Game Capture only, not desktop

[tensemoments]

Hi!
New to OBS and the last time i streamed was yrs ago and bk then i was using windows and xsplit. there was a game capture option then, so that it only recorded the game i was tabbed into.
I can see by searching that this feature is not avail in OBS on Linux and that I need to use video capture instead?
However I cant figure out how to make it so it only captures the game Im tabbed into, is this not posible at all then? :s
I dont want it to show my desktop and webbrowsers etc if I need to tab out, is this posible?
Ty

 

[tensemoments]

Does anyone know how i stream my game only, and not the rest when i tab out pls? I cant figure it out, or is it just not posible on Linux?
Im thinking there must be some tips and tricks to it but im not finding it :s
Id like to stream but cant start till I figure this out :)

 

[AaronD]

That feature has some problems on Windows too, so I advise people to not use it even if it's available. Do it the old way instead, which is a loopback device that you explicitly know about.

A loopback can take several forms, but the common theme is that you use either the app's settings or the system settings to send its audio to a specific device, which the app always thinks is a physical speaker regardless of what it really is, and then you pick up that sound from something that is connected to that device. This could be a system loopback, which is already provided for every output with the term "Monitor" attached to it, or a more complicated one that you set up yourself.

The common way to do it on Linux is to add a "null" output device, and then use the system monitor of that as a Desktop source in OBS. Send your app's audio, alone, to that null device, and you're good. You just won't hear it in the speakers unless you also Monitor it in OBS.

A more involved way to do it, which is what I do because I have a LOT of audio processing anyway, is to use a DAW to do all of that processing, and set up a bridge device into the DAW for each category that I want to process differently. Connect each app to the appropriate bridge, which also acts like a speaker as far as the apps are concerned, just like a plain loopback does. The DAW does everything and drives both the speakers and OBS. OBS at that point is just a single unchanged passthrough.

(DAW = Digital Audio Workstation: essentially a complete sound studio, all in one app)