OBS Studio 30.2 it out! (Patreon)

We've released OBS Studio 30.2! You can get the latest versions here:
https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases

It's been a really active couple of months with a lot of heavy development, so let's check out the new changes:

Multitrack Video Streaming

Otherwise known as "Twitch Enhanced Broadcast", this is simply the ability to stream multiple resolutions and codecs of your broadcast at the same time in the same stream. This development is huge for a number of reasons:

• Firstly, and most importantly, due to the required protocol changes, this will soon enable the ability to stream with other codecs, such as AV1! This is technically already working in OBS itself, but services are still working towards supporting it in full. Expect to see support for newer codecs in the future due to this change.

• Secondly, this gives everyone access to higher quality lower resolutions and bitrates for viewers to use or select when watching your stream. You might say "but doesn't Twitch already provide transcodes?" However that is not what this change is. This change is better than transcoding; transcoding takes video that's already encoded, decodes it, scales it, and reencodes it, which loses significant video quality. This change takes the raw video before encoding, and simply scales it and encodes it, giving viewers the highest possible video quality you can get for a specific resolution. This change is a significant boost to quality when viewers are unable to view the highest resolution for whatever reason (usually mobile viewers).

Note that this change is currently only supported by Twitch and only with very recent NVIDIA and AMD hardware on Windows, with more in the works in the future. Check our patch notes for more details on what hardware is currently supported.

Again, this is a really big change that will probably alter streaming for the foreseeable future. It will greatly increase overall streaming quality, give everyone access to higher quality lower resolution scales for viewers, and in the future will give access to higher quality codecs such as AV1.

Hybrid MP4 Files and Chapter Markers

When recording, MP4 files have always had the problem where they become broken and unviewable if your computer shuts down for any reason, losing your valuable video. Thanks to Rodney, we've now added "Fragmented MP4" file support with our own custom muxer, which prevents data loss on unexpected shutdown.

Due to now having a custom MP4 muxer, this also adds the ability to set chapter markers via hotkey or API. This will give users the ability to mark specific points in video files when something has occurred, or to separate different content in the same video more easily without having to manually search through the video file and mark specific points after it's been recorded.

Note that to use this, you have to set the recording file format not to MP4, but to "Fragmented MP4".

Improved Linux Hardware Encoders

Linux has been getting a lot of love lately, and now has access to texture-based hardware encoding, which improves performance of hardware encoders. Specifically, this affects NVENC, Quicksync, and VA-API encoders.

As a Linux user myself this makes me happy to see. Big thanks to Rodney, Kurufu, and nowrep.

Other Changes

There are various other changes this update, such as the ability to more easily create and maintain custom OBS themes, caption support for AV1/HEVC, as well as minor various improvements, optimizations, and bug fixes. See our patch notes for a detailed list of all the new changes and fixes.

What else is going on

Outside of managing the project and reviewing code, I've personally still been working on our D3D12 renderer. It's been a bit of a tedious process because I want to make sure to maximize performance, but I began to realize that there are a lot of rendering code paths that need to be updated because they were just not as optimal as I'd prefer. So it's been a bit of work, but I'm continuing at it as much as I'm able with all the other work and events going on in my life right now. After D3D12 is complete I'll begin work on the Vulkan renderer for Linux. Linux has been gaining a lot of steam lately due to people wanting to migrate away from Windows which has pushing AI and cloud on them.

Similarly, Pat's also been working on a Metal renderer for macOS to replace our old OpenGL renderer.

A big thing we're also working on is third-party plugin management. Downloading, installing, and updating third-party plugins is a bit of work for both developers and users right now, so we want to make sure we have an ecosystem where developers can make, distribute, and update plugins more easily. This will also make it easier for users to obtain plugins and keep them up-to-date.

There are other things currently in development, and inevitably more things will pop up as contributors decide to submit them.

Another personal note

I've been making a lot of progress in my personal life. As I said in my last personal note, things have been very hard these past two years. To sum it up, my father died, I transitioned, the sibling I was once closest to wasn't happy, I gave up pretty much everything, and I had to restart my life; a better and more fulfilled life, and I had to do it alone with no guidance for the longest time. Now, I've found more supportive friends and people in my life that I love and care about, and my life has become so much more fulfilled than it used to be. I feel like I've made more progress in these past 10 months than I have in my entire life. Things are still difficult and I still have a lot of work to do on myself, but I've been so much happier having finally been able to understand myself and bring who I am to the surface. I'm finally able to be myself and it's been wonderful.

I've also had a couple of surgeries these past few months, so I've been trying my best to work through recovery. I have another surgery coming up soon as well, and recovery is going to be a bit rough. Wish me luck!

Anyway, thank you all so much for supporting the project! I'm very grateful for all the support. Trans rights are human rights!