Advanced Scene Switcher 1.29.3

[Mark Weiss]

I wonder if this can be used to interject a station ID or bumper into a VLC media stream?

I have VLC media pointed to a folder full of videos. They play sequentially or in random order.

What I'd like is to have this playlist pause every 15 minutes or so and the media file with the ID play, then resume to play the next VLC media in line. Is that possible? If so, how would I set it up?

 

[AaronD]

I wonder if this can be used to interject a station ID or bumper into a VLC media stream?

I have VLC media pointed to a folder full of videos. They play sequentially or in random order.

What I'd like is to have this playlist pause every 15 minutes or so and the media file with the ID play, then resume to play the next VLC media in line. Is that possible? If so, how would I set it up?

VLC source in OBS? Or the standalone VLC app?

 

[Mark Weiss]

VLC source in OBS? Or the standalone VLC app?

VLC source.

 

[Warmuptill]

I wonder if this can be used to interject a station ID or bumper into a VLC media stream?

I have VLC media pointed to a folder full of videos. They play sequentially or in random order.

What I'd like is to have this playlist pause every 15 minutes or so and the media file with the ID play, then resume to play the next VLC media in line. Is that possible? If so, how would I set it up?

This might do what you are looking for:

Media playlist with commercial interruptions

An automation tool for OBS Studio. Contribute to WarmUpTill/SceneSwitcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[AaronD]

VLC source.

I *think* this should work. I'm testing it now in a "sandbox" instance.

I thought you might want to have several different bumpers that play at random, so I included that too. If not, you can simplify a bit.

I tried "not Playlist Scene for 15 minutes", but the logic on that seems to be "not (Playlist Scene for 15 minutes)" instead of the "(not Playlist Scene) for 15 minutes" like is needed here. So I added a variable that keeps track of whether we're playing a bumper or not.

The "Playing" and "Less than X time remaining" condition, together with a transition over the same X time, makes a much nicer transition than having it stop fully and then switch. If your sources start and end nicely on their own, then you might not need that. In that case:

Another side-effect of doing it this way is if you have a scene that isn't a normal bumper, you can switch to it manually, and the same Return from Bump macro will trigger on that too, and go back to the playlist.

The playlist itself (VLC Source) should probably have this setting:

 

[AaronD]

This might do what you are looking for:

Media playlist with commercial interruptions

An automation tool for OBS Studio. Contribute to WarmUpTill/SceneSwitcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

That works too, if the bumpers are *always* 15 seconds, or whatever the Wait action is set to. Mine looks at the media itself and doesn't have that restriction.

If it helps the thought process, the variable in my example can be replaced with the 30-second timer from this one, but changed to 15 minutes, while keeping my switch logic. Lots of different ways to do the same thing. :-)
The result of that combination would be this, with the others unchanged:

 

[Mark Weiss]

Thank you. This looks like it has the capacity to give plenty of flexibility. I downloaded the advanced switcher and will try out some of the settings you listed. My breaks are of varying length. Some as short as 5 seconds. The ability to detect the transition between VLC video clips is key here. I'd want to gracefully insert the bumpers, not interrupt if possible. Although for long form content, I may want to break in every 20 mins or so with a bumper.

 

[Mark Weiss]

In the first example in the link you provided, they talk about a playlist file;

In my case, I have VLC media source looking at several folders which contain video files. This gets updated automatically as I add/remove videos from the folders. I hope to avoid having to edit a playlist file to make this work.

 

[Mark Weiss]

The other question is does it have to be a scene file? If so, how do I make it play only ONE bumper/ID per break and shuffle the IDs each turn? Can I have it arbitrarily play a media file at each break, rather than switch scenes?
To be clear, can I have it play a MEDIA file as a break instead of switching scenes outright?

 

[Mark Weiss]

I'm coming to the conclusion that I will have to make a new scene for the break, so if I do that, do I simply make another VLC Media source in the Break scene and point it to a folder with bumper videos?

 

[AaronD]

I'm coming to the conclusion that I will have to make a new scene for the break, so if I do that, do I simply make another VLC Media source in the Break scene and point it to a folder with bumper videos?

My example uses a scene for each one, with an OBS-native Media source in each one. Not VLC.

In fact, I've never used the VLC source for any of my production rigs. Always native, and always a single specific thing in each. And it's usually the only source in its scene. Separate scene for each too. Lots of simple scenes; complex ones are hard to work with IMO, and I don't need a lot on the screen at once.

how do I make it play only ONE bumper/ID per break and shuffle the IDs each turn?

My example already does that. :-) It has a macro dedicated to starting each one, and the main Goto macro picks one of those other macros at random to run right then and there, regardless of its condition(s).

 

[Mark Weiss]

Would it be possible to put all the break videos in one folder and one scene and have OBS randomly select a video from that scene and play it? I guess Native video uses less resources?

EDIT: it looks like Media Source can only do one file at a time.

 

[Warmuptill]

Would it be possible to put all the break videos in one folder and one scene and have OBS randomly select a video from that scene and play it? I guess Native video uses less resources?

EDIT: it looks like Media Source can only do one file at a time.

I guess that should be possible using a VLC source.
Just make sure to enable shuffling for the VLC source and re-shuffle before showing to it.

 

[Mark Weiss]

I have shuffle enabled, but where is this reshuffle option you mentioned?

 

[Warmuptill]

I have shuffle enabled, but where is this reshuffle option you mentioned?

