OBS Studio 33
Comments
schrodingersket
hyperbolablabla
It's very heartening to read testimonials from users who aren't jaded. I hate negativity around OSS online
somat
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.
coldtea
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.
lukan
I believe a lot of negativity comes from people who believed the OSS preachers "come come, you don't need that proprietary crap, we have everything free and better"
And then most people are in for a surprise, that usually the above is only true in theory. But in reality there are driver issues, missing firmware, outdated repositories, broken updates ... critical missing features and in general a need to understand technical details with no polished UI.
And speaking of, with OBS I really liked the UI to just get started, but performance/quality of produced video was way worse for me, then simple screencapture with ffmpeg.
schrodingersket
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).
herunan
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.
jasonvorhe
That's not what he said. OBS decided to not support streaming to Rumble for political reasons. So Omarchy is gonna ship a leaner alternative soon-ish, that's all.
asveikau
I'm sure that obs can export to something that can be used to stream to rumble.
j45
Someone needs to ship an alternative of omarchy the same way.
Kwpolska
Omarchy is just Arch + config + slop + fascism, you can just build your own desktop, and you can skip the last two.
jasonvorhe
Must be quite comfy to live in such a simplistic reality. Imagine not having to think through all the complexity of life all the time by just crying fascism whenever people disagree with you.
Was envious for a second there. Then I was reminded that I quite enjoy thinking.
jazzypants
[flagged]
digilypse
they’ve been leaning into that since 2020, are the hosting platform for truth social etc
jazzypants
Yes, I know that Rumble is clearly a fascist enterprise. I was talking about Omarchy. It feels like a red flag when a distro rejects software simply because it doesn't allow them to publish to fascist outlets.
simias
Is there any other reason to use this distro other than signal political alignment? I looked into it a few months ago without even being aware of the political controversy surrounding it (I was curious about the whole "Agentic Linux" angle) and all I found was a poorly configured Arch Linux install with some rather crappy bash scripts on top.
Well, ok, I think there's another use case which is to LARP as a Un*x "pro user" without actually having any idea how to properly use a shell.
jasonvorhe
I've been running Omarchy for about a year and I've never seen any indication of it attempting to steer me into some political direction. It never asked me to vote somewhere, attack or dislike anyone based on superficial criteria. It's just... a desktop distro that fits on how I like to work.
I probably disagree with many Omarchy developers and donators and I'd be quite surprised if that didn't also apply to most of its users.
I really don't see how this rhetoric is helping anyone. It just creates more division.
I've been working a lot on customization and upstreamed some patches and I have no idea what would count as poorly configured.
That you think it's all about UNIX guru LARP I have to question how many Omarchy users you actually engaged with because I've mostly met humble and friendly folks. YMMV.
sejje
do you have any non-political / demographical arguments against omarchy?
what is it good at, what is it bad at?
jazzypants
I'm not the person to whom you asked this question, but it seems redundant considering that their post literally contained this critique:
> a poorly configured Arch Linux install with some rather crappy bash scripts on top.
sejje
Sure, but arch notoriously is very small, I'm not sure how you can really configure it that poorly at the install level.
What makes the bash scripts crappy, etc?
I asked what it's good at, too, didn't literally contain that critique.
sejje
> It feels like a red flag when a distro rejects software simply because it makes political decisions on behalf of the users
Fixed that for you.
jazzypants
So, you agree that it's a red flag regardless of the reason? Good to know!
sejje
yes, that exactly
jasonvorhe
Is this sarcasm or are you really completely unaware of how ridiculous this statement is when it applies just as much to OBS' decision to restrict where their users can stream to?
sejje
I was specifically talking about OBS' decision to restrict where their users can stream to, so I'm not sure what you think it is I'm completely unaware of.
I just made his quote read more accurately.
jasonvorhe
Then I misread your comment. I'm not a native speaker, perhaps that caused it. Sorry for being rude.
malfist
This is the paradox of tolerance. How dare OSB not tolerate my intolerance.
sejje
yes, using rumble is intolerance
jasonvorhe
Can you elaborate?
sejje
Yes, the guy I responded to is using "intolerance" to describe the users using/wanting rumble.
I responded with heavy sarcasm, because i don't think people who redefine words & describe things in outlandish terms are arguing in good faith, so I prefer to tell them I agree, and restate their outlandish claim.
You're now here to police me based on our other interaction, and your misunderstanding of my positions.
jasonvorhe
You seem prone to inferring intent based on very little information. I had no intention of policing you. All the best though.
scotty79
I hate that this whole cluster of beliefs exists, but software on my own computer enforcing what I can and can't do for ideological reason is a bit much.
Unless they just didn't implemented it for whatever reason, but someone else can implement this as an extensions or something. Your software obviously doesn't need to support everything.
adjejmxbdjdn
It’s the latter.
The snowflakes rounding up people for holding up signs also think volunteers not actively promoting their views are engaged in civilization ending suppression of speech.
zahlman
With more detail this time:
> The snowflakes
This is a subjective judgment, but I would say they are nothing of the sort.
> rounding up people for holding up signs
You first of all are not talking about the same people, and commit outgroup homogeneity bias. If we're going to play that game, then we could just as well talk about that one outgroup member who was shot and killed for talking calmly to college students (who had all freely volunteered to do so) and having a dissenting point of view. That death was celebrated by many people, surely at least some of whom are now upset about far milder and more justified actions.
But even then, the people "rounded up for holding up signs" were, in fact, not rounded up for holding up signs but for taking actions that directly impeded the job of those they were protesting. This is amply demonstrated by looking at the facts of each such case of "round-up"; along with noting the copious amount of people holding up signs in the background of every such video, against home no action was taken.
> also think volunteers not actively promoting their views
First off, supporting a streaming platform has nothing whatsoever to do with promoting any particular political view. This is again outgroup homogeneity bias.
Second, nothing of the sort is demanded. The volunteers in question are only being called out for explicitly citing political reasons for their rejection. (I looked up DHH's tweet, and saw that he was citing Lunduke to make the argument; and Lunduke is very explicit about this cause of grievance.)
> are engaged in civilization ending suppression of speech.
This is histrionic and does not bear any relationship to what the critics actually claim.
rexpop
That's the most frustrating aspect. They act as if we've trampled on their rights, but all we're doing is conserving our own energy and not carrying water for their ideology.
Since when is anyone freely entitled to my time and attention?
scotty79
> Since when is anyone freely entitled to my time and attention?
Funnily enough the same people say the same when it comes to pronouns and such. The right (if we can call them that) immediately copied, perfected and weaponized all the attention seeking and whining they've seen and complained about.
rexpop
What's "and such"?
zahlman
It's only hypocrisy when the accused actually does the thing they're asking others not to do.
As far as I can tell, there is no harassment of the OBS team and no demand that they support Rumble as a drop-in. After all, there are many other services they don't support. They are only criticizing the OBS team for making public statements to the effect that they are explicitly not adding Rumble to the list for political reasons.
But even beyond that, it is entirely fallacious to equate Rumble users with the "right wing", and especially not with some nebulous "they" who are interested in the issue. And the idea that making it easier to use a platform is inherently "carrying water for their ideology" is utterly absurd. (Not to mention that the overwhelming majority of them simply do not hold harmful beliefs on anything like the level ascribed to them; their actual beliefs are constantly and grossly misrepresented, leading to a high-profile assassination a bit over a year ago.)
zahlman
No aspect of that sentence reflects reality.
hardbass
The maga idiots tried to get a TV stations license canceled for legal free speech. They hate free speech with a burning passion. I see them talk all the day of how "it is legal" that people of other faiths build religious structures on their own private property. They hate private property and the right to private property. They hate when foreign companies justly and fairly make better and cheaper products, they hate capitalism.
jazzypants
As far as I can tell, it's the latter option. Rumble has a whole section of their website explaining how to use OBS with it [0]. The complaints seem to be entirely based around Rumble not being available in a drop-down menu [1]. It's kind of pathetic honestly.
[0] https://studio.rumble.com/help/guides/obs
[1] https://x.com/dhh/status/2108603279345070205
(Sorry for the X link, but that is the only place that I can actually find people complaining about this).
jasonvorhe
I may be completely stupid but these instructions by Rumble either completely unhelpful or something on my end isn't loading content in that site. But if that's the actual instructions to get OBS to stream to Rumble, I get why just upstreaming it would've been user-friendly.
But apparently I'm a fascist for this type of wrongthink.
jazzypants
What's confusing about using RTMP or a virtual camera? It's extremely straightforward. I genuinely do not understand how you could possibly need more instructions than this. Do you want screenshots or something?
Regardless, this just means that Rumble needs better documentation. It's clearly possible and fairly easy.
jasonvorhe
I think my issue is that I don't know Rumble Studio and expected OBS to be able to stream to it without, thus expecting some rtmp links + auth flow in the docs.
Karliss
Should be as simple as copy pasting server url + credentials or streaming key. My interpretation is that documentation authors either considered it so simple that it's not worth clarifying or since they are pushing for their own software (rumble studio) they intentionally didn't explain it further to encourage people using their software directly without extra step of OBS.
Once you open corresponding panel in Rumble it shows you all the information you need to copy paste in single place with convenient copy to clipboard buttons.
Platforms with "builtin support" require same amount of configuration minus the server url. But since the server url is provided in the same place as stream key, copy pasting 2 instead of 1 value hardly makes a difference. It probably takes less time to copy server url than trying to find it in dropdown containing 70+ other services.
amlib
OBS should just do the maliciously compliant here and add the support but throw a little jab in the drop down menu by labeling it "Rumble - Fascists and lunatics only" or something like that.
TulliusCicero
It's been years since I needed to use it, but: lack of an undo button. Not being able to undo stuff was very annoying, and felt out of place for an otherwise nice piece of software.
wizardcm
OBS added Undo/Redo in 2021, and it tracks the last 5,000 actions in the session.
brightball
I saw somebody else besides DHH talking about their decision not to accept PRs with AI written code briefly. I believe there’s a Rust fork in progress.
theaxeonthanksg
[dead]
Kwpolska
If DHH disapproves of something, you know it must be good.
asveikau
How was latency for all of this?
schrodingersket
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
fock
and all this without vibecoding!
prmoustache
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.
schrodingersket
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.
prmoustache
Yes in contradiction to what the downvoters might think, I am not judgemental. By all means use what works for you. I was just pointing out how one thing can be done different ways and I might not even have thought about using OBS for that purpose while being a user myself of the program.
dylan604
wait, OBS is a huge app but ffmpeg is not?
prmoustache
Depends what are our criterias:
- size on disk
- cpu usage
- size in memory
- impact on user lives
- impact on developer lives
- impact on our industry as a whole
- <insert other criteria>
The thing is, ffmpeg is a dependency of obs, so if you install obs you have ffmpeg installed while the opposite is not necessarily true.
NamTaf
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.
trollied
I've been using this for Twitch streaming. Don't need to install anything. https://flint.cam/
whycombinetor
Whoa, this is crazy good. Although not being open source makes me wonder how long it intends to stay free.
quietdean
Wow. I'm rarely astounded by software these days. This is amazing.
jimmydorry
> 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...
wizardcm
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...
breakingcups
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.
EduardoBautista
My vibe coded apps tend to over sanitize inputs. Not sure what was the point of blaming LLMs.
croes
LLMs weren’t blamed, vibe coders were blamed.
If you don’t know what you are doing any tool can be dangerous
no-name-here
[flagged]
Forgeties79
Does this even remotely matter? What’s the issue here?
no-name-here
Did you mean to reply to my comment? Was your issue with the original claim that lack of sanitization *"required"* "vibe-coded" functionality, or with the counterclaim that lack of sanitization can and has occurred even for code that is 0% related to vibe-coding or LLMs (let alone "requiring" vibe-coding for it to occur)?
spankalee
Read where "required" was in the comment you're flipping out about: it didn't say that the software had to be vibe coded, just that it was.
The RCE was caused specifically by a custom Claude generated overlay, so finding the RCE did require using this vibe coded software.
adrianmonk
> the original claim that lack of sanitization "required"* "vibe-coded" functionality*
That claim was ever made. The comment was about actual pieces of software that exist in the real world, not about all possible software that could exist in theory.
In real-world usage, for a user to be exposed, a necessary ingredient was to use a particular piece of software that actually exists and that happens to be vibe coded.
That does not preclude the possibility that a non-vibe-coded piece of software could have been vulnerable. It's just that such a piece of software did not happen to exist.
So why even mention vibe coding? Presumably it's relevant for some other reason. Perhaps the implication is this vibe-coded software is not an established piece of software with lots of users. (Since vibe-coded software is easier to create, maintainers may be less invested in it or committed to maintaining it. Vibe coding changes the economics and opens up the possibility of creating throwaway software.) Or perhaps the implication is that users should be more careful about using vibe-coded software.
Forgeties79
I did and I think you’re just coming across as very eager to defend LLM’s. Totally possible I am misreading your intention though
otabdeveloper4
> tend to
Whew, thanks for putting my fears at rest. You're only pwned some of the time, not always.
Cyph0n
As the FFmpeg devs like to say: if you don’t like how OSS volunteers do things, send patches or money, or just fork (off).
Orygin
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.
rgovostes
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.
damowangcy
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.
no-name-here
> 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.
mystifyingpoi
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?
lynndotpy
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.
wpm
How did you end up on Hacker News?
ro_bit
address bar
cobbzilla
paste a link to this HN article and then your comment into your favorite LLM, it will be happy to guide you.
Rapzid
Sir, this is a Wendy's..
fatata123
[dead]
d5lt5
That's two fallacies at the same time!
* Appeal to personal responsibility;
* False equivalence.
I'll strike those off my bullshit bingo card.
rgovostes
"Appeal to personal responsibility" is not a fallacy. Get a different bingo card.
d5lt5
> "Appeal to personal responsibility" is not a fallacy.
It is one when you deflect criticism instead of addressing it. Maybe you should have read more than the first sentence after you googled what a fallacy is.
rightnutwingjob
Fair chance not everyone here has the same skill set, motivations, predispositions, and so on and so forth.
simonra
If all you do is complain you'll find yourself left out, for good reason. The internet is really not all that different when it comes to this, if you consume other people's emotional energy without ever giving anything back it would be unhealthy to interact with you, regardless of where or why.
The bigger issue is perhaps whether one views someone else politely pointing out something they would like to see improved/changed as a complaint. I suspect a not insignificant portion of users of English unfortunately would interpret it that way. However, the ubiquity of the LLMs might give us some hope that the sending side over time ceases contributing to the problem by saddling the people they wish to freely sacrifice their lifetime for them with their frustration.
bulbar
I tend to agree with you, but why calling it "bullshit"? You can disagree and have a discussing without belittlering other people.
thebruce87m
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.
wizardcm
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.
dylan604
Yeah, I don't agree that using an LLM to generate a PR in a code base is the best line of action. I could see using an LLM to generate information to provide to create an Issue with would be potentially useful. It doesn't generate code in a way that may not be in the project's style. It doesn't hide anything from the devs. Instead, it points the devs to the specific problem and allows the devs to grok what/why/how of the issue. As we've all seen before (I'm assuming), fixing a bug in one place might not be the best fix place for the fix or a fix might reveal an issue somewhere else.
cwillu
That's not even remotely true.
sick_of_slop
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.
TomGarden
[flagged]
MichaelDickens
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!
hofiflo
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 :)
mixtureoftakes
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
jcm93
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).
wizardcm
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].
Sammi
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.
mixtureoftakes
- use obs any of the latest versions on macos any version
- have reasonably low storage
- start recording
- couple seconds or minutes later the video on the preview gets frozen and stops being recorded, while audio continues; recording status unchanged
- the freeze usually happens in the moment of switching between apps, allthough this isn't required at all
yes maintainers do it for free for years which deserves recognition but this exact issue existed for years and has been reported in many ways, without any change, and no other apps have ever behaved this way on my devices
DrewCarlson
I'm not denying you're experiencing this, I believe this issue occurs for you and likely has occured across OS and/or application versions.
My personal MacBook had 8GB of free storage (4.2GB after my test recording). I experience issues with programs like xcode failing to compile or crashes when I open too many files, pages hasn't been able to save a file since the machine had 15GB+ free.
I just download, installed, and recorded 10 minutes of desktop footage with a webcam overlay and audio. Nothing unexpected happened. I watched all 9 minutes and 28 seconds of it and it looks and sounds exactly as I would expect.
