Automatic scene switching when you're in-between matches, face tracking, background removal
- OBS Studio plugins can do amazing things.
It's been a while since I've talked about them on this channel, so get ready, I'm hyped
for today's episode.
In this video, we're covering 5 OBS plugins that can help increase the production value
of your stream.
I'm EposVox, the Stream Professor and I have tutorials and guides on everything you could
possibly need to know about OBS Studio - from the basics to crazy advanced tricks.
I'll be following this video up with one next week talking about 5 more OBS plugins that
help your workflow for your stream - so hit the subscribe and notification buttons so
you can stay informed.
First up, an easy one.
Tuna lets you easily display "Now playing" information from a multitude of music streaming
services OR a VLC source within OBS to show album art, metadata and even a progress bar!
Install the plugin and then go to tools - Tuna Settings.
Under basics, set a path for it to write the album art and metadata to.
We'll be adding image and text sources to our scene that will read updates from these
files.
For a basic setup I just made an "OBS Tuna" folder in my Documents folder and set up the
cover, title, and artist files to write there.
I also told it to remove file extensions from the title, just in case.
Then I set Song Source to VLC as I'll be using a VLC playlist source within OBS Studio so
music is already ready to go when I launch my stream.
Make sure you have VLC installed for that to work.
Then, add a VLC source to your scene.
Here you can manage individual files, whole directories, or playlists for VLC to queue
up.
And you know we're using Backing Track, my music streaming service that you can download
for free and use in your videos and streams.
I've actually just finished converting a lot of these files to FLAC specifically for this
project and I'm releasing them with the free downloads that you can get at Discord.gg/eposvox
or if you want to stream them from your favorite streaming service, head to BackingTrack.gg.
I just added the individual album folders to VLC since it doesn't seem to like loading
subdirectories for me.
Then back in Tuna settings, click the VLC tab and choose your VLC source from the drop-down.
If you don't see it, click refresh.
Now go back to the Basics tab and click "Start" at the bottom and close this window.
Now we add our sources.
Add an image source for album art, and text sources set to load from file for metadata.
There's also a progress bar source you can add!
You can stack all of this with custom fonts, colors, other customizations, and so on.
Pair it with the audio visualizer plugin for some cool effects!
Next, we have an a new tool to remove your background from your camera without needing
a green screen nor RTX graphics card.
Keep in mind, however, that this does require a lot of CPU usage, so it will be incredibly
hard to run at 4K, and even at 1080p or lower you'll probably want to only use it on a dedicated
streaming rig.
You can adjust threshold of the faux key, smoothing of the edges, feather blending,
and so on.
There's 4 different person detection models to choose from that perform differently at
finding you in the scene.
The only limitation is that it doesn't retain alpha when it removes your background, so
you then have to stack it with Chroma Keying by choosing a background color in the removal
and adding a chroma key filter after the fact.
This may not be for everyone, but this could easily unlock some doors for streamers wanting
to key themselves in front of presentations, gameplay, or just to more easily hide a messy
backdrop.
Next up we have an effect that was a TikTok trend for a while: The Time Warp effect.
This is pretty simple - a line draws across the screen and creates a still image based
on where your video is, stretching your face and so on.
It's pretty straightforward, install the plugin, add an effect filter to the video source you
want it to change, and change the settings.
Here you can change the duration of the scan, how long it takes to drag across the image
- this is measured in ms, so 1000ms per second.
You can change the line width, color, and opacity to your liking.
You can even change the rotation of the angle so it can come in diagonally or something.
Lastly, you can add a background image to appear with the scan if you're applying the
filter to a video with transparency, such as a green screened camera view.
The image it creates holds until you toggle off the filter.
The only real limitation right now is that there is still no way to toggle filter visibility
with hotkeys yet - at least not natively.
You can set that up with the OBS-filter-hotkeys script, though!
Our second-to-last plugin today is one of my favorites I've discovered in a long time.
Someone by the name of Norihiro has built a Face Tracker for OBS.
Install the plugin, add the face tracker filter to your camera and... it just works.
Performance seems great, the panning and zooming is SUPER smooth and eased just right, it performs
MUCH better than Nvidia Broadcast's reframing tool and better than some of the cheap AI
tracking webcams we checked out on a recent AFK Chat episode.
This is wild.
You have a ton of options for controlling zooming and cropping.
The main one to look at is the "Tracking Target Location" section, where you can change the
default zoom factor: I started with 0.5x, and then the max scale so it doesn't zoom
in too much.
You can adjust the responsiveness of each of the tracking factors, the sensitivity of
the borders to detecting your face, and even turn on the face-detect squares to see what
it sees.
Also, you can save preset configurations!
Awesome stuff.
This also means you can get the movie-style dolly zoom going on your face.
It's wild.
Lastly we have an incredible tool that can automatically switch scenes when your match
in a game is over, when you get an alert, and so on.
It's called Pixel Match Switcher, but calling it a plugin might be a LITTLE misleading as
it currently requires a separate build of OBS.
I want to go ahead and warn you that installing this "Atomic-Effects" fork of OBS Studio actually
replaces your existing installation.
I'm not a fan of this, especially since it comes bundled with StreamElements' OBS.LIVE
plugin, but oh well.
This tool is INCREDIBLY powerful.
I'm super impressed.
Once you have everything installed and launch OBS, go to Tools → Pixel Match Switcher.
Then click "Enable Matching."
Here, it will tell you it hasn't found any Pixel Match Filters.
Find your specific source or scene list that you want to focus on, right-click, click filters
and add a "Pixel Match" effect filter.
Now close this window.
Back in the main Switcher Window, it should now detect this new filter and config.
Under "Match Config #1" you can choose to either Capture the specific region or image
you want detected, or use a screenshot.
I believe this build is disagreeing with my Windows scaling, so the capture method is
broken for me, so I just grabbed a screenshot of the top-left-hand corner of my Discord
window.
I then pointed to that file.
Now, this detects that capture based on its positioning on the screen (with a flexible
threshold) so you have to give it coordinates of where the image is.
I used ShareX to get the rough approximate location and then moved around from there
until it showed a 98% pixel match.
Then you choose your Match Actions.
You can do pretty much anything here: switch scenes, run hotkeys, start or stop recording
or streaming, take screenshots, just about anything.
For now we'll just be changing scene.
So I have it set to switch scenes immediately to my camera if it detects I pulled up my
Discord Window.
You could have it activate a blur overlay or something instead.
Now click "Enable Switching" and test.
You can save different presets here, as well.
Now, there is a feature to have actions when this element is un-matched, but it doesn't
seem to work for my test here.
I believe that's because it has switched scenes and the filter isn't active anymore, but if
you're doing all of this on the same scene, it should work.
With this you can automatically switch scenes when entering game menus, hide personal information,
all kinds of stuff.
It's really impressive, and the stacking and advanced control possibilities here are endless,
far outside of the scope of this one video.
I'll be experimenting more as time goes.
And there you have it: 5 OBS plugins (and a LUA Script) to help increase the production
value of your streams and do... just about anything you want with it.
This list really feels like a good filling of fun and game-changing practical ideas and
I can't wait to see what you do with it.
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