Category: Tools

OBS 33 is here

OBS Studio Logo

Whats that OBS did a big point release? It did indeed. (OK OK it’s 33.0.1 now…)

For the most part for streamers the key changes as a bunch of UI overhaul and a update to browser sources. This should really trip anyone up but it so make sure to drop your developer a line so they can update.

This one is a mix of “just catching up to the lastest browser engine” as well as “plugging security holes from the old engine we had”, so it’s an important update/change.

The same goes for OBS Plugins, for some plugins an API command or two was removed and plugins might not graceful catch that and crash out, but thats rare. Most developers will have caught up and updated already, but you should check for plugin updates anyway.

As a Plugin Developer

For plugin developers OBS has started the 6 month or so period of “we are makign a big change” warning period.

Notably is changes to how images are loaded for use. (specifically the removal of gs_image_file which to my knowledge should be replaced with image_file)

So if you a Streamer and you see plugins marked as “legacy” in the Plugin Manager, don’t worry about it). But maybe check/drop a line to the plugin developers, they may also have patched already for this change and a update is available.

As a Streamer

If a streamer, you should not take it upon yourself to move plugins around yourself. OBS will auto handle this itself when they complete the deprecation cycle, if a plugin developer doesn’t update the plugin themself in the mean time.

Quick Change Summary

  • Updated Browser Source engine to something MUCh newer
  • Many changes to how PLugins load to ensure the sanity of plugins and OBS going forwards
  • Improved Source Snapping when moving sources around
  • Improved checks for removed encoders
  • Support for latest NVIDIA Broadcast SDKs (don’t forget to update those)
  • Fixes/improvements to game capture
  • All the usual bug fixes tweaks and improvements across the board

Known issue if you use a “controller inputs overlay” can be tracked here the joys of fixing security bugs is you introduce security blocks.

Summary

You can find the full change log for OBS v33 over on github and plugin developers can check the details for legacy over on the OBS Knowledge base.

And don’t forget to file OBS bug reports with OBS to help us all AND talk to your plugin devs so they can update their plugins!

And don’t forget to backup profiles and scenes collections before hand, in case you need to roll OBS back if v33 and the plugins are not ready for you and your work flows yet!

New Tool Release: Bluesky Live

Bluesky Logo

Somewhat recently Bluesky added the ability to mark/set yourself as Live on Bluesky and link out from Bluesky to a given service. At the moment that is a short list of services, but includes Twitch and Stream.place among others.

If you were to set yourself as Live manually on Bluesky, you are maxed to 4 hours, so you would need to remember and come back to bump your time or manually remove the status if you ended before 4 hours.

Given Bluesky oAuth is a thing, and because App Passwords are not tooooo much fun with work with IMO, so I built a tool to implement Bluesky oAuth as an adventure in how Bluesky does oAuth (thats likely gonna be a separate post as it’s pretty interesting and in depth).

I’m still tweaking/optimising how my code runs as there are some caching layers that could be added to speed up operations, but I digress!

AND SO via the powers of Twitch oAuth and Twitch eventsub, pair the two services together to do Bluesky Live AUTOMATICALLY! (Anyone using Stream.place it’s native to the platform)

MAGIC!

The only drawback is that Bluesky oAuth is a smidge brittle, as outlined in this Issue on GitHub I authored, even when you have your Client configured as confidential. And understanding how scopes work is FUN! (Follow up post soon)

Well what does it do?

First of all it handles the 4 hour max issue, by “bumping” the expiration time automatically whilst the Twitch channel is live. As well as:

When you go live on Twitch

  • Mark your Bluesky as live with a link to your Twitch
  • Applies your stream title as the title as Bluesky live entry
  • Applies your stream thumbnail to the Bluesky live entry

When you change your Title or Category

  • Applies your new stream title as the title as Bluesky live entry
  • Applies your new stream thumbnail to the Bluesky live entry

When you go offline on Twitch

  • Delete the live status

Periodically/every 15 minutes

  • Updates the thumbnail from Twitch to Bluesky
  • Updates the title from Twitch to Bluesky
  • Rebump the expire timer
  • Sanity check and remove the status

But wait, there’s more

Yes there is MORE!

Kylo Ren yelling MORE on loop
MORE!

Since this tool pairs your Twitch account with a Bluesky Account, when the job runs to maintain Bluesky live status, it can see if you are live elsewhere (manually set or auto set by another service), if that elsewhere is not Twitch then I won’t overwrite or attempt to manage it.

But, if it IS Twitch, then I’ll maintain the live status (and the thumbnail), so if you manually marked yourself as live on another channel, the tool will maintain the thumbnail and expire timer till that channel goes offline (or you manually remove it) which is great if you are guesting on another stream, or doing a Dungeons and Dragons show for example elsewhere on Twitch when it’s not dual streamed to your own channel.

Why 4 Hours

No idea, but on the upside it does mean that if the oAuth breaks due to the brittleness or other reasons, and the tool cannot write to your Bluesky account any more, the status will self disappear on its own.

Then you just need to reauthenticate to the tool and away it goes

Ok, let me use it

You can find the tool over at https://bluesky.chatbot.barrycarlyon.co.uk/ and it comes with the bonus of listing who is live using the tool! FREE DISCOVERY!

Starship Discovery care of https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery

And yes it works with custom Bluesky handles, like mine barrycarlyon.co.uk and should work with ANY PDS (personal data server).

Support can be found via my Discord, check the site for the invite link down the bottom right, and/or support the tool via my ko-fi! Or drop me a line thru the usual channels.

Free support methods? Well retweet/repost the Twitter or Bluesky posts about it! (or the ones about this blog post that I don’t have the links to yet!)

A screenshot of the Tool showing a handful of live streamers on Twitch whom are using the tool.