How do you make macOS Screen Capture less clunky?

kenji_hayakawa

New Member
The macOS Screen Capture [mSC] is very clunky.

My environment is a MacBook Pro 2019 with Ventura OS. Basically, I want each mSC to capture a specific app - one for Adobe Acrobat, one for FireFox, one for TextEdit, and so forth, as shown below.

Screenshot 2023-08-10 at 00.15.35.png


On Windows, when I do the above using Window Capture [WC], each WC "remembers" the app and assigns the relevant source window every time the app and/or OBS is opened/closed. However, with mSC, this doesn't happen. Instead, each time I re-open the app and/or OBS, the mSC automatically assigns a random source that has no relation to the originally selected window/app.

Screenshot 2023-08-10 at 00.17.12.png


This happens even when I re-open the window with exactly the same name.

For example:
1. Open a pdf file called "P1" with Acrobat.
2. Open OBS, add a mSC [call it "Acrobat (PDF)"], select "Window Capture" and select "Adobe Acrobat - P1"
3. Close both Acrobat and OBS.
4. Re-open "P1" with Acrobat.
5. Re-open OBS.
6. The mSC "Acrobat (PDF)" no longer captures P1, but instead is reassigned to some random source (in the above screenshot, the Dock)

This means that every time I start a new stream, I have to re-assign all of my window captures in every scene, which is not only time-consuming but also creates an additional source of human error for the stream.

Is there a way to fix this? Basically, I'm looking for a solution that works just as well as the Windows' equivalent of this feature.
 

mishakim

Member
This is a design flaw in the new macOS Screen Capture source, when set to Window, it is tied to the exact window you picked, which does not exist the next time that app restarts, or even closes and respawns the same window. I raised it as a bug and was shot down that it was intended operation.

Instead, use the Deprecated -> Window Capture source, as it keeps track of the window you picked across restarts. Hopefully that stays around until the developers come to understand how users expect the feature to work.
 
Top