Question / Help Disadvantages of using OBS Studio on a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) ?

[HowlRound Theatre Commons]

What are the disadvantages, if any, of using OBS Studio (24.0.6) on a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) that's running MacOS 10.15 (Catalina)— compared to an equally spec'd Windows laptop?

I believe one disadvantage is the lack of ease in using "desktop" audio on a Mac, if, for example, you wanted to use Spotify audio, or Zoom audio as an audio source in OBS Studio? And another disadvantage, I believe, is not having access to some popular OBS Studio plugins such "Virtual Cam"? And needing to use a bunch of dongles because of the lack of native ports such as Ethernet, USB Type A, etc.

What other disadvantages can you think of?

 

[Harold]

There are also thermal issues and other performance issues compared to computers built by Lenovo, Dell and HP with similar processors in them.

Not to mention the difference in cost.

 

[Narcogen]

1. No game capture on MacOS version of OBS. Only display and window capture are available, and window capture is not particularly performant.
2. No native support for certain Elgato capture devices-- you need to use their software, or use OBS Link to create an NDI feed and capture that. (HD60S).
3. No access to the best in class NVENC hardware encoder; MacOS does have hardware encoding capabilities that it can use on Intel CPUs or AMD GPUs, but these are not as good as NVENC.
4. Fewer available plugins. Some plugins for OBS are not available on MacOS. VirtualCam is one of these. StreamFX is another.
5. Third party software is required for desktop audio capture on MacOS. While some 3rd party software is very useful to have on Windows for managing audio (Voicemeeter) it is optional, not required. (Another note: The best in class software for this purpose on MacOS is not free, but I think it does what Voicemeeter does and more, and is well worth the purchase if you go with MacOS. It's LoopBack by Rogue Amoeba).
6. Scaling is often required. Some Mac laptops and desktops (particularly iMacs) come with high pixel count displays compared to their GPU horsepower. Best practice in OBS is usually to capture the display's native resolution, but Mac GPUs may struggle to run their display, the OBS frames, and the OBS preview.
7. In Studio mode, the frame rate OBS runs at is reduced when the preview window is visible. This does not affect the Multiview window. This does not affect the default hot switching mode.
8. Reduced performance. In my experience, for a variety of reasons, OBS functions less well on the same hardware running MacOS as compared to Windows 10, in addition to the reduced functionality.