Question / Help Easy way to go to next scene?

Micah G

New Member
Hello, first post on here. I am a pastor who has begun using OBS Studio to stream services during our Coronavirus closure. We previously just used Facebook Live with a single camera and no graphics, but I'd like to train my video people to use OBS in the future because multiple sources and graphics are really helpful for people watching from home (lots of senior members on Facebook when they can't go out).

My question to you all (probably answered elsewhere but I couldn't find it) is if there is a way to bind a hotkey to go to the NEXT scene whether or not the OBS window is in focus. I know you can bind hotkeys to specific scenes for that use, but I really need a very simple next scene solution so that our setup can be operated by people who aren't tech experts.

I have been using the regular mode of OBS Studio and keeping the focus in the scene list view, then pressing the down key to move through the many scenes that I have set up with camera views & lower-third graphics, media sources, and display capture sources for the various parts of the service. This has worked fine for me for the most part because I am usually doing the service while sitting at the computer; however, I did something different yesterday that required me to switch focus to a different window to run a slide show while walking around, and it made advancing to the next scene a disaster (projector remote sent Page Down command and jumped OBS to last scene because I couldn't just leave the focus on my Chromium window with the slides the whole time, which then meant I had to go back to obs and click on the right scene).

Sorry for the overly long description - I just want to make our setup as easy as possible to use. FWIW, I am currently running the unstable version 25.04 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (unable to stream with stable version), though I would be a huge fan of any solution that would work on our regular stream computer, a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 server running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS that may not be able to handle any further OS upgrades due to its weird BIOS. It's performed admirably with single-camera stream on Facebook, but I know it's on borrowed time and won't be upset when it finally isn't the right tool for the job.

Thanks for your help!
 

Brotuulaan

New Member
I'm not sure of the best solution, but there's one solution with Advanced Scene Switcher (really easy to install) that could be workable enough for your needs until you found a better one.


The fourth tab in the settings is for scene sequences. It lets you set up a sequence of scene switches based on time, togglable via a hotkey.

The basic process would be to set up each of your scenes in that tab to switch to the next scene, then treat your preferred hotkey as an auto on/off toggle. You'd need to tweak the time so it transitions quickly when you want it but not right away so you can turn it off again once it's transitioned successfully. Maybe setting transition time for each scene to something like 1 second would be good to start, so you'd basically be doing a slow double-tap each time you want to switch (one tap to start the transition timer, one tap to stop it after transition).

It might get tedious setting it up if you've got a laundry list of scenes, but I'm going to guess that's not the case. Each scene transition should take only a few seconds to set up since you'd just need to change the start and end scene for each transition once you have your time figured out.

Btw, I'm an associate pastor in Arkansas. Welcome aboard the OBS train!
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
+1
Our House of Worship stream heavily uses Advanced Scene Switcher. As we pre-record a number of videos (Prelude, Hymns, Readings, etc), I use the relatively new Media tab that auto switches to next scene when a video ends
- As you have to start streaming in advance of 'FB's go live (scheduled) time', I got author of tool to add Start Recording on a specific scene
- Note: recommend using FB Scheduled Live so non FB users can also watch
so I use the Time tab to change to specific scene, start recording, and Go Live time
- I then use Sequence Tab at end to time Join us for virtual coffee hour (leave up for 10-15 seconds), and music copyright slide (2 seconds) then auto end stream and recording

I'm over 25 scenes at this point. The only thing missing is being able to change PowerPoint slide with scene change ... oh well (new MS Office versions security controls make it really complicated to script)
 
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