The popular video capture software is now available on Steam.
OBS Is the very popular free, open-source, and cross-platform screencasting and streaming app that is available for Windows, macOS, Linux distributions, and BSD.
Now, much to the delight of many fans, OBS is accessible on Steam, where it will sit alongside all of your other games and applications.
It will work like the standalone version and will feature automatic updates instead of manual ones.
Steam describes OBS as:
”a free and open-source program for livestreaming and video recording. Create scenes with multiple types of video sources, including your computer display, video games, webcams, video files, and more. Stream your video productions on sites like Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook Live, or record your videos locally to share.”
The features of OBS on Steam include:
- Livestream video to sites like Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Live, and many more, including your own custom servers
- Record videos to save to your hard drive and share with friends
- High-performance real-time video/audio capturing and mixing. Create scenes made up of multiple sources including window captures, images, text, browser windows, webcams, capture cards, and more
- Set up an unlimited number of scenes you can switch between seamlessly via custom transitions
- Intuitive audio mixer with per-source filters such as noise gate, noise suppression, and gain. Take full control with VST plugin support
- Powerful and easy-to-use configuration options. Add new Sources, duplicate existing ones, and adjust their properties effortlessly
- Streamlined Settings panel gives you access to a wide array of configuration options to tweak every aspect of your broadcast or recording
- Modular ‘Dock’ UI allows you to rearrange the layout exactly as you like. You can even pop out each individual Dock to its own window
- Choose from a number of different and customizable transitions for when you switch between your scenes or add your own stinger video files
- Set hotkeys for nearly every sort of action, such as switching between scenes, starting/stopping streams or recordings, muting audio sources, push to talk, and more
- Studio Mode lets you preview your scenes and sources before pushing them live. Adjust your scenes and sources or create new ones and ensure they’re perfect before your viewers ever see them
- Get a high-level view of your production using the Multiview. Monitor 8 different scenes and easily cue or transition to any of them with merely a single or double click.
OBS on Steam will have free automatic updates which will be convenient for some but might be a bit risky for those who use OBS for work purposes. OBS is mostly stable though so it might not be a dealbreaker.
If you already have the standalone version installed on your PC, the Steam version of OBS seems to carry over all of your settings, but the developer stated in a FAQ that it will not have cloud saves.
The developer said of the move:
”We are working on building better ways of exporting/importing and backing up your OBS data regardless of platform.”
Everything else will function as it does in the standard version. Plugins can be installed in the same way, and you can join the beta or nightly versions by selecting ‘betas’ from the right-click menu.
Because Steam doesn’t have a limit on how many games you can play at once, you can launch OBS and then play a game to capture it exactly like you would with the other version.
Unfortunately, because it’s free, no trading cards will be available.