Open Broadcaster Software

Short description: Free software of screencast and streaming

Open Broadcaster Software

OBS Studio 26.1.0 running on Windows 10

Original author(s)| Hugh "Jim" Bailey
Developer(s)| Community
Initial release| v0.32a / 1 September 2012; 13 years ago (2012-09-01)[1]
Stable release|

26.1.1 / 6 January 2021; 5 years ago (2021-01-06)[2]

Written in| C, C++[2]
Operating system| Windows 8 and later, macOS 10.13 and later, Linux[3]
Platform| IA-32 and x86-64
Available in| 59 languages[4]

List of languages

* Afrikaans
* Albanian
* Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
* Azerbaijani
* Bashkir
* Basque
* Bengali
* Bulgarian
* Catalan
* Chinese (Simplified)
* Chinese (Traditional)
* Croatian
* Czech
* Danish
* Dutch (Netherlands)
* English (UK)
* English (US)
* Estonian
* Farsi
* Filipino
* Finnish
* French
* Gaelic (Scotland)
* Galician
* Georgian
* German
* Greek
* Hebrew
* Hindi
* Hungarian
* Indonesian
* Italian
* Japanese
* Korean
* Kurdish (Turkey)
* Lithuanian
* Malay
* Mongolian
* Norwegian (Bokmål)
* Norwegian (Nynorsk)
* Polish
* Portuguese (Brazil)
* Portuguese
* Punjabi
* Romanian
* Russian
* Serbian (Cyrillic)
* Serbian (Latin)
* Slovak
* Slovene
* Spanish
* Swedish
* Tagalog
* Tamil
* Thai
* Turkish
* Ukrainian
* Urdu
* Vietnamese

Type| Software vision mixer, streaming media
License| GPL-2.0-or-later[5]

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a free and open-source cross-platform streaming and recording program built with Qt and maintained by the OBS Project. Since 2016, the software is now referred to as OBS Studio.[6] There are versions of OBS Studio available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions. OBS Project raises funds on Open Collective and Patreon.[7][8]

## Contents

* 1 Overview
* 2 User interface
* 3 History
* 4 Plug-ins
* 5 Software based on OBS
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links

## Overview

OBS Studio is a free and open-source software suite for recording and live streaming. Written in C, C++ and Qt, OBS provides real-time source and device capture, scene composition, encoding, recording, and broadcasting. Transmission of data is primarily done via the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and can be sent to any RTMP supporting destination, including many presets for streaming websites such as YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Facebook.[9]

For video encoding, OBS Studio is capable of using the x264 free software library,[10] Intel Quick Sync Video, Nvidia NVENC and the AMD Video Coding Engine to encode video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format and the H.265/HEVC format.[11] Multiple tracks of audio can be encoded using the AAC codec. Advanced users can choose to use any codecs and containers available in libavcodec / libavformat as well as output the stream to a custom ffmpeg URL.[12]

## User interface

The main user interface is organized into five sections: scenes, sources, audio mixer, transitions, and controls. Scenes are groups of sources like live and recorded video, text and audio. The mixer panel lets the user mute the audio, and adjust the volume through virtual faders, and apply effects by pressing the cogwheel next to the mute button. The control panel has options for starting/stopping a stream or recording, a button to transform OBS to a more professional Studio Mode (see below), a button for opening the settings menu and a button to exit the program. The upper section has a live video preview, used to monitor and edit the current scene. The user interface can be switched to a variety of themes, including both dark and light themes, depending on what the user prefers.

When in Studio Mode, there are two canvas preview windows, the left one for modifying and preview of non-active scenes, while the right window is for preview of the live scene ("Preview" and "Program" respectively). In the middle there is a secondary transition button, allowing for transitioning to the non-active scene in the left window using user-defined "quick transitions".

There are some simple tutorials on the Internet that show how to use Open Broadcaster Software,[13][14][15] including more in-depth tutorials designed to cover every aspect of the application.[16]

## History

Open Broadcaster Software started out as a small project created by Hugh "Jim" Bailey, but quickly grew with the help of many online collaborators working both to improve OBS and spread the knowledge about the program. The first version was released in August 2012.[17] In 2014,[18] development started on a rewritten version known as OBS Multiplatform (later renamed OBS Studio) for multi-platform support, a more thorough feature set, and a more powerful API.[19] In 2016, OBS "Classic" was no longer supported, and OBS Studio became the primary version.[20]

## Plug-ins

Open Broadcaster Software supports a variety of plug-ins[3] to extend its functionality. Plug-ins are loaded as native dynamic libraries,[21] although a wrapper plug-in[22] is available that allows hosting of plug-ins written in the .NET Framework.

