OBS Built-in sound indicator when going live or recording?

ItsYESfahad

New Member
Indicator examples:
1- Clear sound when pressing Start/Stop. "Optional can be toggled on/off"
2- Red dot icon on screen overlay "Won't be visible on your video or live stream", "Optional can be toggled on/off"

I am so surprised this is not a thing in OBS it's super useful, This is the only reason I don't use shortcuts for recording or going live anymore I don't trust it I don't want to spend 2 ~ 4 hours playing, and then find out that I wasn't recording! This happened to me a lot this should be a standard function.

Thank you OBS team . . . <3
 

ItsYESfahad

New Member
Few months later and nobody cares this is the most obvious feature that should have been implemented since day 1 obviously like back in 2012 lmao.
 

AaronD

Active Member
You might use the Advanced Scene Switcher to do something outside of OBS:
1690492799099.png

If that's the only time that program ever runs, then you know the macro ran, and if that's the only thing that triggers the macro...

There's lots of other things that Adv. SS can do too. Poke around and see what you find. If you're okay with just a notification in the corner like all the other apps do, then Adv. SS can do that by itself.

Another common idea (for me anyway) is to have the macro do the action itself, that you're thinking of as a trigger. Trigger the macro by something else, that doesn't do anything except the macro, and then you can have it appear to respond *before* the thing that you presently want it to respond to. For the example here, you could put a dot on the screen or whatever the external program does, and *then* start recording, all from the same trigger...which is not OBS's native record button.
 

ItsYESfahad

New Member
You might use the Advanced Scene Switcher to do something outside of OBS:
View attachment 96202
If that's the only time that program ever runs, then you know the macro ran, and if that's the only thing that triggers the macro...

There's lots of other things that Adv. SS can do too. Poke around and see what you find. If you're okay with just a notification in the corner like all the other apps do, then Adv. SS can do that by itself.

Another common idea (for me anyway) is to have the macro do the action itself, that you're thinking of as a trigger. Trigger the macro by something else, that doesn't do anything except the macro, and then you can have it appear to respond *before* the thing that you presently want it to respond to. For the example here, you could put a dot on the screen or whatever the external program does, and *then* start recording, all from the same trigger...which is not OBS's native record button.
I appreciate the time and effort for making this post but man this makes it even worse does it have to be that complicated for a very important & simple function like this?
 

AaronD

Active Member
I appreciate the time and effort for making this post but man this makes it even worse does it have to be that complicated for a very important & simple function like this?
It's just a matter of how much effort you're willing to put into it to make it do what you want. The more serious you are, the more technical you'll be, and the more you'll manage it explicitly for your specific rig.

I have a couple of rigs myself that have their own external documentation just to keep everything straight. It's much easier to read the docs than to figure out all over again what <this weird collection of settings> is supposed to do. And every once in a while, I still verify that the docs and the settings match.
 

KillStorm

New Member
I agree with you, it's a problem when playing in full screen and VR.
What I did and which works quite well:
1. in OBS > File > Settings > HotKeys set the key Caps for Start Recording and Stop Recording. Now the CAPS LOCK light will turn on/off when you start/stop recording.
2. If you are in VR and you don't want to take off the headset just to see if the recording has started, go to Win 11 Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard > Toggle keys. Windows will play a sound every time you press the key
 

codeWiz

New Member
To get an alert when my disk is full or I accidentally hit a hot key, I downloaded an "old car horn.mp3" from Pixabay and set the advanced scene switcher to execute it when recording stops or pauses.

works fine.

I would probably use a film projector or an air horn for "recording starts".
 

codeWiz

New Member
"<path to media player>\wmplayer" "<path to sound file>"
(the quotes are important, as the path at least to wmplayer contains blanks!)
starts the windows media player. Of course it does.

At least I can configure which player to use, so the playlist on my default player does not get erased.
If you are happy using your default media player, you can just use "<path to sound file>".
 

StefenTower

Member
... but how can I play the sound without starting a media player?

Judging from this VBScript solution, wmplayer <soundfilepath> should word.
I found a simple .wav player that works well for this purpose. It's a fast-loading .exe and runs in the background until complete.
I downloaded a couple free .mp3 files from Pixabay for this purpose, and quickly converted them to .wav using Audacity for use with this player.

It would be nice to have start/stop sounds built into OBS, but the Advanced Scene Switcher solution truly is a straightforward one.
 
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