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OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

obsproject.com

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Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#131

Post by jhugo »

mgdlbp wrote: post #117
Godel_unicode wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s desync, not latency/lag. They’re different things, and this solution will actually make the lag worse as it deepens the buffer. OBS virtual cameras definitely have noticeable lag with most people I have seen using them on Teams/Zoom.

The meaning of lag is notoriously varied--I think GP understood it as a consistent delay, and you and GGP are saying that OBS introduces an inconsistent delay, i.e., dropped frames or stuttering. The one using the virtual camera should be able to diagnose through the stats 'Frames missed due to rendering lag', 'Skipped frames due to encoding lag', and 'Dropped Frames (Network)', unless the virtual camera driver is so…

> Or does one of you mean that even the constant delay is significant enough to be noticed on top of the video call latency?

That's what I meant. Video call latency is noticeable but in most cases is not detrimental to conversation (or I have gotten used to mentally correcting for it). Colleagues who have used virtual webcams often have a noticeable additional 100-300ms steady-state latency which goes over the threshold for easy conversation, for me at least.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#132

Post by 867-5309 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #39

When I was half my age, OBS was unfathomable. I was shooting video on digital 8, editing in Final Cut Pro 4 which was the new hotness, and trying but failing to use DSS on my college network. Actual streaming at scale required a massive server and a massive license from RealNetworks. If I wanted to do anything with animation, it was all $$$$$ software. This all took place in a shared lab at my college with stuff I co…

pretty sure ffmpeg would have been a thing back then

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#133

Post by Schinken_ »

OBS is an amazing piece of software. I remember when I first dabbled in livestreaming and everything was either pricey or broken.

I am currently using OBS solely as a method to grab screens/windows and use a custom plugin to stream that to multiple WebRTC users to create something like a low latency game streaming for friends. OBS saves me a ton of time since I don't have to implement X11 / Wayland / Mac / Windows DXGI screen capture methods as well as a way to composite several of those into a nice picture.

The development discord is hit or miss though but with a bit of luck and digging (and thanks to other plugins) one can piece together how to write a plugin.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#134

Post by NavinF »

usrn wrote: post #81
platz wrote: post #62

I'm not a streamer, but I find OBS is great for other uses. The main things I use OBS for is: - Recording screen or window, while recording desktop audio and mic at the same time. - routing master windows audio through a compressor/limiter when listening to videos or streams that have poor leveling (though you need to install a virtual audio output in windows to do this - I found something called CABLE that works. Th…

> - Recording screen or window, while recording desktop audio and mic at the same time. FFMPEG alone (well, with the pulseaudio loopback) can do this. It can also stream to stuff like twitch with no extra software. OBS is great but I feel like it's overkill for a lot of what people do.

Low latency hardware encoding and muxing with ffmpeg can be rather tricky depending on your setup. OBS works out of the box on every platform. If you’ve never measured end-to-end latency, your viewers are missing out.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#135

Post by keerthiko »

unlog wrote: post #130

I do not understand the five-second minimum delay I got..... nginx and obs paired at a 1s key frame interval still gives a five-second delay on football matches, which is very annoying because you heard your neighbors before actually watching the footage, and no, this is not solved by any streaming service.

There is a stream delay setting in OBS — check your settings on the source setup running OBS. 5 seconds sounds like the default, you could potentially set it to 0. This is in place to

a) head off any network dropped frames and allow OBS to backfill the stream buffer. At 0 seconds you may see slightly more quality drop from 1080p to 480p if your stream source upload bandwidth is unreliable than if you left this at 5+ seconds.

b) for game streamers of competitive multiplayer video games, to protect them from "stream cheating" where an opponent recognizes their in-game ID and then looks at their stream to get additional information in the middle of a match (eg: looking at their hand in poker). With many games a 5 second delay nullifies this issue, and many streamers set it to more like 30-45 seconds depending on the game they play.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#136

Post by dividedbyzero »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #104
Rantenki wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a configuration problem, and not hard to correct. Tell him to go into the audio settings, then "advanced audio settings", and add the "sync offset" in milliseconds required to bring the audio and video into sync. Also, it's likely that his camera is mostly at fault; OBS with my Logitech camera doesn't have any significant lag. OBS itself has very little lag.

That’s desync, not latency/lag. They’re different things, and this solution will actually make the lag worse as it deepens the buffer. OBS virtual cameras definitely have noticeable lag with most people I have seen using them on Teams/Zoom.

I've experimented with OBS at well and decided not to use it for this specific reason. The lag is kinda subtle but on the other side of a test call (with someone else at my own desk) I was able to notice it quite well in interactions and it felt kinda annoying. Since I want the whole thing to feel as natural and positive as possible for the lager end, that was a non-starter. I can do without multiple cameras and gimmicky be-right-back screens.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#137

Post by rb666 »

sundvor wrote: post #50
reilly3000 wrote: post #39

When I was half my age, OBS was unfathomable. I was shooting video on digital 8, editing in Final Cut Pro 4 which was the new hotness, and trying but failing to use DSS on my college network. Actual streaming at scale required a massive server and a massive license from RealNetworks. If I wanted to do anything with animation, it was all $$$$$ software. This all took place in a shared lab at my college with stuff I co…

We've come an incredibly long way since Genlock on the Commodore Amiga! I use OBS Studio with my Streamdeck, a Logitech Streamcam, NVIDIA Broadcast, a condenser microphone via a Steinberg XLR audio interface along with Elgato Key lights and iHue fill lights for my working from home office Google Meets. Startup and shut downs of the entire stack including launching into Google Meets are automated with the deck (one bu…

What on earth is an "iHue fill light"? I don't get any hits on Google for this term.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#138

Post by nodja »

unlog wrote: post #130

I do not understand the five-second minimum delay I got..... nginx and obs paired at a 1s key frame interval still gives a five-second delay on football matches, which is very annoying because you heard your neighbors before actually watching the footage, and no, this is not solved by any streaming service.

I've tried to deal with this many years back, I think the latency is inherent in the protocols, there's layers like 2/3 layers of buffers that by the time the frame reaches the client several seconds have already passed.

When I was researching this back then, there was only one protocol in OBS that was fast enough, but it was proprietary. It was called FTL and was what Mixer used (twitch competitor, now dead). Mixer was so fast that I could move my mouse from the stream window, latency was probably very similar to cloud gaming services today.

Not sure what you're trying to attempt, but if you want low latency webrtc will probably be the best performing because it's p2p, however there's no official support for it in OBS and client support is weird, you might have to cook up some webrtc webpage just for it, but if you want sub 100ms latency it's the way to go.

The alternative that OBS supports is SRT, but I have never used it, the arch wiki claims it has ~1s delay. Maybe the 1to1 version lowers it and it seems simple enough if you can use ffplay/vlc where you're watching.

SRT Project Page: https://github.com/Haivision/srt

Live Server Implementation: https://github.com/Edward-Wu/srt-live-server

1to1 Client Implementation: https://github.com/Haivision/srt/blob/master/apps/srt-live-t...

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#139

Post by Karrot_Kream »

jhugo wrote: post #66
platz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately it does add a bit of lag which I find makes the technique somewhat untenable.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. I have a colleague who uses an OBS virtual webcam setup like this, and it's really disconcerting having a conversation with them, compared to others who don't use it, because of the additional lag. Their setup may have some specific problem though.

I glanced earlier at the source for the OBS MacOS virtual webcam plugin and from what I could tell it read the webcam data into a buffer and fed that as the "virtual webcam" stream. If that's true, the extra reading and writing could be taking up cycles causing additional latency.

Re: OBS – Open Broadcaster Software

#140

Post by j1elo »

TechSquidTV wrote: post #20
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

OBS is an awesome app. Its interface is a bit "awkward," but not too bad. It has many tools that are not available elsewhere.

We need to find a way to better integrate UI/UX designers into open source.

There might be an issue with the view that non-programmers have of contributing to open-source.

My sample size of 1 is a friend who is a professional UX designer. Once, I tried convincing them to help with some OS project, but the response was "that sounds like work, and I don't work for free".

Which has a point, I guess. Open Source contributors have normalized pouring countless hours for free into their projects (when not paid by a commercial entity). But outside of this bubble, I guess people don't see it with the same eyes. Even though in the end, it benefits everyone.

It just requires (semi?)professional knowledge to write good code, like it takes professional knowledge to write good UX, so "why would anyone do that unpaid". Maybe makes sense in the spirit of an artist who gives their art for free, but not in the mindset of a professional who charges good $$$ for an hour of work.

EDIT: Typos and unfinished phrases.

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