- 4/17/2025
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) developers, Ben Torrell and Colin Edwards, join Joe and Norris.
Category
š¹
FunTranscript
00:00all right welcome back to checkpoint xp esports and gaming radio we have some very
00:11guys this is a big deal we got some really special guests here we've got ben and colin from obs
00:20yes that obs the obs you're all probably using right now the obs that we use to broadcast and
00:30others to millions of people guys how are you doing today doing good pretty good it's been a busy day
00:37yeah we've walked around since like eight this morning so yeah i mean it's it's been a pretty
00:43big place we've been sort of tethered here but uh it's been a great experience but we we got a few
00:49questions that we always ask to everybody you know no matter who they are is that number one
00:56what is the best video game of all time
00:59i'm a big fan of the metroid series oh um i mean i i don't know if super metroid is the best of all
01:08time it's the even bat or half-life one i would say oh good choices i've been grinding through
01:14the castlevania series recently so i'm kind of partial to those at the moment which one though
01:18so rondo of blood on the pc engine okay fair simply because you say on the pc engine
01:25fair i'll give you a fair um all right cool so obviously anybody in the world who's who's streamed
01:33they know about obs they it's integral to all this stuff that we have here uh in the esports area
01:41so what has it been like seeing that grow um honestly i i i kind of forget what it's like
01:50with everybody who uses obs like i've been i've been on the team working doing support stuff for
01:56obs since almost a few months after it came out so like it's it's grown uh over the time that i've
02:03been there helping out and it's kind of like grown on me so i didn't really pay attention to it until
02:08like it kind of blew up um but i mean i i consider it a privilege i really like being able to help
02:14make this possible uh help increase the accessibility to streaming for everyone and making it so widely
02:21available is it means a lot to me yeah and and with you know talking about making it accessible
02:29and and bringing it to more people i mean is it difficult sort of trying to stay on the cutting
02:35edge when more people are trying to create more software new hardware is constantly coming out
02:40and you've got to make sort of a one-size-fits-all type of solution so we actually this is where our
02:46really good community comes in and it's been really helpful for us so if we like something new comes
02:50out or like a new piece of hardware comes out we can usually ask someone you know either directly
02:54on the team or someone in our discord that we have like you know what do you know about this have
02:59you tried it and they'll either be like yeah this hardware is awesome use it you know this other
03:02software you can integrate directly is great or they'll just be like no just don't waste your time
03:06with it you know you know worry about something else uh and that's been really useful for that kind
03:11of stuff um and then just even in general like as far as keeping up with new stuff our own group
03:19within ourselves we're always like sharing links about like oh what's the new you know stream
03:24encoder that's out that we can use or like uh so basically somebody will know what's coming out
03:29and like whether or not to worry about it so speaking of that you know speaking about uh
03:33sort of sharing the uh information between you guys what's the size of the team that we're talking
03:39about to be constantly working on lbs so as far as there's a so we have a couple different parts
03:44of the team we have our support volunteers uh there are a couple maybe five to six people who are
03:52regularly in there yeah we're in there it's fairly informal at this point um then we have a couple of
03:58core developers there's probably what 10 people that contribute regularly something like that yeah
04:03and then we just any other people will just show up and give us code and then um so that's kind of
04:09like the people that happen from day to day but we do get a lot of people that you know pass by
04:13you know share resources with us have one piece of code they can fix they'll stop by and do and
04:19that's that's always really appreciated yeah i gotta tell you when i think about something like
04:25obs being very open source and very you know community driven i i gotta imagine that can feel
04:32like a bit of a thankless job sometimes where something like a few people reaching out to say
04:36like wow this is great thank you guys so much and a lot of people reaching out to say hey this doesn't
04:41work or we need this feature what's that like working with that um it could definitely be challenging
04:47i mean we we we do have a lot of people who come in and are like into that support channel
04:53uh having problems and needing something fixed and honestly i gotta give a huge shout out
04:58to those of us and those people in our support community who do do support uh they're heroes they
05:05handle those people all the time um and i think that even though there are people who come in
05:11and maybe are demanding that we fix this or this is broken please fix give me this thing
05:16um there are those people but there also are lots of people out there who are thankful for the
05:21program and even if it isn't vocalized as much uh they they do exist and that's why we recently like
05:29set up a patreon for people to uh express that if you want to help support the program development
05:34you can go over to patreon slash ops project and you can give back there um that's something that
05:40i've been working on a lot lately is helping uh let our community contribute back uh to help support
05:47us as we make this this program for everybody and and speaking of that you know programs like ours
05:54that sort of came out of you know really you know bespoke and small podcast communities and twitch
06:00communities and stuff like that i just want to say on behalf of us that definitely thank you for for
06:05all the support and all the work that everybody does on lbs but i'm gonna make a a quick pivot here
06:11into sort of esports and and seeing you know even here at the convention center um the level of
06:19energy and investment that's now being injected into esports where does obs sort of fit into that
06:24sort of apparatus what do you guys project uh is going on what obs as sort of the traditional
06:30media apparatus gets more involved with esports and gaming so obviously you're going to have guys
06:36coming in that are used to the you know traditional production setup and they want to you know bring
06:40their whole studio we've seen we've seen people approach the esports that way we've also seen
06:44people that do kind of a hybrid solution where they'll do some of like the newer scene based stuff
06:49from obs but it's still very much like just a huge hardware switcher based um and so we've kind of been
06:55since we're kind of on the far end of that spectrum we've kind of been spending time talking to people
06:59that are in the traditional broadcast industry and like what kind of features would make them more
07:04likely to use obs for these esports events because you know it it works very well for them but there are some
07:09features that they are missing and so we've spent some time talking to people like recently we
07:13integrated uh play out support for black magic devices just so that you can get the output from
07:18obs out of a sdi feed you know into some other production flow so then you can more easily integrate
07:24uh you know your video into traditional setup awesome well i mean and even you know something
07:31simple like like the the cam link and being able to pull uh an hdmi in or something like that all
07:38like obs has changed so much since my first time booting it up years ago if you had to pick something
07:45that you would say is the best improvement to obs over the years each of you what would you say is the
07:52best improvement made to obs
07:53um probably one of the biggest feature requests from the very beginning was cross-platform support
08:03it's been a challenge getting it working on mac and linux correctly but i'm very glad that we were
08:08able to take the time to actually get that support in to increase the number of people who could use
08:13the application increases accessibility it's not it's not a very sexy feature but i think it's a very
08:18important feature that we were able to do i'm gonna have to go with the fact that we finally got
08:24hardware acceleration in the browser source working on a modern version of chrome so like that made a
08:30lot of people really happy like super flashy alerts 60 fps uh all sorts of cool overlays and stuff and
08:37that's something i'm glad we fixed so we know you can't obviously share everything uh but is there
08:45anything that maybe fans of obs should be looking forward to in the in the near term or so nothing
08:50terribly exciting on the radar we're doing a lot of stuff i have a little short list here let me see
08:56i know we want to do a lot of uh so recently we added the service integration stuff where if you
09:00open up obs you can log in directly with uh twitch and mixer and i think we just added restream in the
09:06latest release and then from there you know you get your different web panels that you can use right
09:10inside obs uh via chat and change stream titles and all that kind of stuff and so i know we're
09:17going to spend some more time on seeing what other services we can integrate with that system uh just
09:21so it's really easy to just open up obs login and you have a whole set up and see everything for your
09:27stream in one place and then aside from that we we get a lot of feedback that just some of the features
09:32are really hard to use and the buttons aren't in the right place so we're kind of sitting down spending
09:37a lot of time thinking about how to solve those kind of rough edges that make it really harder to
09:42you know stream right out of the box or just like oh this part is confusing and kind of making that
09:46whole experience easier uh anything else um i mean it's it's not that we want to like keep secrets
09:54like keep the features we're working on secret or something like that a lot of times our development
09:58cycle is such that we don't even necessarily know what's going to be in the release until a few weeks
10:05before the release actually happens um so what we can we can say is there are things that we'd like
10:12to be working on or things that we're we're working on in some sort of time frame uh it might not come
10:17out in the next release or the release after that but um things like uh for example uh there's a feature
10:25that's currently in the works that would help detect if your internet bandwidth suddenly reduces quite a
10:31bit and then uh obs will automatically reduce your bit rate so that instead of dropping frames you'll
10:36just reduce quality and then when your bit bit bent your bandwidth comes back it'll come back with you
10:43so that's like a cool feature we've it's been in the works for a while i'd really like to see it come
10:47in i don't know when it'll come in but uh i'd like to see it in the program sooner rather than later
10:51all right guys that is ben and colin from obs from the streamer community again thank you so much for
11:01all the work that you guys have done on obs that has provided access to streaming to literally hundreds
11:08of thousands and millions of people uh thank you again for taking time out of your day uh to talk to
11:14us and uh we hope to see more people using obs and continue to see the program grow yeah absolutely
11:23thanks you're listening to checkpoint xp we'll have a lot more coming from nab in las vegas next
Recommended
14:19
10:04
7:50
12:16