OBS Notification System [Feature Request]

kodec · May 12, 2017

OBS is great, when the program registers to start a recording.

I often find myself pressing my hotkey to start a recording and find that, after an hour or two of work, OBS never registered and started my recording. If anything this is a major bottleneck to a program that is meant to record.

Why does such a great program lack visual notifications about starting and stopping recordings?

I've read that when OBS fails OBS plays an error sound. That's good, but far from a solution to this problem.

I've recorded a screencast of an example of how OBS should be doing notifications.

Notification System needs:
Ability to either display an on-screen notification message (shown in the video above) or play a customizable sound on recording/streaming START and STOP.
Ability to show visual notification OR playback a customizable audio notification when switching between scenes (shown in the video above).

If anyone is interested in the AHK script i used for this, feel free to grab it here:
edit:: i cant post my link, the system thinks it's spam, i've contacted staff. (in the meantime, see the description of the youtube video for link to script).
I've included both the AHK script and the compiled version, make sure to read the info.txt first.

Older threads:
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/taskbar-recording-notification.8761/
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/notification-when-start-record.21415/

kodec · May 16, 2017

So i thought i recorded again, and lost 3 hours of material because of the lack of notifications.

What are your guys methods to make sure that you are recording?
Constantly watching to make sure that OBS is recording detaches from my focus and is very distracting. Recording 'should just work', no?

Is it possible to have OBS AUTO-record on startup?
I'll be looking into a way to automate OBS on startup to do so if its not possible native.

@the bug tracker
https://obsproject.com/mantis/view.php?id=700

idg · Oct 11, 2017

Sadly there is no native way to do, my work around for auto record currently is to create a shortcut in the start menu startup folder to start OBS on boot, then use Auto hotkey to create a script that runs on boot to press a hotkey, eg, I've set my OBS to start the record buffer when pressing F11, the script will then check to make sure OBS is running and if it is it will press F11. So far its been working fine. This is script ive been using:

Code:

DetectHiddenWindows, on
WinWait,ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon
controlSend,,{F11},ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon
return

davesf · Feb 13, 2019

I've run into this problem also..... especially using "replay buffer" retroactive clip hotkey (rather than continuous recording).

My workaround is to use a separate program to watch the OBS output folder, and show a desktop notification when a new file appears. This at least gives me some visual notification that my instant clip hotkey did something.

The program I'm using right now is "Watch 4 Folder 2.5"... it's visually very clunky looking, but it works, and it's free.

http://leelusoft.blogspot.com/p/watch-4-folder-25.html

iSkilz · Sep 26, 2020

Here's my solution to the problem. I make it beep (high) when I start recording, and beep (low) when I stop recording.
It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing!

Code:

;{█████████████████████ OBS ██████████████████████

    #if
        NumpadDiv::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if WinExist("ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon") {
                soundbeep(800)
                sendpress("^{F6}", 40)
            } else send /
            return
        NumpadMult::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if WinExist("ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon") {
                soundbeep(600)
            } else send *
            return

    ;}███████████████████████████████████████████████

    soundbeep(frequency:=523, volume:=35) {
        soundget current_volume
        soundset % volume
        soundbeep % frequency
        sleep 150
        soundset current_volume
    }
    sendpress(keys, duration:=40) {
        SendMode Event
        SetKeyDelay, , % duration
        send % keys
    }

ps. in the example above, I'm using Ctrl+F6 as my OBS hotkey to start recording, but in AHK, I'm actually using the numpad-divide key to create a little beep before it then pushes the hotkey for OBS to start recording.

iSkilz · Oct 4, 2020

*yawn*

Here's the final code that I use for OBS. It's a bit more complicated, but it might be worth a look.

Code:

;{█████████████████████ OBS ██████████████████████

    #if
        NumpadDiv::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if not WinActive("Calculator") AND WinExist("ahk_exe obs64.exe") {
                if not (started_recording) {
                    soundbeep(800)
                    sendpress("^{F6}", 40)
                    started_recording := A_TickCount
                }
            } else send /
            return
        NumpadMult::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if not WinActive("Calculator") AND WinExist("ahk_exe obs64.exe") {
                if (started_recording) {
                    elapsed_time_recording := A_TickCount - started_recording
                    if (elapsed_time_recording > 200) {
                        started_recording := 0
                        soundbeep(600)
                    }
                }
            } else send *
            return

    ;}███████████████████████████████████████████████

    soundbeep(frequency:=523, volume:=35) {
        soundget current_volume
        soundset % volume
        soundbeep % frequency
        sleep 150
        soundset current_volume
    }
    sendpress(keys, duration:=40) {
        SendMode Event
        SetKeyDelay, , % duration
        send % keys
    }

changes include:

it now requires a 200ms delay to produce a notification for stopping after starting recording. This is because that is approximately how long it takes to stop recording after starting.
the mult and div keys now always work in the windows calc app, regardless of whether OBS is running or not.
the OBS title name has been changed to something that is less commonly used.

DmitriySalnikov · Jan 12, 2022

If there are still those who are interested in notifications from OBS on Windows, then I can suggest you my OBS Notifier application.
It uses obs-websocket 4.9.1, and there is also a modified version of it with replay support.

Download: https://dmitriysalnikov.itch.io/obs-notifier

probablypablito · Apr 11, 2023

DimOkGamer said:
If there are still those who are interested in notifications from OBS on Windows, then I can suggest you my OBS Notifier application.
It uses obs-websocket 4.9.1, and there is also a modified version of it with replay support.

Download: https://dmitriysalnikov.itch.io/obs-notifier

View attachment 78991

Thank you! Is there a way to make it display over fullscreen applications like Nvidia does it?

DmitriySalnikov · Apr 13, 2023

probablypablito said:
Thank you! Is there a way to make it display over fullscreen applications like Nvidia does it?

I know for sure that it is possible to display such notifications on top of borderless windows and they can be made "transparent" for clicks. But there is one problem with such notifications - anti-cheats.
If I got a paid signature for the application, it probably wouldn't be a big problem, but I don't have such a signature. And all anti-cheats for "transparent" windows will simply ban users.
The same situation if I try to integrate into the rendering process in full-screen mode.
If I'm wrong, then please correct me.

I myself would really like these notifications to be displayed in full-screen mode. If someone knows a different way of rendering so that no one is definitely banned, then I would definitely use it.

OBS Notification System [Feature Request]

kodec

New Member

kodec

New Member

idg

New Member

davesf

New Member

iSkilz

New Member

iSkilz

New Member

DmitriySalnikov

New Member

probablypablito

New Member

DmitriySalnikov

New Member