My suggestions and comments

[TFS]

Sorry, there is no tl;dr :(
Been using OBS for about a week or so. Great piece of software IF you run it on Windows 7.

I use it mostly for recording my old video games while I play them. Works fine on the laptop, but now it is time to move to the desktop and the 32" LCD TV. Desktop runs Vista 64 bit. Why does OBS require like 5 things to download to run on Vista? I am not even joking. I have literally downloaded 5 different things so far and it still won't run OBS from the.zip(or even run the installer).

When I installed on Windows 7, nothing was needed and fired up right away. Like I said, great software if you install on Windows 7.

Now, my first suggestion, actually check the damn OS version that the program is being installed on. Having to download the files needed to run on Vista wouldn't be so bad if it actually directed me to the versions of updates for my operating system. Right now, the OBS installer directs to 32bit Vista...Who even uses 32-bit that much anymore? Not saying no one does, but of the literally hundreds of friends I have made back in college and on Steam, no one I know uses a 32 bit OS since Vista came out, except on really old hardware. At least have the option when it says "Do you want to download the files needed?" so that I can open a link that takes me to the 64bit version of the needed file instead of the 32bit.

Second suggestion: stop using Windows and DirectX APIs. If this is "open" software and you have plans to have a MAC and Linux version, then why did you build on DX and Windows components? Makes no sense to me as a fellow programmer. The better route would have been OpenGL with open/free libraries such as SDL or something similar...not dx and dx10 of all the ones to choose >_>. More platforms are compatible with OpenGL than Direct X...phones, consoles, OSes, etc.

Third suggestion: I haven't tried the .zip standalone on my 32bit XP netbook yet, but the installer wouldn't even allow it to be installed on Windows XP. I know why as you require *shudder* dx10. Fine, I have dx10 on Windows XP. It's not that hard to do anymore. I don't game on the netbook, but the software for video capture that came with my card blows hard as it records at an insane uncompressed format which eats space extremely fast. Your software records in an awesome mp4 compressed format which is amazing ^_^. My suggestion is to have an experimental XP version installer. It can still require dx10. DX10 can be put on Windows XP now if you just google it these days.

Maybe you are working on some of these. Don't know as I just browsed the forums real quick and haven't looked at the source code yet. Keep up the work! It is a great piece of free software if you run it on Windows 7. I am just frustrated at some inconveniences with Vista :/ I do love OBS though ^_^


BTW, I could just be a giant moron. :P

 

[Krazy]

To your first point, there is plenty of information available on getting stuff ready for Vista with some simple searching. However, I agree that maybe there can be a guide thread stickied in the relevant forum section for extra clarity. Now, the reason there are several things needed to get Vista up to par is that OBS relies on certain features that were only added later via service packs and/or platform updates.

To your second point, the app relies heavily on Windows and DirectX APIs in order to maintain its high level of performance. There are EVENTUAL plans to rewrite the app so it will be at least Linux usable, but that is way down the road. For now, this is a Windows only app. Open Source doesn't mean "every OS must be able to use it"!

As for your third point, those DirectX 10 on XP hacks are never actually real DirectX 10, or at least don't have all the features of DX10 that OBS needs to make use of. There are exactly 0 plans by the current developer to ever get it working on XP. Since the project is open source, however, someone else is allowed, and possible even encouraged, to fork their own version that will work on XP.

Hope this clarifies some of your misunderstandings!

 

[Warchamp7]

As Krazy stated, OBS makes use of a lot of modern features of DirectX that simply don't exist on XP or older versions of Vista, as Microsoft uses it as leverage to get people to upgrade their OS.

On top of that, XP itself is extremely old at this point. Directly supporting Windows XP nowadays is like supporting windows 98 three years ago.

To almost every one of your points, the answer is: for performance. OBS runs extremely well and efficiently, as a result of the way it works and the modern DirectX features it uses.

 

[TFS]

I figured it did have to do with performance in some way. Thanks for the insight. It still is a great program even after I downloaded all the files needed for Vista.

 

[Sunforest]

The entire Windows Vista/7/8 desktop works with DirectX surfaces and when you ask the OS to capture those windows you get DirectX return values. Getting OpenGL to read DirectX data is not possible unless you're lucky enough to have a nVidia card that supports the interoperability extensions or want to waste a lot of CPU resources by copying the data from the GPU to system memory and back again. The extension isn't available on all nVidia cards and there is no AMD support at all. This basically means that if you want to capture anything that the user can see on their monitor in Windows you need to use DirectX.