## Software based on OBS

Since OBS is open source, anyone can create a customized version of it. Notable products based on OBS Studio include:

* Streamlabs Open Broadcaster Software[23]

## See also

* Comparison of screencasting software
* List of free and open-source software packages
* Screencast

## References

1. ↑ "Open Broadcaster Software - Changelog". The OBS Project. https://obsproject.com/changelog.txt.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Download | OBS". The OBS Project. https://obsproject.com/download.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Open Broadcaster Software | OBS". The OBS Project. https://obsproject.com/.
4. ↑ "Locales". The OBS Project. https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/UI/data/locale.ini.
5. ↑ "COPYING" (in en). https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/COPYING.
6. ↑ "OBS Classic is no longer supported - Here's how to easily switch to OBS Studio". The OBS Project. https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-classic-is-no-longer-supported-heres-how-to-easily-switch-to-obs-studio.55820/.
7. ↑ "Open Broadcaster Software - Open Collective" (in en). https://opencollective.com/obsproject.
8. ↑ "Hugh Bailey ("Jim") is creating the OBS Project" (in en-US). https://www.patreon.com/obsproject.
9. ↑ "How to stream games with Open Broadcaster: a fast, free livestreaming application - News - PC Gamer". Future Publishing Limited. http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/04/how-to-set-up-open-broadcaster-a-free-lightweight-livestreaming-application/.
10. ↑ "x264 Home Page". VideoLan Organization. http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html. "In addition to being free to use under the GNU GPL, x264 is also available under a commercial license from x264 LLC and CoreCodec."
11. ↑ "General Performance And Encoding Issues". https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues.
12. ↑ "Surround Sound Streaming And Recording | OBS". https://obsproject.com/wiki/Surround-Sound-Streaming-And-Recording.
13. ↑ "How To Use OBS For Streaming" (in en). https://www.answerslave.com/use-obs-streaming/.
14. ↑ "What is an OBS – How to Use it for Live Streaming" (in en-US). 2017-12-21. https://thebroodle.com/how-to/what-is-an-obs-how-to-use-it-for-live-streaming/.
15. ↑ "How to live Stream Any Video To Facebook Page Using OBS" (in en-US). https://www.techsite.io/p/715237.
16. ↑ EposVox (2017-12-28), The Most In-Depth OBS Studio Tutorial Course Ever Made | OBS STUDIO MASTER CLASS 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK-Mu7nw5EA&list=PLzo7l8HTJNK-IKzM_zDicTd2u20Ab2pAl, retrieved 2019-05-12
17. ↑ Bailey, Hugh (31 August 2012). "I made a streaming application so I could stream startcraft. Now it's open source and free for everyone". Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/z58e9/i_made_a_streaming_application_so_i_could_stream/.
18. ↑ "Releases". https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases?after=0.6.0.
19. ↑ "OBS Homepage". The OBS Project. https://obsproject.com/index.
20. ↑ "OBS Classic is no longer supported - Here's how to easily switch to OBS Studio". The OBS Project. https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-classic-is-no-longer-supported-heres-how-to-easily-switch-to-obs-studio.55820/.
21. ↑ "Plugins — OBS Studio 24.0.0 documentation". https://obsproject.com/docs/plugins.html.
22. ↑ Bradley, John R. (11 August 2013). "Creating a Plugin". http://catchexception.org/docs/creating-a-plugin/. "... All languages based on Microsoft’s Common Language Runtime (.NET) should be fine. This includes C#, C++/cli, Visual Basic and others. ..."
23. ↑ Kaser, Rachel (2018-11-30). "Streamlabs CEO describes building monetization tools for Twitch & YouTube" (in en-us). https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2018/11/30/streamlabs-ceo-describes-building-money-making-tools-for-twitch-youtube/.

## External links

* on GitHub

0.00

(0 votes)

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Software:Open_Broadcaster_Software&oldid=695783"