Mac, OBS and Streaming Audio Right

OBS has for some time been working on it’s new version of OBS which is called OBS studio, and is cross platform. Finally we are free from having to faff about with WireCast, we can now just plug and play and Stream away. BUT WAIT it’s not just that simple!

If you ever tried Minecraft’s in game streaming it will at least (force) prompt you to download additional required software to get you going.

This software (whilst not needed, (well it’s not but you are a idiot if you don’t setup your audio properly)) will get your Audio going properly on OBS streaming when you are not using additional Hardware.

This piece of software is called Soundflower, and is an example of Virtual Audio Cabling, which basically creates a software based Sound Card inside your computer in order to route audio more usefully!

Installing

So first things first, grab yourself a copy of OBS Studio, you can find the latest version on GitHub here. Download and install!

Next we’ll grab a copy of SoundFlower which is on their site here or GitHub here.

SoundFlower will need you to restart your Computer.

Getting Setup

Lets fire up OBS Studio:

OBS 0.9.1

I’ve got a few extra scenes setup, but this is the layout you’ll be presented with!

We are going to add a source, (first make a scene of course) in this case a “Audio Output Capture”

Audio Selection

And then, to keep things simple, just select the SoundFlower 2 Channel. We don’t need to do anything wacky.

Input Select

Finally we need to change the Sound Settings under System Preferences. So open System Preferences and Sound. And select Soundflower (2ch) as the Output device.

System Prefs Sound

Now suddenly everything will go quiet as all your audio is being sent to OBS/Soundflower: (it’s good to check that OBS is actually detecting at this point)

Audio Monitoring

We need to route the Audio from your computer via Soundflower back to Speakers/headphones. For this open SoundflowerBed:

SoundFlowerBed

It’s under Applications/Soundflower, this fires up a Menu Item in the Top Dock

Top Menu

Just click that, and send the Soundflower (2ch) back to “Built in Output/headphones” And now both you and OBS can hear everything.

Soundflower Routing

Your computer’s audio is now sent to this device and captured by OBS.

(You can tell as my mic here is picking up my speakers):

Preview

And there we go 🙂

BONUS

(Billy May’s Voice) BUT WAIT THERES MORE!

Xbox 360 Controller on Mac under Yosemite?

Unofficial Release 0.14 works fine and it’s on GitHub here

BONUS BONUS

Now what do you do if you get Beachball of Death when trying to use the SoundflowerBed Icon from the menu?

First open Terminal (sorry).
Then type:

ps aux | grep Soundflowerbed.app

Then you’ll see something like this:

SoundflowerBed Hunt

Then type:

kill 9331

Where 9331 is replaced with the number here:

SoundflowerBed Kill

It is VERY important you kill the right thing. As otherwise you might break something and have to restart the whole computer.

Once you have kill’ed SoundflowerBed, just reopen and all should be good.

Further Reading: Some Tips from Tuts+

Magento – The missing view type!

Magento has four options when it comes to display products on your e-commerce website:

  1. Not Visible Individually
  2. Catalog
  3. Search
  4. Catalog, Search

Now, normally that about covers most use cases. But if you have configurable products it is somewhat more common place to set the children to Not Visible Individually.

This is great and all, but what if you are using Google Shopping real-time attribute/schema scraping which requires the Child to be visible individually to read those tags (and can be handy for direct to a page when SKU searching on the front end), and you don’t want the children to show in either your category or search grid pages?

This is where an additional catalog visibility type comes in useful, and it is actually very straight forward to achieve!

First setup a basic Magento module/plugin, which I won’t bore you with the complete details of, but we are binding to a model of the Mage Catalog Module under a rewrite!

Set up your

local/Company/Catalog/etc/config.xml

as follows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
    <modules>
        <Company_Catalog>
            <version>0.0.1</version>
        </Company_Catalog>
    </modules>
    <global>
        <models>
            <catalog>
                <rewrite>
                    <product_visibility>Company_Catalog_Model_Product_Visibility</product_visibility>
               </rewrite>
            </catalog>
        </models>
    </global>
</config>

Fairly straight forward here, setup a basic module and override Mage/Catalog/Product/Visibility.

Next setup the Model

local/Company/Catalog/Model/Product/Visibility.php
class Company_Catalog_Model_Product_Visibility extends Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Visibility {
    const VISIBILITY_PAGE = 5;
    
    public function getVisibleInSiteIds()
    {
        return array(self::VISIBILITY_IN_SEARCH, self::VISIBILITY_IN_CATALOG, self::VISIBILITY_BOTH, self::VISIBILITY_PAGE);
    }
    
    static public function getOptionArray()
    {
        return array(
            self::VISIBILITY_NOT_VISIBLE=> Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Not Visible Individually'),
            self::VISIBILITY_IN_CATALOG => Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Catalog'),
            self::VISIBILITY_IN_SEARCH  => Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Search'),
            self::VISIBILITY_BOTH       => Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Catalog, Search'),
            self::VISIBILITY_PAGE       => Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Own Page Only')
        );
    }
    
    /**
     * Retrieve all options
     *
     * @return array
     */
    static public function getAllOption()
    {
        $options = self::getOptionArray();
        array_unshift($options, array('value'=>'', 'label'=>''));
        return $options;
    }
    
