Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio is a powerful and flexible screen recording and screencasting tool. The program includes real-time recording, broadcasting, and audio mixing and layouts. The "scene" system allows building custom input settings with numerous audio and video sources (multiple microphones, webcam, applications, screens etc.). Available filters allow for automatic, live filtering including crop, color correction, sharpen, chroma key, audio gain and more.
Cross-platform with versions available for Mac and Linux. Alternatively, PortableApps' OBS Portable is also available.
Time saving notes for first time users:
- If you're used to MP4 you will likely need to be aware Why is the default video output MKV?, which provides a way to auto convert to MP4 (although note the MKV files aren't automatically deleted).
- A webcam's background cannot be casually removed, but fortunately external filters exist online to do it - this one is usually considered the best (and smallest) for it out of these few.
| Category: |
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| Runs on: | Win10 / Win11 |
| Writes settings to: |
Application folder.
Note: "At this time, files used within the scene collection (images, media) are not portable, even when in portable mode. If you plan on relocating the portable instance, you will need to either modify the scene collection JSON file manually, or use a generic path common on all your devices." |
| Stealth: ? |
No |
| Unicode support: |
Yes |
| License: |
GNU GPLv2 |
| How to extract: |
- Download the ZIP package and extract to a folder of your choice;
- Place an empty portable_mode or portable_mode.txt file in the root directory and open obs64.exe in [bin/64bit].
Alternatively, launch [bin/64bit/obs64.exe] using the --portable flag.
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| Similar/alternative apps: |
ShareX, Easy Screencast Recorder |
| What's new? |
31.0 New Features
- Added NVIDIA Blur Filter and Background Blur [pkviet]
- Added preview scrollbars and zoom/scale indicator [cg2121/Warchamp7]
- Added v210 format support for AJA device capture [paulh-aja]
- Added Amazon IVS service integration [palana]
- Added QSV AV1 Screen Content Coding [thyintel]
- Enabled first-party YouTube Chat features [msuman-google]
31.0 Changes
- Updated the browser source/docks CEF (Chromium) to version 127 (6533) on all platforms [reitowo/WizardCM/PatTheMav/tytan652/pkviet/kkartaltepe/Lain-B]
- Changed scene items to use relative coordinates [derrod]
- Existing scene collections will be automatically converted to use relative coordinates if the scene collection has a known output resolution set.
- Split NVIDIA Audio Effects from Noise Suppression [pkviet]
- Existing filters will be automatically migrated.
- Changed the Image Slideshow's Playback Mode property from radio buttons to a dropdown [derrod]
- Disabled the (currently unsupported) built-in Automatic Scene Switcher when using Wayland on Linux [tytan652]
- Improved error messages for macOS Virtual Camera [jcm93]
- Changed Display and Window capture on Windows to not capture the first found display or window [Lain-B]
- Changed display and window capture on Linux to not capture implicitly [Lain-B]
- Added a warning to Window Capture when trying to capture WinUI 3 applications with BitBlt [qhy040404]
- Refactored the NVENC implementation with various improvements [derrod]
- SDK 12.2 features, such as split encoding, are now supported.
- Additional features from old SDKs are supported:
- B-Frames as reference
- Target Quality VBR mode (CQVBR)
- A custom options field has been added to allow setting more options that don't warrant their own UI elements.
- Improved screensaver inhibit functions on Linux in Flatpak
- Changed scripts to correctly pass settings to modified callbacks on reload [Penwy]
- Removed legacy QSV code for old devices (Haswell or older) [RytoEX]
- Removed legacy QSV code for Windows 7 [RytoEX]
- Removed default desktop audio device on macOS 13+ [jcm93]
- Removed NVIDIA Kepler GPU support for NVENC [derrod]
- Removed FTL support [derrod]
- Removed legacy migrations from OBS Studio 28.1 and earlier [derrod]
- If updating from these older versions, you may wish to update to OBS Studio 30.2 first, and then update to OBS Studio 31.
- Removed support for Ubuntu 22.04 [derrod]
- Removed legacy YouTube chat [gxalpha]
- Blocked TikTok Virtual Camera from loading in OBS due to known issues [notr1ch]
- Application settings have been split into "app" configuration and "user" configuration, rather than storing everything in global.ini [PatTheMav]
31.0 Bug Fixes
- Fixed two crashes with the QSV encoder on Linux [kkartaltepe]
- Fixed a crash with a race condition involving multitrack video output reconnect [dsaedtler]
- Fixed two potential crashes in Linux Window Capture [Lain-B]
- Fixed a crash on macOS that could occur if an audio device was disconnected [jcm93]
- Fixed a crash on Windows when capturing D3D12 games [confusionattack/Lain-B]
- Fixed a crash on Linux when importing a scene collection created on Windows [SarenDev]
- Fixed a crash on Windows when capturing a Vulkan application [Charlese2]
- Fixed a deadlock in MP4 muxer [derrod/notr1ch]
- Fixed a deadlock when shutting down muxer [exeldro]
- Fixed a potential deadlock when stopping an encoder [derrod]
- Fixed a potential memory error and crash in text parser [fzwoch]
- Fixed a couple minor memory leaks [pkviet]
- Fixed a memory leak in PipeWire plugin [dimtpap]
- Fixed a memory leak when playing an HDR media file [tt2468]
- Fixed an issue on FreeBSD with handling SSL certificates [emaste]
- Fixed an issue with pressed button color in the Rachni theme [shiina424]
- Fixed an issue with some missing icons in the System theme [shiina424]
- Fixed an SRT listener bug where the socket was not closed properly [pkviet]
- Fixed an issue where the current scene collection could be erased to default when trying to switch to a different scene collection that's corrupted or invalid [derrod]
- Fixed a buffer overrun in UTF-8 text conversion [derrod]
- Fixed an issue that could cause bitrate spikes in QSV CBR [thyintel]
- Note: This fix only applies to Lunar Lake or newer except Alder Lake N.
- Fixed an issue where the Auto Configuration Wizard could unintentionally enable Enhanced Broadcasting [lexano-ivs]
- Fixed issues with the audio clipping indicators displaying incorrectly on volume meters [norihiro]
- Fixed an issue causing hotkeys to register inconsistently on macOS [jcm93]
- Fixed an issue causing multitrack video output to fail if color format was set to I444 [dsaedtler]
- Fixed an issue where Custom CSS in browser sources no longer worked with certain websites (namely YouTube chat) [vvto33]
- Restored STUN support for WHIP output [mondain]
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My recently purchased webcam only works with one version of OBS so I'm unable to upgrade to use new features. I have always had problems playing any video except uncompressed and despite being able to play and edit just about any anything in other software on my PC. Other people have complained about the same issue (videos showing as a black screen) for years but the problem is never addressed by the developers. If you can work around issues such as these or are lucky enough not to be plagued by them, then OBS is nice, light software and recording and streaming work well.
v26.1.0