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OBS Studio 33github.com
473pts/138 comments/2d/─
by pentagrama / hn> / « feed
▲▼ forgotmypw1707:20 hn>

While we're here, does anyone know a screen recording application that automatically takes into account display changes, audio device changes, camera resets, etc.?

I'm making do with OBS, but I lose more video to "plugged in external monitor and forgot to update OBS config" than I actually record.

▲▼ albert_e07:28 hn>

I too frequently plug and unplug dock and external displays. It's a little painful to keep checking and sometimes re-add display source to get the default screen and voice recording working.

I wonder if the "modern" way for problems of this nature is to fork the open-source repo and ask your favourite agent to strip it down to bare essentials that you need (performance gains) and add the specific feature enhancements you want (needs to work only for your configuration -- may not pass the quality standard needed for a PR)

▲▼ cube17207:31 hn>

which OS ?

▲▼ forgotmypw1721:00 hn>

Any

▲▼ structural07:39 hn>

This could probably be automated using either an OBS plugin (if you really want deep integration and not running another program) or a standalone program (written in whatever language you want) that listens for display changes and pokes OBS using its websocket API. The hooks are definitely there to update source configs.

▲▼ rwmj07:44 hn>

Surely the main function of a capture program should be to capture video, no matter what, even if that means capturing too much / uninteresting sources some of the time?

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▲▼ TomGarden07:40 hn>

I made a little script that reconnects everything the way I want it on launch via WebSocket. Works great

▲▼ jwr08:02 hn>

Yes, please, that would help so much. OBS seems to be designed for static setups and a single output stream. In my case, I have a setup that changes often (for example, connect a USB video device that processes input from a microscope). I thought I would be able to record multiple video streams at once without burning them into a single output stream (e.g. to multiple files, or a multi-stream file), but this turned out to be difficult without hacks.

▲▼ structural08:33 hn>

Have you considered using GStreamer pipelines for this? And taking it one step further, if you want to use OBS generally, there's a plugin for OBS that allows you to integrate pipelines too.

The common case for the plugin is to do some preprocessing before importing the video into OBS, but you can also use the pipeline as a video filter, which is really powerful, because you can inject a filter into not only a single source, but also at any level of a nested scene. So you can scale/composite several inputs together and then the video filter can copy the source stream and encode/tee it to a file output. Might still be considered a hack of sorts.

▲▼ stwr09:10 hn>

The Branchoutput plugin[1] is what you are looking for for multi recording/streaming. It allows you to add recording (or streaming destinations) to individual sources, scenes and outputs via the video filter settings. It is really quite powerful.

[1] https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/branch-output-streami...

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▲▼ trilogic09:17 hn>

Not sure if and has bugs but is fast and easy: https://github.com/MathewSachin/Captura

▲▼ graiz16:01 hn>

I'm working on a project for the mac that may address this - arclightlive.com - open to feedback on it.

▲▼ zerkten18:33 hn>

Is it really that hard to fix this in an imperfect way by letting you save a profile? If everything is the same as the profile, go. If things have changed, and all of the options are available, prompt about resetting to match the profile. When there are missing options, ask if you want to go fix that.

▲▼ cube17207:28 hn>

I use Lifelog Timeline

▲▼ mixtureoftakes07:30 hn>

Did they finally fix the bug where if you have less than ~40gb storage the recording will just randomly die for no reason with no notice, it is unimaginably annoying

▲▼ evrimoztamur07:49 hn>

This is happening all time time and I lost countless video recordings because of it...

▲▼ wizardcm09:57 hn>

Is this on macOS [0] or another platform? I don't think I've heard of this issue - if you have a log of such a session, please create a bug report [1].

[0] https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/10596

[1] https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues

▲▼ Sammi11:37 hn>

Man I get exhausted just by reading other people's complaints (without environment description or steps to reproduce). I am puzzled by what keeps OSS maintainers going.

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▲▼ jcm9316:50 hn>

This specifically applies to macOS Screen Capture sources freezing, not recordings on any platform.

Further, it's an inexplicable issue with the API; any consumer of SCK is vulnerable to the issue. I'd regard it as Apple's issue to fix, since there is no good reason for frames to randomly stop streaming just because you have less than ~40 GB of disk space free.

Any solution on the OBS side that tried to detect a frozen stream and restart it would not only be a hack and quite possibly lead to greater issues, but could also have privacy implications if we cannot positively identify that the stream was not stopped intentionally (which we cannot).

▲▼ cheapcheerful03:20 hn>

Yep this one gets me too. Mac book Pro M5 latest OS. Happened on my air also.

▲▼ cube17207:32 hn>

Is solved the source disconnection with macOS ? Even it's an OS problem.

▲▼ TomGarden07:43 hn>

Easily fixable with a script that sets things up as you want it on launch via websocket

▲▼ phatskat07:58 hn>

Do you have that posted anywhere? I'd love to peek at it

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▲▼ ravivarmat07:36 hn>

The plugin-loading overhaul and improved source snapping look like useful updates. OBS continues to show how much attention to detail matters in open-source software. Excited to see how creators and plugin developers adapt to version 33.0!

▲▼ TomGarden07:46 hn>

Love OBS! It's so far ahead of proprietary apps in so many areas, it's incredibly impressive

▲▼ adeptima08:10 hn>

Using OBS only when it’s a must

Much happier with Cap for screencast recording https://github.com/capsoftware/cap

▲▼ Matl08:26 hn>

OBS is much more aimed at livestreaming to platforms like Twitch and managing multiple cameras incl one of you, one of your screen etc. Well beyond what Cap is for.

But yes, use the most specialized tool for the task at hand.

▲▼ haunter08:26 hn>

Why are the binary releases hosted on a 3rd party site and not on Github?

▲▼ SSLy10:30 hn>

So they can see how many people download each binary

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▲▼ Rapzid11:34 hn>

Marketing.

▲▼ the_angry_angel08:34 hn>

Cap completely ate several recordings for me. Admittedly they were over an hour long, and I should’ve broken them up a bit, and perhaps it’s not what it’s used for. Switched back to OBS, while it’s not as easy to use it’s pretty reliable

▲▼ nprateem10:01 hn>

Cap routinely fails to render videos properly. The mouse ends up way off where it was, overlays somehow fail to be rendered.

Even if the preview player shows it correct, once it's rendered the cursor just seems to drift way off making the video useless.

I've gone back to using QuickTime.

▲▼ roboyoshi12:35 hn>

I tried a bunch of "open" tools last week, but turns out they are a paid tool in disguise most of the time. I eventually paid for CleanShotX for my work and have peace of mind because it just works. OBS is IMO much more stable and aimed at live streaming anyway.

▲▼ jimmySixDOF13:47 hn>

ShareX has been around for ever but just updated the UI and now super easy to do capture work with annotations and cam output etc (no studio but it's light weight)

btw I use OBS virtual camera its one of my fav features with masking etc for a video avatar vlogger effect

https://getsharex.com/

▲▼ rgovostes08:27 hn>

There are a handful of comments here rueing buggy behaviors. These days with nearly the same amount of effort to post a complaint you can delegate the task of reproducing the issue, diagnosing the root cause, and proposing a fix. Yes, it may incur a small to moderate cost, but it's a contribution to an open source project that apparently provides some value in return.

▲▼ d5lt508:44 hn>

That's two fallacies at the same time!

* Appeal to personal responsibility;

* False equivalence.

I'll strike those off my bullshit bingo card.

▲▼ bulbar08:58 hn>

I tend to agree with you, but why calling it "bullshit"? You can disagree and have a discussing without belittlering other people.

▲▼ rgovostes09:23 hn>

"Appeal to personal responsibility" is not a fallacy. Get a different bingo card.

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▲▼ cwillu08:46 hn>

That's not even remotely true.

▲▼ mystifyingpoi08:52 hn>

Okay, I'll bite the bait. Assuming that I am a regular user (think gamer), I have a Windows PC, no dev tools, no AI subs or accounts, no GitHub. How specifically can I do the steps required to propose the fix they way you suggest?

▲▼ wpm09:15 hn>

How did you end up on Hacker News?

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▲▼ Rapzid11:28 hn>

Sir, this is a Wendy's..

▲▼ cobbzilla13:03 hn>

paste a link to this HN article and then your comment into your favorite LLM, it will be happy to guide you.

▲▼ lynndotpy13:10 hn>

I'm not the person you are replying to, and I am with you. I disagree with the suggestion it's trivial to reproduce, diagnose, and fix a bug.

But at https://obsproject.com/help we see OBS has a Discord (regular gamer), a Forum, a Feedback page, and a Mastodon.

▲▼ thebruce87m10:00 hn>

Out of interest- what is your recommended path for this? I mean the path of least resistance where I don’t even have to check out the code locally or similar.

▲▼ wizardcm10:20 hn>

Officially and unofficially, the most you need to do is create an Issue report with valid reproduction steps. You'd be surprised how quickly some issues get fixed just because someone finally provided the missing link in an Issue.

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▲▼ damowangcy10:21 hn>

I think this is what the whole "AI killed software" fallacy came from.

>nearly the same amount of effort to post a complaint you can delegate the task of reproducing the issue, diagnosing the root cause, and proposing a fix.

Is the effort the same though?

And even it is the same, making a meaningful contribution to an open source project doesn't mean just fixing your problem, but you also need to stay in line with the contribution guidelines, the project's direction and many more, which takes much more effort than just vibe coding a version for yourself.

Building software for one and for a bunch are two different things. AI is good at the former and can be used for the later but not without much effort. Models will get better, true, but that doesn't mean we need less engineering, in fact we need more to stay up-to-pace with AI. Imagine everyone submitting a PR to fix a bug, how fast can you review it manually? And if you use AI to review/verify them, the cost just shift from person who submitted the PR to the open source maintainer.

That doesn't mean AI is bad but that we need new systems and rules.

▲▼ sick_of_slop10:37 hn>

https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CONTRIB...

>All text and content submitted to our project, which includes code, descriptions, issues, and comments, must be human written.
>The use of GitHub Copilot and other assistive AI technologies is heavily discouraged.
>Low-effort or incorrect submissions that are determined to have been generated by, or created with aid of such systems may lead to a ban from contributing to the repository or project as a whole.
▲▼ no-name-here11:41 hn>
>There are a handful of comments here rueing buggy behaviors. These days with nearly the same amount of effort to post a complaint you can delegate the task of reproducing the issue, diagnosing the root cause, and proposing a fix. Yes, it may incur a small to moderate cost, but it's a contribution to an open source project

That would violate OBS's rules - they disallow AI-written code (or write ups) being submitted. Additionally, if you put nearly the same amount of effort into it as a comment mentioning the original bug - i.e. not much effort - they say that may result in a project ban.

▲▼ jimmydorry08:44 hn>
>Updated CEF from 127/6533 to 150/7871

Finally... The CEF they used was 2 years out of date, and after RCE exploits [0] occuring in the wild getting big enough that they got picked up in the media [1], we finally have a fix 1 month later.

[0] https://blog.scrt.ch/2026/09/22/how-one-twitch-chat-message-...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852143

[2] https://www.scworld.com/brief/vulnerable-obs-overlay-and-chr...

▲▼ wizardcm09:54 hn>

You can find why it was complicated [0] and why it took so long [1] on GitHub. I do wish I had been faster on it. That said, the RCE required the user to be using a vibe-coded web-based chat overlay that didn't properly sanitize chatter inputs, so has a (hopefully) limited scope.

[0] https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/discussions/3853#di...

[1] https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/discussions/3853#di...

▲▼ EduardoBautista09:57 hn>

My vibe coded apps tend to over sanitize inputs. Not sure what was the point of blaming LLMs.

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▲▼ breakingcups10:29 hn>

Thanks for chiming in and linking that, that was an interesting read. As much as I understand CEF's reasoning for making this shift, it's baffling that they don't provide a universal way to implement what you now had to implement yourself.

▲▼ Orygin16:17 hn>

Unfortunately, most streamers don't have the best IT security knowledge, and with AI tools now allowing them more and more than what was previously possible, it also opens the door for more vibe coded apps that could have serious security holes.

Should the streamers' apps be more secure? Absolutely, but the underlying tool should also strive to be secure enough for all use cases.

Anyway, thanks for the two links, they were interesting reads.

▲▼ jimmydorry03:00 hn>

Thanks for sharing the reasoning!

▲▼ ydoc521209:26 hn>

I love that I can stream from my iPhone directly into OBS on my Mac. I don't love that Metal shaders aren't supported, and I have to rely on janky extensions to get them working.

▲▼ ReDress10:27 hn>

Problem still persists where OBS cannot capture it's own window.

▲▼ wizardcm22:17 hn>

This is actually intentional, at least on Windows. At the time it was to fix a crash of some kind, many years ago.

▲▼ zahlman05:24 hn>

Is this something new? I've seen streamers produce a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droste_effect with OBS self-capture many times. (Unless that only happens with screen capture?) It doesn't seem like this is something you'd want to do intentionally, anyway.

▲▼ schrodingersket10:33 hn>

I haven't spent much time in the video processing/streaming space, but I was delighted to discover OBS Studio this week while putting together what has turned out to be an incredibly cozy little entertainment setup by feeding the two gaming consoles and geriatric gaming desktop I've acquired over the years into an HDMI switcher and USB HDMI capture box that in turn streams the feed into an OBS Studio preview (launched from Steam) running on a dummy display.

Launching OBS Studio through Steam lets me stream that preview to my VR headset over a 6GHz WiFi dongle and play games wirelessly in what feels like my own little private theatre. OBS Studio was the puzzle piece I hadn't figured out when the headset showed up last weekend, and I've been really impressed by its performance so far... I think this setup even shaved some latency off when playing online, since consolidating the consoles next to the router let me hardwire them.

Many many thanks to the OBS Studio team for making software that's helping me live out a small part of what I remember hoping technology could be like back in the 90s. I am grateful (:

▲▼ hyperbolablabla10:56 hn>

It's very heartening to read testimonials from users who aren't jaded. I hate negativity around OSS online

▲▼ herunan12:57 hn>

What's the negativity? Anything wrong with OBS in particular? I haven't used it in a while, but recently saw DHH saying it's awful. I reckon that's the usual Twitter hyperbole/rhetoric that attracts attention, so just wondering.

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▲▼ somat14:46 hn>

To misquote the classic about programming languages.

"There are the live video compositors everyone complains about and there are the ones nobody uses."

But really, it is great to see a piece of open source software as the default choice in a field where they tend to suffer, desktop applications.

▲▼ coldtea19:23 hn>

A lot of negativity about OSS is deserved, and doesn't necessarily come from supporters of proprietary software, but for long-time OSS users and programmers, who want it to be better.

But many OSS programs are awesome, and OBS is one of them.

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▲▼ schrodingersket19:28 hn>

It was very heartening to have this experience! I tried to refrain from harboring overly positive or negative expectations while setting this up and am quite content with how it turned out (especially since every part of this stack can run on Linux; this morning, I swapped out the gaming desktop part of this setup out for my Linux dev laptop + eGPU just for fun, and it all works identically).

▲▼ prmoustache11:59 hn>

Funny how you went the huge app route for such a narrow scope where I would have just used a lightweight tool like ffplay given the setting would never really change.

▲▼ dylan60414:38 hn>

wait, OBS is a huge app but ffmpeg is not?

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▲▼ schrodingersket19:42 hn>

Quite so! I'm sure I could have fiddled with ffmpeg commands, set up a custom Steam launcher, etc. I probably would have if OBS Studio's preview performance introduced too much overhead.

I also discovered that OBS Studio can be installed directly from the Steam store, which makes makes the whole thing feel just a little more seamless (I'm streaming to the Steam Frame). I don't mind trading the extra install space for that feeling, especially since OBS is OSS. It was really pleasant to have this all "just work" end-to-end on both Linux and Windows stacks.

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▲▼ asveikau16:52 hn>

How was latency for all of this?

▲▼ schrodingersket19:20 hn>

Surprisingly low. Steam reports about 12-15ms latency over the 6GHz dongle, and the Internet seems to think that the capture card preview adds about 49 ms; I haven't tested the latter claim myself, but ~65ms feels like a reasonable number. I don't usually seem to notice <100ms latency when I play games (which could be a skill issue on my part), and indeed I don't notice delay between the VR headset image and the direct HDMI passthrough that goes to my desktop monitor (the non-dummy display)

I had initially only planned to use this setup for turn-based games, but after this pleasant surprise, it looks like I get to explore some other kinds of games :D

▲▼ fock18:50 hn>

and all this without vibecoding!

▲▼ SuperV123411:05 hn>

Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy:

>All text and content submitted to our project, which includes code, descriptions, issues, and comments, must be human written.
>The use of GitHub Copilot and other assistive AI technologies is heavily discouraged.

Use this instead: https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio

▲▼ fami-com13:33 hn>

Thank you for pointing this out, I just went ahead and donated to OBS Studio explicitly mentioning this policy as a reason

▲▼ nocman18:29 hn>
>Great, another project with an asinine and backwards-thinking AI policy

Nothing asinine about it. Just because many in the industry have decided they are willing to accept the downsides of using output generated by LLMs in their product doesn't mean that everyone in the industry has to. People are still free to do things differently than you do.

▲▼ dawnerd22:10 hn>

And yet it's still a quality product pushing meaningful updates proving that you don't need LLMs to do everything for you.

▲▼ franga200012:08 hn>

Since there's a lot of talk about the CEF update, does anyone know why they compiled it in instead of having it as a normal plugin? It's incredibly annoying that compiling OBS means compliling almost all of chromium...

▲▼ wizardcm22:20 hn>

This should not be the case, at most you'd need to build the CEF wrapper, but the OBS team provides precompiled CEF builds for all platforms [0] or you can use the builds provided for free by Spotify [1].

[0] https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/13900/changes

[1] https://cef-builds.spotifycdn.com/index.html

▲▼ hofiflo12:45 hn>

I love OBS! I’ve been using it for years now to record talks and it just makes it so easy to screen capture slides (even under wayland) and combine it with different video/audio inputs. Granted, I’m not a power user, but I’m (luckily) not encountering the bugs people here seem to be annoyed about :)

▲▼ NamTaf13:30 hn>

Adjacent to OBS, I want to give an unsolicited shoutout to VDO.ninja.

It's a very lightweight way to push low latency video between devices via the browser. I've used it to turn my phone into a webcam, to jointly watch movies remotely (with simultaneous voice chat included), to make a multi-person video call, to stream my phone's screen to my desktop, etc All kinds of cool uses.

Of course, it can feed into OBS, which was sort of the original purpose, but it is so more flexible than that. Of those above examples, only using my phone as a webcam involved OBS.

There's a linked series of videos demoing it at the page, if you scroll down.

[1] https://vdo.ninja/

▲▼ trollied13:46 hn>

I've been using this for Twitch streaming. Don't need to install anything. https://flint.cam/

▲▼ whycombinetor15:04 hn>

Whoa, this is crazy good. Although not being open source makes me wonder how long it intends to stay free.

▲▼ quietdean21:00 hn>

Wow. I'm rarely astounded by software these days. This is amazing.

▲▼ amelius14:20 hn>

Link to website:

https://obsproject.com/

(because I had no idea what this was about and probably not alone)

▲▼ graiz14:40 hn>

I’m working on a side project to rebuild OBS-like tools with a focus on an agentic workflow. Currently testing at https://arclightlive.com if anyone wants to try.

▲▼ MichaelDickens14:51 hn>

OBS is such a staple among streamers, for a long time I thought "OBS" was the generic term for video screen sharing software. Only recently learned that it's a specific software, and it's free and open source!

▲▼ RistrettoMike15:09 hn>

One of my very favorite pieces of software, period. Props to all involved.

▲▼ sergiotapia16:42 hn>

There was a guy who was banned from the OBS github for submitting an AI pr, so he forked it, rewrote it in Rust and is fixing bugs left and right. https://github.com/obs-rust/obs-studio

Their policy outright bans AI. So regardless if you support or oppose this policy, it is going to be fun to see if the fork becomes significantly better than the original or not.

https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/CONTRIB...

▲▼ setopt18:30 hn>

Thanks to the OBS devs!

I work at a university and occasionally make video lectures for my classes. I used to do it in Zoom, but it sometimes had weird glitches where it just… deletes the videos I recorded. It’s happened several times that I lost an hour or more of recordings and had to redo it, once it deleted all the recordings that I did that week. Also, it was a bit of work to position screen sharing vs my webcam feed in a way that looked decent. I then tried a bunch of other apps, most of them had issues with latency, laggy video, or stuttering, despite playing around with the settings a lot.

Finally tried OBS again, I bounced off it in the past because it seemed overcomplicated at first glance. But it’s FOSS, makes excellent video quality, and after some initial setup of my scenes it is very easy to make new videos. And most importantly, it has so far never lost any of my data.

▲▼ mturk19:33 hn>

I actually struggled a bit with OBS yesterday, getting it running. Flatpak was not behaving nicely, and then I ran into issues with various .deb's. I have very little doubt that it's something particularly skewed with my specific desktop setup (lots of leftover cruft, probably missing a number of xdg libraries or something, who knows) but eventually I got it working. I genuinely like OBS, and have liked it for a while, but it definitely took some getting used to. And I've had to reset my dock positioning via editing the ini files more than I would have expected.

I noticed in the release notes that they dropped Ubuntu 24.04. I'm kind of surprised by this and made a mental note to dig in as to why...

▲▼ iam-TJ15:10 hn>

I noticed that since it implies also Debian Stable/Trixie. The reason is it has removed support for ffmpeg/libavcodec < v8.

https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/13964

▲▼ zubie7a21:09 hn>

I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes from an ancient MiniDV recorder

▲▼ efilife21:23 hn>

With obs? How?

▲▼ zubie7a21:34 hn>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niy8hITU-Y

Basically I connect my camera to the computer through an AV cable -> AV to USB capture dongle

In OBS I can select that as video input, and with minimal adjustments (aspect ratio, resolution, audio input channel) I press play on the camcorder and then "start recording" on the computer and it will record it nicely as the video is streamed, though I have to make sure to press manually "stop recording" once the cassette has reached the end.

I had a bunch of old tapes, I searched for services that would digitize them and they were very expensive and would charge per tape, it was cheaper for me to get a second hand camera, the AV cable, the capture dongle, and digitize them myself.

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