Help with Streamlabs OBS?

[Mark Kaine]

I thought this has some sort of overlay like Shadow Play does,  where it tells you it's streaming, recording,  etc . If that's so how do I set it up?  Basically I'd like to be able to control the stream without having to alt tab all the time... i see there's an ingame overlay but idk how to set it up.

 

Also I can't get the overlay for the stream to work, my video will always be *in front* of the overlay , how do I change that?  

As it is it definitely doesn't deserve to be called "overlay".

 

Lastly, I only want to stream the game,  not my desktop (obviously)

 

I set the source to the game but it still shows the desktop when I alt tap out of the game.

 

Ideally it would automatically pause or just show a black screen, but not my desktop...

 

 

[Light-Yagami]

1st: Buy a secondary monitor. You can't stream on a single monitor.

2nd: set source as game capture, disable/hide other sources. Screen will go black when you're out of the game. Display capture will show everything all the time, Window capture has a tendency to break if the name of observed window changes or you close it and reopen it.. Game capture should do it.

[LogicalDrm]

I don't know about any notice when streamin/recording is active, I have either 2nd screen or don't stream fullscreen stuff. I can try to remember to look into it, there might be plugin.

 

For overlay being under video source. You can set order of sources from the Sources panel. Up and down arrows. This works just like in image editors. I have scene with 13 sources to have semi-custom scoreboard running.

 

Like said, you should use Game Capture and select the game you want to capture. If the game is not supported, then you need to use Window capture or Display capture. You also should make hotkey for changing scenes. You could make it react to AltTab, but that might get too messy. So better just learn to press hotkey. For this I recommend using numpad if you have fullsize keyboard.

 

4 hours ago, Light-Yagami said:

1st: Buy a secondary monitor. You can't stream on a single monitor.

You can stream with single monitor, thats just BS. But 2nd monitor would solve this.

[Mark Kaine]

5 hours ago, Light-Yagami said:

1st: Buy a secondary monitor. You can't stream on a single monitor.

Ok, obviously I thought of that,  might be a good solution, even though a bit inconvenient for basic operation, I'd just like to see an overlay with basic controls *start, stop, pause and maybe comments / viewers etc - just as shadow play does basically . 

But if that isn't an option,  despite there being something that does look like an ingame overlay(?), with a second monitor i would at least not having to alt tab anymore  - which is really also quite inconvenient,  might give it a try, i have a second monitor, just not connected / set up at the moment. 

But, still you can obviously stream with 1 screen only... the only real issue I had was that it always showed my whole desktop, instead of the game when I alt tabbed out .

 

And also,  I still don't understand why the "overlay" is "behind" my screen...  that shouldn't be the case obviously I'm missing something here? 

 

 

30 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

I don't know about any notice when streamin/recording is active, I have either 2nd screen or don't stream fullscreen stuff. I can try to remember to look into it, there might be plugin.

ok, it might not have this functionality,  but I'm fairly sure people told me it has since that was my main complaint about obs and they told me just to use streamlabs then... might have been a misunderstanding or something,  on the other hand it does seem to have some ingame overlay thing... it's just two empty text boxes apparently, but I didn't get them to show up on my screen...probably another setting i didn't find.?

 

30 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

For overlay being under video source. You can set order of sources from the Sources panel. Up and down arrows. This works just like in image editors. I have scene with 13 sources to have semi-custom scoreboard running.

 

Oh, ok I'll try that, thanks!  Eh, it does have a lot of options which seems cool, but it's not easy to get into for me,  most things aren't really intuitive at all imo... they said "5 minutes" but it took me over an hour to stream anything  besides the overlay,  because it apparently didn't auto select my game as a (second?) source...

 

30 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Like said, you should use Game Capture and select the game you want to capture. If the game is not supported, then you need to use Window capture or Display capture. You also should make hotkey for changing scenes. You could make it react to AltTab, but that might get too messy. So better just learn to press hotkey. For this I recommend using numpad if you have fullsize keyboard.

Yeah I saw game capture thing but  didn't want to use it because it also said it would choose  or change streaming settings automatically, which I didn't think was a good idea at all, i want to stream at native resolution with high bitrates... which btw worked nicely so far,  so if i chooses game as source does it still use my stream settings?  And isn't that basically the same as choosing the game directly (manually) which I did ,but as said it still showed the desktop on Stream then... it really should either pause in this case or keep streaming the game, not sure if that's possible, its changing scenes as you say, I guess...

 

And yeah, using a second screen would probably solve a lot of these issues, but initially maybe make it even more complicated lol  

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

ok, it might not have this functionality,  but I'm fairly sure people told me it has since that was my main complaint about obs and they told me just to use streamlabs then... might have been a misunderstanding or something,  on the other hand it does seem to have some ingame overlay thing... it's just two empty text boxes apparently, but I didn't get them to show up on my screen...probably another setting i didn't find.?

Ah, SLOBS. I haven't used SLOBS like at all. Their own forums might be better place since its almost complete overhaul of OBS with custom plugins.

 

With quick look, their mobile app shows when you are streaming/recording, so thats one option. The sources UI seems to be older vs OBS Studio which I have. Still, you can most likely drag sources around in a sense that top of the list is top on screen. Or right-click in canvas to send back/forth etc.

 

If there is a setting for some other note about being live, then I don't know about it. I have never felt the need to use SLOBS, regular is fine for my occasional needs.

 

[Mark Kaine]

5 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Ah, SLOBS. I haven't used SLOBS like at all. Their own forums might be better place since its almost complete overhaul of OBS with custom plugins.

Right,  I didn't mention the plugins because I haven't looked into them yet, though I have a slight hope that it's what I'm looking for,  I read it has view count and chat overlays for example, it might also have indicators for being live,  etc. 

 

9 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

With quick look, their mobile app shows when you are streaming/recording, so thats one option. The sources UI seems to be older vs OBS Studio which I have. Still, you can most likely drag sources around in a sense that top of the list is top on screen. Or right-click in canvas to send back/forth etc.

 

If there is a setting for some other note about being live, then I don't know about it. I have never felt the need to use SLOBS, regular is fine for my occasional needs.

Right i mean it's still OBS it should have the same base functionality... i don't really care about fancy overlays and stuff either (not yet at least) but I did want a "basic" overlay just like Shadow play has, it shows you that your on stream,  viewer count,  it has a pause button (hot key) it has an option to *not* show the desktop so it pauses automatically when alt tabbing... it's just really convenient. 

 

Now someone could say just to use shadow play then, which I would,  but recent drivers just keep getting worse... i even rolled back, but the shadow play steams / recordings are weirdly laggy (odd, it says 60 fps,  but for the most part it looks like 20fps, literally slow motion...)

 

I wasn't sure if it's my windows acting up... but the SLOBS stream was super smooth... something I didn't see for a while...

 

Also I do like the customization options,  but yeah, for now just basic settings that let me stream my games only is all I really want. 

 

Well, still, you gave me some pointers i think I know what to look at with the canvas stuff, so that's good,  maybe I can figure it out now. 

[LogicalDrm]

5 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Right,  I didn't mention the plugins because I haven't looked into them yet, though I have a slight hope that it's what I'm looking for,  I read it has view count and chat overlays for example, it might also have indicators for being live,  etc. 

 

Right i mean it's still OBS it should have the same base functionality... i don't really care about fancy overlays and stuff either (not yet at least) but I did want a "basic" overlay just like Shadow play has, it shows you that your on stream,  viewer count,  it has a pause button (hot key) it has an option to *not* show the desktop so it pauses automatically when alt tabbing... it's just really convenient. 

 

Now someone could say just to use shadow play then, which I would,  but recent drivers just keep getting worse... i even rolled back, but the shadow play steams / recordings are weirdly laggy (odd, it says 60 fps,  but for the most part it looks like 20fps, literally slow motion...)

 

I wasn't sure if it's my windows acting up... but the SLOBS stream was super smooth... something I didn't see for a while...

 

Also I do like the customization options,  but yeah, for now just basic settings that let me stream my games only is all I really want. 

 

Well, still, you gave me some pointers i think I know what to look at with the canvas stuff, so that's good,  maybe I can figure it out now. 

There's big difference between open-source software, the overhaul with paid version made on top of that, and GPU manufacturers own software. Just by amount of manhours spent on deveploment. OBS can do about all, just needs more hands-on configuration for it.

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

There's big difference between open-source software, the overhaul with paid version made on top of that, and GPU manufacturers own software. Just by amount of manhours spent on deveploment. OBS can do about all, just needs more hands-on configuration for it.

True, and it's amazing how Nvidia keeps messing it up... seriously shadow play would be pretty good but often updates break it and then it can take months to get fixed... i mean I get it things go wrong,  on the other hand i don't think there's a good reason it happens so often,  kind of like other manufacturers apps that often don't work as they should... for no apparent reason.   

 

And yeah I like that SLOBS has a lot of configuration options,  but also i don't think a couple of basic overlay stuff,  like "online" "offline" "stream health" etc would be hard to implement,  or rather I'm baffled they're apparently not there,  even an option to make custom overlays would be great  -  which tbh might even exists,  i don't know...  but i definitely can't see something like that so far...

 

From the looks of it there's really only "chat" and "events"  ... which at least proves, overlays (for the streamer) are possible...

 

Well, I know you said you aren't familiar with it,  and I managed to capture only the game now... it's indeed "game capture", but I still can't get the overlay in the foreground... seems like it should be simple,  i don't know what you meant with arrows,  im not seeing anything like that...  i can only make the window bigger and smaller,  but as soon it's set to full size it's in front of the overlay lol... 

So any ideas what would possibly change that? I'm really not seeing anything  

 

 

>

 

 

^ the "ingame overlay" btw 

(The chat)

[Mark Kaine]

11 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

OBS can do about all, just needs more hands-on configuration for it

Ok, i figured almost everything out now. 

I had to drag the sources on top of each other... it's now actually showing the overlay,  coulda sworn i tried that before but maybe the ones I tried were disabled or something... 

And selecting game capture/ automatically stops when alt tabbing,  that might depends on the game though...

 

So basically almost everything i was asking for works,  except any ingame indications that you're actually streaming... i mean there's an ingame overlay but that's only showing chat and subscribers etc as far I'm aware. 

Maybe what I want is in the paid version... who knows. 

 

Also I'm seeing you can inject websites (html?)  into the overlay... which is neat,  but that's probably also just for the stream overlay,  Im guessing. 

 

PS: oh, I found this 

 

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-status-overlay-requires-playclaw.490/

 

 

It's for obs studio,  but maybe it works for slobs also... 

 

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

So basically almost everything i was asking for works,  except any ingame indications that you're actually streaming... i mean there's an ingame overlay but that's only showing chat and subscribers etc as far I'm aware. 

Maybe what I want is in the paid version... who knows. 

 

Also I'm seeing you can inject websites (html?)  into the overlay... which is neat,  but that's probably also just for the stream overlay,  Im guessing. 

 

PS: oh, I found this 

 

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-status-overlay-requires-playclaw.490/

 

It's for obs studio,  but maybe it works for slobs also...

Webpage viewer is only for stream. This did give me better search tems, and led to some findings. Yes, there actually is way to know when stream is running on single monitor and while in-game. But it requires lot of configuring and probably troubleshooting too.

 

OBS/SLOBS don't have this by default. SLOBS does have limited game overlay with chat and recent actions (follow/subs etc.). But for anything else, you need another software handling actual overlay. The link is about PlayClaw which was at one point bundled with AMD drivers. Not anymore I think. It is in-between of couple things, like coming from Xfire background. What you can use, and might have already installed, is RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS). Which is best known for showing fps, CPU and GPU temps while in-game. The plugins are for adding OBS status to RivaTuner.

https://github.com/ntoff/obs-reddot#readme

https://github.com/jfoster/obs-rtss

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/reddot.471/

[Mark Kaine]

31 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

What you can use, and might have already installed, is RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS). Which is best known for showing fps, CPU and GPU temps while in-game. The plugins are for adding OBS status to RivaTuner.

https://github.com/ntoff/obs-reddot#readme

https://github.com/jfoster/obs-rtss

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/reddot.471/

Oh, wow thanks, nice find. 

 

I've been looking for something like that but only thing I found was the playclaw thing... which didn't seem too great as it requires yet another program to be installed. 

 

I'll give this a go (looks like 2 different plugins) hopefully I get it to work... I guess it's a matter of actually finding it in rtss or afterburner.

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

I can't get it to work, I think plugins aren't supported, I put it in the plugins folder of slobs,  so it has one, but I don't think it's supported (2 yo info from some dev)

 

I might just try OBS studio then , it's not that i prefer one over the other,  i just thought slobs has more / useful options...

 

 

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

12 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

I can't get it to work, I think plugins aren't supported, I put it in the plugins folder of slobs,  so it has one, but I don't think it's supported (2 yo info from some dev)

 

I might just try OBS studio then , it's not that i prefer one over the other,  i just thought slobs has more / useful options...

They are something you usually don't need. Since you would alt-tab to check situation from UI directly. And with game capture, that wouldn't show-up in end result.

[Mark Kaine]

I actually found a way to show the OBS activity indirectly...! With hwinfo64 rtss settings: "GPU encode usage" shown in the overlay...

 

Itll be 0% when its not recording or streaming and go to like 12% (at least anything above 0) when recording, this is really useful to me, now a way to rename this to make it shorter, less distracting would be perfect, but even so - its definitely better than nothing.

 

On 4/17/2021 at 11:48 AM, LogicalDrm said:

Since you would alt-tab to check situation from UI directly. And with game capture, that wouldn't show-up in end result.

Thats just sort of a bad solution since some games tend to disconnect when alt tabbing and i also find it kinda tedious to do and barely use it because of that. I still dont think its a good decision not to have a Shadowplay like overlay, they could also show stream fps, health, etc, it would be sooo convenient...  as it is they basically almost force you to use a second screen, yes its not "necessary" but surely more convenient to have some Information about the stream or recording.

 

 

PS: they probably should actually use rtss for this, it wouldn't interfere with anything and afaik could also be hidden in streams and recordings.

 

Btw any idea if its possibly to rename things in hwinfo ? That would  be so cool, id just rename video encode to "record" 

 

[Kilrah]

When you set up an RTSS overlay in Afterburner you can override the label, yes

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, Kilrah said:

When you set up an RTSS overlay in Afterburner you can override the label, yes

Yeah, true, I dont even need hwinfo for that i guess, its just where i found the parameter, so i used that.  I'll give this a try with afterburner, thanks!