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Comment by bnycum | Hacker News Reader

If you are looking for a more robust solution Streamlabs OBS[1] is more popular in the livestreaming community, it's OBS on steroids. It is also open source, and just released a beta on Mac like this week.

[1]: https://streamlabs.com/

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I wouldn't say Streamlabs is more robust - it's the same core of OBS Studio, with Electron instead of Qt for the frontend and better Streamlabs integration.

For newbies, it also comes with a ton of demo content and setups (pre-roll, transition, etc), to ease the learning and spin-up curve. Agree that doesn't make it more robust (see my other comment). I have no affiliation with either project, just an Old Guy learning/doing some streaming projects.

The main issue I have with Streamlabs is that they _heavily_ push their "Prime" SaaS model.

I started to get myself set up on Streamlabs for the first time the other day, and accidentally deleted my free Theme/ Scenes that I set up during install. So I went to their Store to re-find it (https://streamlabs.com/library#/), and it's almost impossible to filter through to find the non-prime things -- none of their filters / sorts allow filtering by price or Prime.

I stumbled upon that I could type "free" in the search bar to finally do it, but it was quite painful, and without that I was having to filter out the first 20-30 pages to get past all the "Prime" addons.

Is this a fork of OBS or another project.

If it's a fork, why not work on the OBS project to implement these enhancements there? Is there backlash to that sort of thing from the OBS maintainers?

I think one of the reasons why is because Streamlabs sells premium add-ons https://streamlabs.com/goprime

That aside, I think it specializes OBS in a way that is too specific for OBS, which tries to be more generic. I think they both have their place, but personally I use OBS for recording videos and SLOBS adds no value for me.

I didn't know about slobs, but the idea of a "theme store" maybe would be something worth to explore on obs, It actually could be a revenue stream, just like wordpress, where the core is open source but you have several theme stores.

It's a frontend for OBS.

This is the Electron app: https://github.com/stream-labs/streamlabs-obs/

This is the wrapper library for Node: https://github.com/stream-labs/obs-studio-node

Almost all of their changes are UI changes. They use our core OBS Studio code, with an Electron GUI instead of Qt. Not easy/basically impossible to port back over. We monitor any back end changes they make, and pull when appropriate. They do not collaborate with us, however, so it's rare they make changes that we can use.

A link to the Mac beta? And no Linux version, right?

No linux version, no. They concentrate on twitch / game streamers. Most gamers are on windows so Linux doesn't even pop up on their radar.

Can you elaborate on what makes it more robust?

Streamlabs OBS has support for alerts (subs/followers, donations, etc), themes, overlays/widgets, etc. Most livestreamers use it for a more interactive experience. Just depends on what you need.

One example: keeping Preview and Program windows open (common for realtime stream prep/mgmt) on Mac with OBS will kill your frame rate (dropping 20%+ of frames) due to GPU rendering issues in Qt [1]. Streamlabs has no issues with this. I guess there's a question about whether that == "robust", but in terms of the app's features performing as it should, I would guess so.

Some simple/weird workarounds: literally move the Preview window offscreen, and/or open a Windowed Projector (popup) for Preview (but again keep Preview off screen).

[1] Can't find the thread on it now, but it's something about the way the two views are structured in a container

Link you are referring to: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/low-framerate-in-studio...

It's still in beta, so it's not actually better yet. I tried it out for a week and it didn't work out. After about 30 minutes of streaming, my dropped frames went up to 90%, despite my connection being strong. OBS never had a problem with this.

Oh snap, it's out of Beta!?

Downloaded!

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