Stinger transitions are a great way to improve your production value for your live streams
and videos. Stinger transitions are a transition between two scenes where a visual of some
sort - an animated logo, text, or even just a shape in general - enters overtop the first scene
and (generally) fills the frame to hide the transition to the second scene.
A new OBS update enhances those transitions by letting you mask certain areas,
combining it with the idea of a “luma matte” transition and can help make them even higher
quality in the future. Here’s an example.
I’m EposVox the Stream Professor, and the v27 update for OBS Studio has just entered
beta. I’ve been covering a few of the updates in different videos - I’ll keep an updated
playlist linked in the description so you can keep up with all of my content on it.
This update comes with a specific change for Stinger Transitions: Track Matte support.
Track Mattes are basically a way of indicating how a video file should
be masked between two video sources to act as an overlay - typically as a transition
between them. This is used in place of the normal transition point indicators, usually
by saying at what point in milliseconds or which frame in the animation is the transition point.
The uses for transitions here actually go beyond what you might traditionally think of
for stinger transitions - that is when a graphic comes in and fills the frame to hide the cut
between two scenes - and allows you to do lots of cool transitions between two scenes that
actually still show the scenes transitioning. Here are some example track matte transitions.
Track Mattes work by identifying the black areas as one of the clips
(say the scene you’re transitioning FROM) and the white areas as the other clip (or the scene you’re
transitioning TO). Then in editing software, you’d typically use a track
matte effect and specify which is which, overlay your clips and bam, transition.
This differs from stinger transitions which use a graphic on an alpha channel transparent background
to pull in a graphic overtop the scene. Track Mattes don’t require alpha channels - they’re
a non-transparent video and the track matte process is what causes the transparency.
BUT to use them in conjunction with stingers here in OBS does require alpha for the stinger
side of the transition. So unfortunately, my recent investigation into which media
formats are best for media sources and stinger transitions still applies here.
To use a track matte with a stinger transition in the new OBS update, add your stinger transition
and check “use Track Matte.” Now you don’t need to specify a frame or time to transition, as it will
follow the track matte. You do have the option of using separate stinger and track matte files, but
to keep them in sync, it’s best to put them in the same file. Let’s look at how I built my example.
So for my example transition, I took my usual stinger transition of my CRT animation coming
in and filling the frame, but I tediously masked out the screen and another VHS animation
so that at a certain point it glitches to being transparent. What can I say, I love
torturing myself for these videos and the baby was watching The Wiggles and being good anyway.
Now I have a stinger transition that has a window for the second scene to
show up in. While I COULD go on and export this out and set the usual transition point,
both the inside of the CRT and the outside would transition at the same time, which is
less cool. So instead, we need to build our track matte.
With these you need a masking animation of two colors: Black and white. Black indicates
scene 1 that you’re transitioning FROM, white indicates scene 2 that you’re transitioning TO.
I will note here that OBS will give you the option to invert the mask colors so you can use
the opposite if that’s necessary for your work, but the default is black to white, as I described.
So since I already made and tracked my mask for the CRT, I simply made a new composition
with white and black solids and copied my mask keyframes at the right time to the white solid.
Then, once it reaches a point where the whole scene is supposed to show scene 2, not just
the masked bit, I have another full-screen white solid show up. Otherwise if I just let it push in
to black light that, it’ll cut back to scene one for a few frames before the transition ends.
We’re not done yet. Now you need to put these in the same composition, either side-by-side
with the stinger transition on the left and track matte on the right,
or stacked with stinger on top. So for a 1080p transition this would either be 3840x1080 for
side-by-side or 1920x2160 for stacked. Make sure the timing lines up, of course.
Now export this out with alpha and add it to OBS. Enable track matte, choose the layout,
invert colors if needed, and preview to make sure all is working smoothly.
And wham bam, you have some absolutely sick transitions. I will say that what I have
done here, while really cool, is honestly the low-hanging fruit of what can be done
here. There’s a ton more possibilities and I am very stoked to see what everyone comes up with.
I will be experimenting with some new VHS style transitions with this new
feature - which I will give away some of on our Discord server at Discord.gg/eposvox.
You know what else I’m stoked for? New creators getting into streaming or YouTube to
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Unfortunately despite what some comments had suggested on my media formats investigation video,
this does NOT eliminate the need for alpha channel and hardware acceleration for stinger transitions.
Hopefully they will one day enable chroma keying for stingers and save us
some headache, but today is not that day.
I’m showing another way that your transitions can become
more powerful in the next video on this update, so stay tuned :)
I’m EposVox, the stream professor. Hit the like button if you enjoyed,
subscribe for more tech education and stream guides,
and sound off in the comments with what transition ideas you come up with. See ya.