7 ms·

OBS Studio Lands AV1 and HEVC RTMP Streaming Support

174 points by mikece 4y ago

phkahler 4y ago
For the OBS fans who have been wanting a builtin equalizer for years, you get the 3-band one and that's it. I submitted a decent 8-band, asked for feedback, and after a few months it was rejected. They want you to use plug-ins. I'd be happy to improve the one I submitted (more bands, steeper rolloff,etc) but the project does not want such a feature. I'm not butthurt, I just find it odd but half expected the rejection going in based on what I read.
- moritonal 4y ago
  Could you expand on the context? Why would an open source project not want what sounds like an obvious improvement?
  - andreareina 4y ago
    Not the GP or associated with OBS but they could conceivably want to not handle anything that can be (and are already being) done via plugins. What's an obvious improvement to you is new code (always a risk) doing something that's already solved.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    I suspect it's because the project is primarily focused on video. Another reason could be that audio effects can be an endless rabbit hole of constantly striving for some elusive perfection. Best to leave it to plugings. On the other hand, I think basic functionality out of the box is still a good idea and the 3-band doesn't quite cut it. But thats just me - I just used it once and EQ was the one thing I found wanting. The Cynic in me wonders if the project is funded by plug-in vendors and this might be a conflict! I lean towards the rabbit hole theory though.
    - corobo 4y ago
      My quick assumption is that they don't want to maintain code you wrote forever. If it's done as a plugin they don't need to worry about it. I don't know how complex the code is though, of course. E: Their response seems to be that users who would find this useful already use a plugin. https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961
      - phkahler 4y ago
        >> Their response seems to be that users who would find this useful already use a plugin. But nee users will have to figure that out. That is one of the worst excuses they could have offered. BTW the code is completely self contained. Nothing to maintain. That's due to a clean API on their part.
        wsgeorge 4y ago
        > Nothing to maintain. Never say never...
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Audio-wise it should probably support LADSPA/VST plugins and that's all, there is EVERYTHING audio wise available between those 2 formats. I think it supports VST2 currently ?
    - throw0101b 4y ago
      > I suspect it's because the project is primarily focused on video. Audio is 80% of video. Most people will watch to a potato-quality video if the person talking can be understood fairly well, but will probably not bother with something where the audio is echo-y, with wind, and sounds like it was recorded over a wet string, even if the image is 4K/HDR. How advanced the included audio controls is certainly up for debate, but it's not possible to focus on 'just' video.
      - bigtex 4y ago
        This is very true, as someone helping a church do there weekly services, audio is king. Even the best soundbar at maxxed volume can't overcome a service broadcast using the built-in microphone on an iPhone. But get the microphone audio plugged directly into the stream and that changes everything.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    Why would an open source project not want what sounds like an obvious improvement? Every additional feature is another thing to maintain and test. Saying no leaves more time for everything else so there needs to be an exceptional reason to say yes. This is true for all projects, not just open source.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    OBS is not a DAW. On every (?) platform where it runs, there are ways to connect capable audio processing software to OBS, and that software already has all the capabilities you might want (and more). Yes, it's a bit more convenient to do it all in the same program, but the complexity and maintainance expansion has its own costs.
- albertzeyer 4y ago
  Can you link the PR? But also, what's the problem with having this as a plugin? Isn't it better to keep the core OBS small, and provide extra functionality via plugins?
  - phkahler 4y ago
    >> Can you link the PR? https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961 I guess most frustrating to me was the request to format the code and fix the commit message as if it was on track, only to be rejected for "we don't want this in the first place". Plugins suck. There are a lot of people who will not bother to go that route. It immediately raises questions about what OS do they work on, do they cost money, how do I install them? They include compression and noise gate among others. Enough to clean up my microphone input. But not much in the way of tone control.
    - mikece 4y ago
      > Plugins suck. There are a lot of people who will not bother to go that route. Serious people WILL explore the plugins route, but one has to go from "What is this thing I just downloaded and how do I use it?" to "Okay, I've got the hang of this, I'm pretty good at it, but the stock tools are holing me back from making something better." I would venture to say that the majority using OBS will never make it to that second phase. For those who do, have a well SEOed blog post and YouTube/TikTok video ready to show them how to take it to 11.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      > I guess most frustrating to me was the request to format the code and fix the commit message as if it was on track, only to be rejected for "we don't want this in the first place". Usually, those things are easy to check, almost a part of just triage where you try to cover lots of ground but just the surface. Takes small amount of time for the maintainer unless there is a lot of ground to cover obviously. But unless they explicitly signal the change is wanted, I wouldn't (in the future) take that as a signal that the change in general is wanted. As a tip, before trying to contribute any larger patches to FOSS, create a issue to ask if this is something they'd actually be willing to merge, if you chose to build it. Then you know for sure up front if it's worth spending time on. > Plugins suck. There are a lot of people who will not bother to go that route. It immediately raises questions about what OS do they work on, do they cost money, how do I install them? Personally, I appreciate the architecture of "small core - allow extensions" so I'm happy they don't expand OBS in that way. As well, I'd appreciate it a lot if you made what you did into a plugin, better audio control is wanted by a large set of OBS and I know many do the piping outside of OBS to get a proper equalizer. So if you spend time on making it into an extension, I'm sure you'd find lots of people grateful for that.
Torkel 4y ago
A "fun" thing here is that it isn't possible to create or open these streams in ffmpeg due to neither hevc or AV1 being part of the Adobe RTMP standard. At least as per this thread: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/6389 https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/6389
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  As part of this work they've proposed updates to the spec: https://github.com/veovera/enhanced-rtmp https://github.com/veovera/enhanced-rtmp
  - Torkel 4y ago
    Nice! That looks great!, didn't know about it. The hardline opposition to adding hevc etc support to rtmp came from ffmpeg+gstreamer afaik, and from the document it looks like at least ffmpeg is on board. ...Might have to brush off our broadcast software and add this :)
    - rektide 4y ago
      That veovera repo is a week old. ;)
syntaxfree 4y ago
I bought the Loom yearly subscription because it was inexpensive and features unlimited videos (so I can just record myself working for hours and trim). But I’d much prefer something that cleanly works in Linux.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Does Loom work in linux? I'd likely pay for it if it did, but as a linux user I don't even bother checking that kind of stuff anymore :-(
  - rozhok 4y ago
    It does work as a browser plugin, but I don't like the UX.
Sean-Der 4y ago
I am heavily conflicted on this. I am happy that people get access to better codecs. Better compression and those that aren't encumbered with patents/licensing (AV1) I am sad that we are extending RTMP instead of adopting something better. I want things like * Codec negotiation happening at connect time, so we don't hardcode things * Multi-track. So users can upload multiple audio tracks, or do Simulcast. I would love a world where users upload the multiple quality levels. Then anyone could run a stream service, not just those that can afford transcodes. * P2P. Stream your OBS output directly to another user. It is frustrating to see users struggle with setting up RTMP servers/HLS when they want to share their video with just one or two other people. The other use case I really care about is co-streaming. * Standardized. I would like to see whatever protocol we use be discussed in the IETF. It frustrates me that it is just companies behind closed doors deciding things. If an individual/open source/startup has an idea or use case it is never going to make it into RTMP. I have been trying to add WebRTC support https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926 so I am hopeful for the future.
- der_rod 4y ago
  Well there just isn't "something better". Yet. MoQ (Media over QUIC) development is underway at the IETF - with involvement from Twitch/YouTube/Facebook/Cisco/etc. - but will probably still take quite some time before its finalised and can be adopted.
  - Sean-Der 4y ago
    I use WebRTC today and am happy with it! Works great for broadcasting from Web, Mobile and tools that support it (GStreamer) I have a PR open to OBS for it right now https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926
    - tracker1 4y ago
      How many of those users are direct vs. relaying through a TURN server? I'm genuinely curious, as I kind of anticipate that the majority of users are relaying, but I guess if p2p requests can open router ports in the common config, that could work.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

174 points by mikece 4y ago

For the OBS fans who have been wanting a builtin equalizer for years, you get the 3-band one and that's it. I submitted a decent 8-band, asked for feedback, and after a few months it was rejected. They want you to use plug-ins. I'd be happy to improve the one I submitted (more bands, steeper rolloff,etc) but the project does not want such a feature. I'm not butthurt, I just find it odd but half expected the rejection going in based on what I read.

moritonal 4y ago
Could you expand on the context? Why would an open source project not want what sounds like an obvious improvement?
- andreareina 4y ago
  Not the GP or associated with OBS but they could conceivably want to not handle anything that can be (and are already being) done via plugins. What's an obvious improvement to you is new code (always a risk) doing something that's already solved.
- phkahler 4y ago
  I suspect it's because the project is primarily focused on video. Another reason could be that audio effects can be an endless rabbit hole of constantly striving for some elusive perfection. Best to leave it to plugings. On the other hand, I think basic functionality out of the box is still a good idea and the 3-band doesn't quite cut it. But thats just me - I just used it once and EQ was the one thing I found wanting. The Cynic in me wonders if the project is funded by plug-in vendors and this might be a conflict! I lean towards the rabbit hole theory though.
  - corobo 4y ago
    My quick assumption is that they don't want to maintain code you wrote forever. If it's done as a plugin they don't need to worry about it. I don't know how complex the code is though, of course. E: Their response seems to be that users who would find this useful already use a plugin. https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961
    - phkahler 4y ago
      >> Their response seems to be that users who would find this useful already use a plugin. But nee users will have to figure that out. That is one of the worst excuses they could have offered. BTW the code is completely self contained. Nothing to maintain. That's due to a clean API on their part.
      - wsgeorge 4y ago
        > Nothing to maintain. Never say never...
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Audio-wise it should probably support LADSPA/VST plugins and that's all, there is EVERYTHING audio wise available between those 2 formats. I think it supports VST2 currently ?
  - throw0101b 4y ago
    > I suspect it's because the project is primarily focused on video. Audio is 80% of video. Most people will watch to a potato-quality video if the person talking can be understood fairly well, but will probably not bother with something where the audio is echo-y, with wind, and sounds like it was recorded over a wet string, even if the image is 4K/HDR. How advanced the included audio controls is certainly up for debate, but it's not possible to focus on 'just' video.
    - bigtex 4y ago
      This is very true, as someone helping a church do there weekly services, audio is king. Even the best soundbar at maxxed volume can't overcome a service broadcast using the built-in microphone on an iPhone. But get the microphone audio plugged directly into the stream and that changes everything.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Why would an open source project not want what sounds like an obvious improvement? Every additional feature is another thing to maintain and test. Saying no leaves more time for everything else so there needs to be an exceptional reason to say yes. This is true for all projects, not just open source.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  OBS is not a DAW. On every (?) platform where it runs, there are ways to connect capable audio processing software to OBS, and that software already has all the capabilities you might want (and more). Yes, it's a bit more convenient to do it all in the same program, but the complexity and maintainance expansion has its own costs.
albertzeyer 4y ago
Can you link the PR? But also, what's the problem with having this as a plugin? Isn't it better to keep the core OBS small, and provide extra functionality via plugins?
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Can you link the PR? https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7961 I guess most frustrating to me was the request to format the code and fix the commit message as if it was on track, only to be rejected for "we don't want this in the first place". Plugins suck. There are a lot of people who will not bother to go that route. It immediately raises questions about what OS do they work on, do they cost money, how do I install them? They include compression and noise gate among others. Enough to clean up my microphone input. But not much in the way of tone control.
  - mikece 4y ago
    > Plugins suck. There are a lot of people who will not bother to go that route. Serious people WILL explore the plugins route, but one has to go from "What is this thing I just downloaded and how do I use it?" to "Okay, I've got the hang of this, I'm pretty good at it, but the stock tools are holing me back from making something better." I would venture to say that the majority using OBS will never make it to that second phase. For those who do, have a well SEOed blog post and YouTube/TikTok video ready to show them how to take it to 11.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > I guess most frustrating to me was the request to format the code and fix the commit message as if it was on track, only to be rejected for "we don't want this in the first place". Usually, those things are easy to check, almost a part of just triage where you try to cover lots of ground but just the surface. Takes small amount of time for the maintainer unless there is a lot of ground to cover obviously. But unless they explicitly signal the change is wanted, I wouldn't (in the future) take that as a signal that the change in general is wanted. As a tip, before trying to contribute any larger patches to FOSS, create a issue to ask if this is something they'd actually be willing to merge, if you chose to build it. Then you know for sure up front if it's worth spending time on. > Plugins suck. There are a lot of people who will not bother to go that route. It immediately raises questions about what OS do they work on, do they cost money, how do I install them? Personally, I appreciate the architecture of "small core - allow extensions" so I'm happy they don't expand OBS in that way. As well, I'd appreciate it a lot if you made what you did into a plugin, better audio control is wanted by a large set of OBS and I know many do the piping outside of OBS to get a proper equalizer. So if you spend time on making it into an extension, I'm sure you'd find lots of people grateful for that.

Torkel 4y ago

A "fun" thing here is that it isn't possible to create or open these streams in ffmpeg due to neither hevc or AV1 being part of the Adobe RTMP standard. At least as per this thread: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/6389 https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/6389

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
As part of this work they've proposed updates to the spec: https://github.com/veovera/enhanced-rtmp https://github.com/veovera/enhanced-rtmp
- Torkel 4y ago
  Nice! That looks great!, didn't know about it. The hardline opposition to adding hevc etc support to rtmp came from ffmpeg+gstreamer afaik, and from the document it looks like at least ffmpeg is on board. ...Might have to brush off our broadcast software and add this :)
  - rektide 4y ago
    That veovera repo is a week old. ;)

syntaxfree 4y ago

I bought the Loom yearly subscription because it was inexpensive and features unlimited videos (so I can just record myself working for hours and trim). But I’d much prefer something that cleanly works in Linux.

freedomben 4y ago
Does Loom work in linux? I'd likely pay for it if it did, but as a linux user I don't even bother checking that kind of stuff anymore :-(
- rozhok 4y ago
  It does work as a browser plugin, but I don't like the UX.

Sean-Der 4y ago

I am heavily conflicted on this. I am happy that people get access to better codecs. Better compression and those that aren't encumbered with patents/licensing (AV1) I am sad that we are extending RTMP instead of adopting something better. I want things like * Codec negotiation happening at connect time, so we don't hardcode things * Multi-track. So users can upload multiple audio tracks, or do Simulcast. I would love a world where users upload the multiple quality levels. Then anyone could run a stream service, not just those that can afford transcodes. * P2P. Stream your OBS output directly to another user. It is frustrating to see users struggle with setting up RTMP servers/HLS when they want to share their video with just one or two other people. The other use case I really care about is co-streaming. * Standardized. I would like to see whatever protocol we use be discussed in the IETF. It frustrates me that it is just companies behind closed doors deciding things. If an individual/open source/startup has an idea or use case it is never going to make it into RTMP. I have been trying to add WebRTC support https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926 so I am hopeful for the future.

der_rod 4y ago
Well there just isn't "something better". Yet. MoQ (Media over QUIC) development is underway at the IETF - with involvement from Twitch/YouTube/Facebook/Cisco/etc. - but will probably still take quite some time before its finalised and can be adopted.
- Sean-Der 4y ago
  I use WebRTC today and am happy with it! Works great for broadcasting from Web, Mobile and tools that support it (GStreamer) I have a PR open to OBS for it right now https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926 https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/7926
  - tracker1 4y ago
    How many of those users are direct vs. relaying through a TURN server? I'm genuinely curious, as I kind of anticipate that the majority of users are relaying, but I guess if p2p requests can open router ports in the common config, that could work.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]