OBS Studio Notes

Published 2020-03-01. Last modified 2024-02-03.
Time to read: 2 minutes.

This page is part of the av_studio collection.

Audio Settings

OBS Studio does not know about mono channels, only stereo channels. This causes two problems:

The left and right channels are hard-panned left and right, which is seldom what you want. To center the channels, go to Edit / Advanced Audio Properties and enable “Mono” for the channel pair, which means “downmix to mono”.
OBS Studio has no provision for adjusting the volumes of the left and right channels independently. Use RME TotalMix to adjust the mix for the AES Loopback channels.

Downmix Stereo to Mono

To change a file (audio or video) from stereo, with only one channel recorded, to mono, use ffmpeg with the -ac 1 option:

Shell

$ ffmpeg -i "stereo_but_only_one_channel.mkv" -ac 1 "mono.mkv"

Downmixed video.

VST Plugins

The directories that OBS Studio looks for VST plugins in cannot be changed. Windows users can use Junction to link two directories together, however.

I copied the following from obsproject.com/kb/vst-2-x-plugin-filter:

Command Line

OBS Studio command line options include two that I sometimes use:

--safe-mode Disables third-party plugins, scripts, and websockets.
--disable-shutdown-check
--verbose for debugging stubborn issues

OBS Studio must be started from its installation directory.

cmd.exe

C:\Users\Mike Slinn>cd "%ProgramFiles%\obs-studio\bin\64bit\"

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\bin\64bit>obs64.exe --disable-shutdown-check --safe-mode

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\bin\64bit>obs64.exe --disable-shutdown-check --verbose

Windows

On Windows, VST files use the .dll extension.

Note: %ProgramFiles% generally corresponds to C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86).

%ProgramFiles%\Steinberg\VstPlugins\
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Steinberg/Shared Components\
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\VST2\
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\VSTPlugins\
%ProgramFiles%\VSTPlugins\

macOS

On macOS, VST files use the .vst extension.

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/
~/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST/ (Home folder)

OBS Log Analyzer

The analyzer reviews an OBS log file for common issues and problems and provides suggestions for how to solve them. This innovative web-based service works very well.

The Log Analyzer does not yet process crash logs.

There are 2 ways to upload the OBS log file for analysis:

This method requires OBS Studio to be functional. In OBS Studio, select Help > Log Files > Upload last Log File. Copy the URL and paste it here.
This method can be used without running OBS Studio. The directories for OBS Studio log files for each supported OS are:
- Windows: %AppData%\obs-studio\logs
- MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio/logs
- Linux: ~/.config/obs-studio/logs
From this page, choose the log file and upload it, then press the Analyze button.

Here are the results of a log analysis:

Reporting Bugs

Report bugs to the OBS Studio GitHub project.

Source Record Plugin

This plugin has had no new releases since Dec 11, 2022 (16 months). I consider it to be abandoned.

The Source Record plugin for OBS Studio provides a filter for sources and scenes that allows them to be individually recorded into separate files.

Unfortunately, I found this plugin would not allow OBS Studio to exit properly. The plugin cannot be disabled, the only way to remove it is to delete %ProgramFiles%\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit\source-record.*.

This issue apparently has a workaround: disable the Source Record's Replay Buffer. However, I found that did not help.