Question / Help Black Screen after a night of streaming

[power_user]

Here's the logs: https://hastebin.com/gomiqifuro

I have a stream running 24/7 showing a camera feed. Every morning, though, I find OBS with a black screen. The (YouTube) stream is running, but there are about 3 hours of blackness visible (complete blackness, no dark camera image) and I have to manually switch scenes back and forth in order for the image to reappear.

I have a theory that the camera I use does not capture dark environments very well. In the past when using another streaming software, the feed used to just stop and resume in the next morning, but OBS seems to stream a completely pitch black image instead.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Narcogen]

Guess I'm not clear what the question is?

If you've got a camera in a dark room and OBS is streaming... yeah, it'll stream a black screen until you click stop.

You can set an output timer so it will stop streaming after a certain amount of time.

 

[power_user]

Thanks for your reply.

It's not complete darkness when it's night. There is still some light. And it does not stop streaming, it streams a pitch black image after a while and never goes back to normal, even at day time. Only when switching scenes back and forth, it goes back to normal during the day.

Interestingly, this night I left an "offline" video running and the issue did not appear. So I guess it might be camera related.

 

[tj warner]

i guess no one knows how to fix a black screen problem

 

[power_user]

I would mostly be interested in how OBS handles a network camera that doesn't send any data anymore, because it appears to switch to a black screen as soon as there is not enough data sent and never switches back automatically.

 

[Narcogen]

I'd guess that's something handled by the camera driver. I do not think OBS includes any code to actively disconnect a device that stops sending data. The log will note if the application loses connection to a capture device, and that's not in your log. So as far as OBS is concerned, it is still connected. Even if OBS did have a routine to sense if a device was sending unuseful data (like a black screen) I assume it would also note this in a log when it does it.

 

[power_user]

The problem persists. I changed a lot of stuff in the camera, yet I get a black screen in the morning, even when the camera is sending data through "night vision". As soon as I change the scene, though, the image comes back.

So, as a workaround, I will try to write a python script for OBS that changes the scene at a certain time of day.
Can someone direct me to a good resource on the python API? I could not find anything helpful in the docs, e.g. how to I switch a scene in a script?

Thanks!