I spent my time doing this and writing this comment not to belittle you or your experience, though at this point I would ask you what do you expect to happen?
You did not post an existing bug report, or write one yourself. You've provided no evidence that anyone who contributes meaningfully to the project has experienced or even heard about this issue, let alone anyone who operates the project or consumes it from macos has any notion it is an issue.
Again, I believe this is a real issue. But there is no information here to go off of, especially with my experience, that points to anyway to meaningfully improve an OSS project in regards to your experience. If nobody with the requisite experience is asking the right questions, this will not get fixed. It starts with those people having any information to start with.
dylan604
How does one operate with only 8GB of free storage? Are you not constantly receiving OS pop ups about low disk space? Are all of your USB ports dead so you can not attach external storage to move some of you (likely) unused files off? Maybe you like living dangerously? Wonder what other aspects of your life you choose to live so dangerously close to the edge as well?
lossyalgo
I bought a Mac mini a couple years ago to develop an app and went with the cheapest model: $600 for 256GB version. Once I had Xcode, Visual Studio, and the rest of my development setup installed, I was down to roughly 60GB free. After every build, I moved installation + build/debug files to an external drive to save about 1GB.
Over the following year, roughly 20 releases later, my disk was full. Xcode generates a ton of hidden cruft in the DerivedData folder during every build/release that I wasn't even aware of! I spent a couple days googling and trying free & paid disk space analyzers (sidenote: I didn't realize how good we have it in Windows-land, there are so many good free tools but in Apple-land they are all so frustrating to use and most of them are totally useless for this particular case). Eventually, I found an Apple forum thread explaining where Xcode hides its generated build data, it was like 8GB of stuff per build! I set a calendar reminder for every 12 months to clean this folder.
I can't move anything else to an external drive really because what's left is necessary for build environment. I don't use the Mac for anything except development, so I've literally removed everything and it's down to barebones but it's still a struggle. If I had known I would have invested another $150 for the 512GB version.
roryirvine
I'm probably showing my age here, but I'm astonished to read that 8 GB of free space could be considered so exceptionally low that you'd receive OS alerts about it or that apps would start preemptively failing.
The most my homedir has ever grown in one year is 3.2 GB, and I don't really go out of my way to keep things tidy. I'd be very pissed off if things started pestering me to clear stuff up years before it actually became a problem.
DrewCarlson
> Maybe you like living dangerously?
lol! This comment made my night. In short: low available disk space, lots of projects requiring disk space.
No I don't see OS notifications about low disk space (at least on my macbook), some 3rd party applications give me notifications about low disk space though. I can confirm that all of my USB-C ports work! I have 2 local drives and a remote NAS that backup all the 'critical' data from my machine.
Unlike other operating systems I've had experience with, macOS is the most capable of operating in a (near) 'disk full' state. Where something like Windows will go from crying about the available disk space, to failing opening explorer, macOS will continue running just fine for general usage.
> Wonder what other aspects of your life you choose to live so dangerously close to the edge as well?
As for this: I've spent the last year living in India, where most people I've met think they are invincible, so I roll the dice every day!
dylan604
> macOS is the most capable of operating in a (near) 'disk full' state
I used to get the OS out of space warning a lot from macOS. I used to have a 128GB SSD, and Adobe would fill up the drive with cache in the Application Support folder frequently. My newer MBP has a larger SSD, but I also manage the storage much closer now.
DrewCarlson
Makes sense, I don't run a lot of applications other than developer tooling that keep very small overwriting caches. So day to day build up isn't a huge issue.
This experience I have of low disk space is only on Sequoia which I haven't seen give an OS notification until 5gb left, which again doesn't happen often.
_joel
Are you sure that's not time machine stomping all over it? You system might be snapshotting and having trouble at low disk space. Or if you're swapping a lot, then that could also be a reason?
cheapcheerful
No, don't use time machine.
PaulDavisThe1st
> I am puzzled by what keeps OSS maintainers going.
We need the money.
zahlman
Sorry, we're talking about OSS maintainers here, yes? What money?
evrimoztamur
This is happening all time time and I lost countless video recordings because of it...
cheapcheerful
Yep this one gets me too. Mac book Pro M5 latest OS. Happened on my air also.
TomGarden
Love OBS! It's so far ahead of proprietary apps in so many areas, it's incredibly impressive
amelius
Link to website:
(because I had no idea what this was about and probably not alone)
adeptima
Using OBS only when it’s a must
Much happier with Cap for screencast recording https://github.com/capsoftware/cap
Matl
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.
roboyoshi
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.
jimmySixDOF
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
haunter
Why are the binary releases hosted on a 3rd party site and not on Github?
SSLy
So they can see how many people download each binary
haunter
'download_count' is part of the REST API https://docs.github.com/en/rest/releases/assets
SSLy
I rest my case then.
RobotCaleb
I'm not sure that means what you think it means
dylan604
I'm not sure it means what you think it means
anddam
Ba dum tschhttp
Rapzid
Marketing.
the_angry_angel
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
nprateem
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.
forgotmypw17
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_e
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)
jwr
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.
stwr
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...
jwr
Thanks -- this does look like it would do this. But I'm wondering if this entire setup isn't completely overkill. All I need is to record multiple video streams simultaneously. I currently do this by launching multiple Quicktime Player apps and clicking "record" in each one of them...
toast0
> launching multiple Quicktime Player apps and clicking "record" in each one of them...
sigh why does Apple name things so wrong. How do you edit a pdf? In Preview, of course. How do you record a video, with Quicktime Player, of course.
(sorry for the rant)
structural
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.
zerkten
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.
structural
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.
rwmj
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?
flaunf221
> even if that means capturing too much
People streaming things mights disagree.
RobotToaster
As the name (Open Broadcaster Software) suggests, it isn't primarily a capture program.
structural
Except it's really designed to composite video from a bunch of different places and broadcast the result, whether they are windows, screens, cameras, etc. And a rather lot of people don't want every screen to be captured, just the ones that they have selected. It's not a "screen recorder" program, really. And it's explicitly designed with an API to be remote controlled if hardware changes out from under it, so you can encode exactly your own policy logic on what to do. (External display plugged in? Disable my laptop source at full resolution and enable my laptop and monitor sources, side by side, with one scaled as necessary, and in this layout. But if I'm currently recording or streaming, don't do anything. - this is user-specific logic)
trilogic
Not sure if and has bugs but is fast and easy: https://github.com/MathewSachin/Captura
graiz
I'm working on a project for the mac that may address this - arclightlive.com - open to feedback on it.
TomGarden
I made a little script that reconnects everything the way I want it on launch via WebSocket. Works great
cube172
which OS ?
setopt
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.
mturk
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...
ydoc5212
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.
graiz
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.
RistrettoMike
One of my very favorite pieces of software, period. Props to all involved.
zubie7a
I love this software, it made it so easy to digitalize my 20+ year old family tapes from an ancient MiniDV recorder
efilife
With obs? How?
zubie7a
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.
efilife
Genius, thanks, I have to try this
franga2000
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...
wizardcm
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
ReDress
Problem still persists where OBS cannot capture it's own window.
zahlman
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.
wizardcm
This is actually intentional, at least on Windows. At the time it was to fix a crash of some kind, many years ago.
cube172
Is solved the source disconnection with macOS ? Even it's an OS problem.
TomGarden
Easily fixable with a script that sets things up as you want it on launch via websocket
phatskat
Do you have that posted anywhere? I'd love to peek at it
TomGarden
No, but it was very trivial (Claude did it in maybe a minute). It just made a new launcher that opens OBS, then refreshes/checks all my sources.
Answer this thread if you struggle and I can post when I get to the office
sergiotapia
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...
tartoran
[dead]
rbaRBA
[flagged]
gubidonius
[flagged]
ravivarmat
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!
123dd123
[dead]
kevinhacker
[dead]
Kevin_Guo
[dead]
cube172
I use Lifelog Timeline
SuperV1234
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-com
Thank you for pointing this out, I just went ahead and donated to OBS Studio explicitly mentioning this policy as a reason
nocman
> 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.
dawnerd
And yet it's still a quality product pushing meaningful updates proving that you don't need LLMs to do everything for you.
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 (: