OBS School Edition

[dhoff]

I work at an old elementary school and brought their News Room to the modern age. For about a month, I had incorporated OBS into the setup, offering scenes, animation, music, and keying to the news show. (I hosted a private Zoom meet for the school and used OBS as a virtual webcam.)
Everyone loved it! It looked like a professional newscast run by children.
Although only in elementary school, the kids picked up the software quick and were able to navigate the scenes without issue, running the show like little pros.
However, the software was getting so popular the county had to do a risk assessment and deemed it unsafe for our digital ecosystem due to the potential to stream. Obviously our elementary students would not be setting up everything necessary to stream, however middle and highschoolers potentially could. And, if the software is available to us, it is available across county.

tldr; How feasible would it be to create a neutered version of OBS without streaming functions, just to use scenes and effects?
I apologize if this has been asked before. The FCPS staff and I would greatly appreciate any help getting our fun, creative news shows back!
Thank you ^^

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

A reply only as a user that has not needed/wanted to try this
See recent threads on folks compiling their own version of OBS Studio .. it is entirely possible...

However, if the concern is avoiding streaming, I'd be far more inclined to set up network firewall rules and block streaming traffic rather than create a fork of OBS Studio, which you then need to self-maintain (or go thru effort to recompile each new release you wish to implement). the amount of effort to block undesirable traffic at the OS firewall, or better yet at network layer, is bound to be FAR less effort or more robust (though granted, different IT teams involved)...

As an IT professional, with your requirements, this is a case where paying for licensed software that can be restricted as required for local organization security policy has a decent chance of being much cheaper in the long run vs creating custom software that requires ongoing self-maintenance (unless you have someone willing to volunteer to do the customize, compiling, and s/w maint) ... just my $0.02

Good luck