sluggish when I try to stream to Twitch? I'm using a MacBook Air Retina 2018 model with an external monitor connected to it.
peterburkimsher 7y ago
Check out CamTwist in the meantime - that has a virtual camera on Mac, and I enjoy using it to flip my video upside down (because I live in New Zealand). Also for typing large-text subtitles over the image, which was great for my late grandmother. I'm not affiliated, and it's free. http://camtwiststudio.com/ http://camtwiststudio.com/
- alpb 7y ago
  My problem is more like OBS does everything I need, but I need to use OBS as a camera in Zoom or Hangouts, but I suspect CamTwist isn't as feature-rich.
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
    You can pipe OBS through Syphon into CamTwist.

jordigh 7y ago

OBS is amazing and I love everything about it. Thanks for maintaining it. Are there any paid developers working on it? Does the project make money?

dodgepong 7y ago
Currently the lead developer (Jim) is the only paid developer, and he's able to work on the program full time thanks to a few large sponsorships. That said, we'd really like to be able to pay more people, as the program has many development needs that could really use attention. More detail about sponsorship/donation opportunities can be found here: https://obsproject.com/contribute https://obsproject.com/contribute
- gempir 7y ago
  This makes me so sad. Thousands of streamers make millions of Euro from their great software and so few of them contribute back.
  - boredpudding 7y ago
    Twitch, who makes as much as the streamers, is a sponsor though.
- voicedYoda 7y ago
  Repost this comment as a standalone so it can get more attention than a buried comment!
- uxcolumbo 7y ago
  Just thinking out loud. I haven't used it yet, so maybe this already exists, but maybe think about adding something to the app itself to remind people to contribute financially, similar to how Wikipedia is doing it. Maybe count how many times someone is using the app (local count) and when the count is high then show a little something, short message and call to action to donate.

ehsankia 7y ago

Huge thanks to you, jim and everyone else involved. It truly is easy up there as one of the greatest open source success stories.

libraryatnight 7y ago

You guys are awesome. I've been using this for a long time to stream, record whatever I want from my computer, and it's always been fantastic. Keep up the great work and thank you.

sulam 7y ago

Happy user of OBS here. Thanks for all the hard work.

jjeaff 7y ago

OBS is awesome. I love being able to switch scenes on the fly. But I have one suggestion that would save a lot of embarrassment for a lot of people. Tldr; There needs to be a master audio level display or at least some sort of master indication whether a stream is getting an audio signal or not. Or at the very least, audio sources should be muted by default in new scenes. We have an Intro screen scene that just displays our logo and some background movement with a message that we will begin soon. We started the live stream and then muted the mic on the audio inputs and then, for good measure, muted the physical mic. We then proceeded to chat and get things ready for the presentation, etc. Little did I know that OBS includes -all- audio sources on every scene, by default, unmuted. And though I had muted our regular mic, the webcam's built-in mic was on and transmitting. We didn't see the green audio level animation or even the listing for that input either, because it was at the bottom of the list of audio input sources where you have to scroll down within that box to see it. Luckily, we didn't say anything too embarrassing, but it was embarrassing nonetheless.

fenrirthviti 7y ago
This is something we want to do, but there are some complications both in the design of the program and getting the UI balance between "normal" users and users familiar with professional equipment/DAWs. There's been some proposals, but we haven't reached a consensus yet.
- noyesno 7y ago
  Would it be possible to create a big "mute all audio" button with an OBS plugin?
- jjeaff 7y ago
  Something as simple as sorting the unmuted audio to the top of the audio source list when you start streaming would be helpful.
- mycall 7y ago
  opt-in "Mute is Default" option

brian_herman__ 7y ago

Thanks I use obs all the time at work for recording stuff keep up the good work!

anonymoushn 7y ago

What CDN are you using? I worked on a feature at Cloudflare that prevents this scenario and is on for all users.

r1ch 7y ago
Fastly have kindly sponsored us with free CDN service. They have a tiered caching feature called Shielding that ended up being our solution - it just needed turning on.
- anonymoushn 7y ago
  I see! I didn't mean tiered caching. I meant, if a thousand clients simultaneously request a cacheable resource from the same colo that lacks the resource, only one request should make it to your origin, and the response should be streamed to every client. This is possible in Fastly but IIRC it depends on what combination of http and https your client and origin connections are using. Thanks for making OBS!!

buttersbrian 7y ago

Can we just get the 'color picker' option that exists on windows when you are using chrome/color key feature for 'green screen' effects? Not having that on Linux when it exists on windows is frustrating.

pjtr 7y ago

OBS is very good software, thanks for working on it! Recording the screen works much better than any other screen recording software I tried. For this use case the preview can be a bit confusing. If the resolution does not match (because of OS 200% scaling for example) going to the settings each time to adjust it is a bit cumbersome; the interactive resizing handles in the preview somehow never helped me. Sometimes one of the reset zoom context menus helps. Also the "Window source" would be awesome, but is a bit cumbersome to set up every time, and doesn't capture things like menus unfortunately. It's probably really difficult to improve these things, so they work automagically for dummies like me that know very little about OBS and use only a tiny feature set, without taking making things worse for power users, which are probably happy with things as they are.

dhimes 7y ago

Thank you. Although I've moved away from it, it's excellent.

thaniri 7y ago

It's so cool to see you in the mainstream and not hidden on teamliquid! r1ch hwaiting!