    /**
     * Retireve all options
     *
     * @return array
     */
    static public function getAllOptions()
    {
        $res = array();
        $res[] = array('value'=>'', 'label'=> Mage::helper('catalog')->__('-- Please Select --'));
        foreach (self::getOptionArray() as $index => $value) {
            $res[] = array(
               'value' => $index,
               'label' => $value
            );
        }
        return $res;
    }
    
    /**
     * Retrieve option text
     *
     * @param int $optionId
     * @return string
     */
    static public function getOptionText($optionId)
    {
        $options = self::getOptionArray();
        return isset($options[$optionId]) ? $options[$optionId] : null;
    }
}

First of all we add a new Constant, logically named

VISIBILITY_PAGE

and we give it the next free “id” of 5. (Check core/Mage/Catalog/Model/Product/Visibility.php for the base list).

Next the important function

getVisibleInSiteIds

tells Magento which Products to allow to be shown individually, so we just add our constant to the array here.

All the other functions deal with rendering the new Visibility type in the admin interface for editing products (as otherwise the parent functions are used and they can’t “see” the new visibility type).

As per usual when you add/edit a new module make sure to clear the cache accordingly!

That is it all done, short and sweet!

Fun with WP.me and Twitter Cards

I was trying to figure out why my Twitter Cards weren’t working when I was tinkering with someone else’s WordPress install.

Turns out at some point Twitter decided to follow the WP.me redirect and grab the page behind is differently.

So, now you need to whitelist your domain rather than WP.me.

To do that pop along to The Card Validator with one of your none WP.me Blog Post URL’s in hand and pop it in the validator box.

twitter_card_validation

Click request approval, fill in the little form and wack submit! It might throw an error but retest your page and all should be good!

pending

Give it a few minutes:

waiting

And Finally:

finally

A working Tweet!

Updated like so:

Barry_Carlyon_on_Twitter___Fun_with_WP_me_and_Twitter_Cards_http___t_co_WYcrgwtMgG_

A Week of Commuting

So today ends my first week of my Manchester based job at Fred Aldous. Currently this means I’ve been commuting to and from Manchester every day.

Currently my journey goes

  • My House
  • Burley Park
  • Leeds train station
  • Manchester Piccadilly
  • Starbucks
  • Short walk

And of course the reverse!

So far it’s been difficult to get a seat but I don’t mind standing since it is some form of exercise 😛

Anyway, what really annoys me is when a train arrives at a station and people gravitate towards the doors.

They do it in such a way so that it makes it difficult for people to get off. Which aside from being a pain in the arse do them, the moment there is a gap people start piling on, and of course at peak times there is always a person or two stuck in the aisle trying to get off whilst people are piling on the train.

Inevitably this causes delays as the piling on lot have to stop and clear a route for those getting off to get off.

/Begin Rant/
Why can’t people just take a step or to back and not be in such a rush! If you let people get off and just give everyone some space. I’m sure it will be better for everyone involved and potentially help keep the trains on time at these peak times!
/End Rant/

Anyway my first week hasn’t been to bad. But more on my new job in another post. Currently standing on a train! Trying to publish this blog post in the little windows of coverage I get! And we appear to be following a slow moving train!

Prison Architect

From the minds that bought you Uplink and Darwinia comes a currently in Alpha, kind of being Kickstarted game: Prison Architect.

When I first came across it I had left it open in a tab or some time and I finally got around to watching the introductory video. And from that point on I decided to back the project!

Intro Video

Here’s the introductory video. It is quite hilarious in places, and it got me hooked!

Or Jump to YouTube

PRISONERS WITH DRILLS FOR NO REASON!!

They are running a Kickstarter style campaign to allow people to back the game but they have built the backing process to run on their own site. And using a third party provider to secure downloads. Which is quite clever as it give them full branding control. But does mean they miss out of the relevant sites promotional routes, but like them it still relying on backers to help promote the game.

The Game

The aim of the game is to design, build, and run a prison, using gaming themes and ideas from such games as Theme Hospital and others.

It’s currently reached its alpha 7 release and improvement on alpha 6. Largely adding in the Name in the Game backers, and the crimes they have committed (biographies), heres mine.

Barry Barry Barry

It’s quite a good laugh. I’ve had plenty of Prisoners escape, Guards die, and Workers building but not managed to start a big enough riot to burn it down (yet), but if it did happen, you can call the Fire Brigade in and direct them to put the fire out. In the future they are adding more “disasters” and relevant services to deal with them, bit like Sim City I suppose.

Backing

They have several levels of backing available and even if you do go for the lowest level where you just get access to the game, you can always upgrade later via a PayPal donation. And due to recent milestones being reached you can get a “discount” on the name in the game level.

I myself am on the picture in the game level. Which gets your name in the game and your Prisoner designed to match your likeness. (And of course all the previous tiers including copies of existing Introversion Software games, and some nice physical bonuses!

Where

Check the game out over on Prison-Architect.com and on Twitter @IVSoftware! I think it’s worth backing even at just the $30 level to get a copy of the game!