The reshuffling must be done as described in the video I linked above using the "Source" action type.

 

[Mark Weiss]

I couldn't find that video, but I looked up the problem and saw that some are using source... refresh source... VLC Media Source to reshuffle. I'll try that and see if it gets the desired result.

 

[AaronD]

I'm finally getting around to reporting this. Not a huge deal, but the docks are still being replicated on the other screen.

3x 1920x1080, side-by-side. The docks on the left screen are duplicates of where they are on the center screen. As before, mousing over either copy highlights both.

 

[David51201]

We have a church live stream that starts at 9:25am every Sunday. The problem is we would get busy with other setup tasks and not start the stream when we were supposed to, so we could miss a few minutes of the service. I then found Advanced Scene Switcher, which solved many of our problems. Fast forward to a couple of months ago and YouTube changed something that broke our web page which in turn broke this automation. I was able to get it to work but now we are using the Manage Broadcast functionality and we would really like to see a small expansion to the Streaming functionality. In the screen shot below, our automation is able to click on the Start Streaming button, but when we do that, the Manage Broadcast button changes to say Go Live! Would it be possible to have the ability to click the Go Live! button after the Start Streaming button is clicked within a running automation? I'm not sure how feature requests work here so let me know if it needs to be done somewhere else.

 

[UnreakWaifu]

You will have to use a macro similar to this one to get the current system time.

View attachment 97421

If you want to import the example macro you can use this code:

{"macros":[{"name":"Get Date","pause":false,"parallel":false,"onChange":false,"skipExecOnStart":false,"group":false,"dockSettings":{"register":false,"hasRunButton":true,"hasPauseButton":true,"hasStatusLabel":false,"highlightIfConditionsTrue":false,"runButtonText":"Run","pauseButtonText":"Pause","unpauseButtonText":"Unpause","conditionsTrueStatusText":"Conditions are true.","conditionsFalseStatusText":"Conditions are false."},"registerHotkeys":false,"pauseHotkey":[],"unpauseHotkey":[],"togglePauseHotkey":[],"conditions":[{"collapsed":false,"id":"date","logic":0,"durationModifier":{"time_constraint":0,"seconds":{"value":{"value":0.0,"type":0},"unit":0,"version":1}},"dayOfWeek":0,"condition":0,"dateTime":"Thu Sep 7 19:56:14 2023","dateTime2":"Thu Sep 7 19:56:14 2023","ignoreDate":false,"ignoreTime":true,"repeat":false,"updateOnRepeat":true,"duration":{"value":{"value":0.0,"type":0},"unit":0,"version":1},"dayOfWeekCheck":true,"pattern":".... .. .. .. .. .."}],"actions":[{"collapsed":false,"id":"variable","enabled":true,"variableName":"Variable name here","variable2Name":"Invalid varialbe selection","strValue":"","numValue":0.0,"condition":5,"segmentIdx":0,"subStringStart":0,"subStringSize":0,"regexPattern":".*","regexMatchIdx":0,"findStr":"Text to find","replaceStr":"Text to replace with","regexConfig":{"enable":false,"partial":true,"options":0},"mathExpression":"( 1 + 2 * 3 ) / 4","useCustomPrompt":false,"inputPrompt":"Assign value to variable:","useInputPlaceholder":false,"inputPlaceholder":"--enter text--","environmentVariableName":"USERPROFILE"}]}],"version":"c375daa"}

You can reference the variable in your "File" action which you use to write the log entry using this syntax:
${Variable name here}

So an example action could look like this:
View attachment 97422
And will produce output similar to this:
[Thu Sep 7 20:00:49 2023] new log entry

Hope that helps!

Hi, I'm using this to change screenshot filenames on Custom location to have Date on it. One problem I'm having is you're not supposed to have ":" in filename so by far I haven't succeeded in doing what I want. Can I ask if there's any way I can replace ":" in the Variable to dash "-" or anything else?

 

[Warmuptill]

I'm finally getting around to reporting this. Not a huge deal, but the docks are still being replicated on the other screen.
View attachment 99012
3x 1920x1080, side-by-side. The docks on the left screen are duplicates of where they are on the center screen. As before, mousing over either copy highlights both.

Thanks - I will try to reproduce it and have a look.

We have a church live stream that starts at 9:25am every Sunday. The problem is we would get busy with other setup tasks and not start the stream when we were supposed to, so we could miss a few minutes of the service. I then found Advanced Scene Switcher, which solved many of our problems. Fast forward to a couple of months ago and YouTube changed something that broke our web page which in turn broke this automation. I was able to get it to work but now we are using the Manage Broadcast functionality and we would really like to see a small expansion to the Streaming functionality. In the screen shot below, our automation is able to click on the Start Streaming button, but when we do that, the Manage Broadcast button changes to say Go Live! Would it be possible to have the ability to click the Go Live! button after the Start Streaming button is clicked within a running automation? I'm not sure how feature requests work here so let me know if it needs to be done somewhere else.

View attachment 99176

Last time I checked I don't think that was possible, unfortunately, as there was no API call to click the "Go Live!" button.
But I will try to check again if I find the time to.

Hi, I'm using this to change screenshot filenames on Custom location to have Date on it. One problem I'm having is you're not supposed to have ":" in filename so by far I haven't succeeded in doing what I want. Can I ask if there's any way I can replace ":" in the Variable to dash "-" or anything else?

Something like this should do the trick: