Original author(s) Repository github.com/jp9000/OBS | Developer(s) Community | |
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Initial release v0.32a / 1 September 2012; 4 years ago (2012-09-01) Stable release v0.659b / 30 August 2016; 6 months ago (2016-08-30) Preview release v18.0.1 (Studio) / 7 March 2017; 11 days ago (2017-03-07) | ||
Open Broadcaster Software (also known as OBS) is a free and open source streaming and recording program maintained by the OBS Project.
Contents
Overview
Open Broadcaster Software is a free and open source software suite for recording and live streaming. Written in C and C++, OBS provides real-time source and device capture, scene composition, encoding, recording and broadcasting. Transmission of data is done via the Real Time Messaging Protocol and can be sent to any RTMP supporting destination (e.g. YouTube) including many presets for streaming websites such as Twitch.tv and DailyMotion.
For video encoding, OBS is capable of using the x264 free software library, Intel Quick Sync Video and Nvidia NVENC to encode video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. Experimental support for AMD VCE encoding was added in OBS Studio version 0.16.0. Audio can be encoded using either the MP3 or AAC codecs.
History
Open Broadcaster Software started out as a small project created by Hugh "Jim" Bailey but quickly grew with the help of many online collaborators working both to improve OBS and spread the knowledge about the program. In 2014, development started on a rewritten version known as OBS Multiplatform (later renamed OBS Studio) for multiplatform support, a more thorough feature set, and a more powerful API. OBS Studio is currently a work in progress as it has not yet reached feature parity with the original OBS, which is why the original is still available.
Plug-ins
Open Broadcaster Software supports a variety of plug-ins to extend its functionality. Plug-ins are loaded as native code DLL files, although a wrapper plug-in is available that allows hosting of plug-ins written in the .NET Framework.