Question / Help OBS Text Limit

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Fritti

New Member
According to everything I've read (going back to 2014), when adding text in OBS, there shouldn't be a character limit - either reading from a file or using the built-in text file box. However, this doesn't actually seem to be the case; based on what I'm seeing, the text cuts off at certain points and loops back to the start. For background as to why I need that much (or more) text, my thought was to include game patch notes as a scroll at the bottom of my stream for when whatever something I play regularly is updated so my viewers can see them.

Since I've tried to no avail to fix this (the positioning and scrolling is perfect, I'm not having any issues getting that working exactly how I want), I thought instead to finally ask for help. I have tried:

1. Using the built-in text file box
2. Reading from a file
3. Changing the font in the original document to the smallest possible and then adjusting within OBS
4. Opting to use the Custom Text Extents options both with and without Wrap (which actually ends up cropping even more of the total text I'm trying to have scroll)
5. Changing the font within OBS only, with the document at a "normal" text size. However, if I go for the smallest font (6) which gets me the most text, it is blurry to the point of illegibility even if I change the frame/window size for it. At 16pt, it's tolerable, although the bigger the font, the less text I get. Ideally, I'd like 20pt - I've tested multiple sizes through just recording and this is the easiest to read on the stream, to my eye - but also gets me the smallest amount of text. 16 is obviously slightly more but not as much as I need

Is there something I'm doing wrong or is there a soft cap based on font size? Any assistance would be appreciated. Thank you!
 
Fenrir

Fenrir

Forum Admin
As far as I'm aware, OBS doesn't have a limit on text. However, I think you might be confused on how the scroll filter works. The scroll filter will only scroll the texture of the source itself, it's not scrolling the text. A workaround for this would be to add all of your text to a text source (so that the bounding box is very large, possibly too large to fit on the screen all at once) and then crop it down (alt+drag the red bounding box so that it turns green to show it's cropping). This will scroll the entire text, and allow you to use as much as you want.

If this doesn't make sense, let me know and I can try to explain better.
 
R

Renderclips

New Member
Fenrir said:
As far as I'm aware, OBS doesn't have a limit on text. However, I think you might be confused on how the scroll filter works. The scroll filter will only scroll the texture of the source itself, it's not scrolling the text. A workaround for this would be to add all of your text to a text source (so that the bounding box is very large, possibly too large to fit on the screen all at once) and then crop it down (alt+drag the red bounding box so that it turns green to show it's cropping). This will scroll the entire text, and allow you to use as much as you want.

If this doesn't make sense, let me know and I can try to explain better.
Click to expand...

Actually I was able to get approx 2400 chars that looked fine.
Thanks
 
S

Se7enth Sol

New Member
I just had that problem too! I found a work around though. All you have to do is create a word doc with your credits, black background with white text (or really anything you want as long as its a solid color). Add some space in the beginning so you can start on a blank spot then add the scroll filter. I imagine as it gets longer the file will be larger and therefore have worse quality.
 
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andrzejmarek

New Member
Please, explain better :) I'm beginner. I want to see a long texte scrolling but it 's not possible :( After some lines it disapears . What I must do on PC or on Mac
Fenrir said:
As far as I'm aware, OBS doesn't have a limit on text. However, I think you might be confused on how the scroll filter works. The scroll filter will only scroll the texture of the source itself, it's not scrolling the text. A workaround for this would be to add all of your text to a text source (so that the bounding box is very large, possibly too large to fit on the screen all at once) and then crop it down (alt+drag the red bounding box so that it turns green to show it's cropping). This will scroll the entire text, and allow you to use as much as you want.

If this doesn't make sense, let me know and I can try to explain better.
Click to expand...
 
D

dominateeye

New Member
@Fenrir I know this is an old post, but can you please explain in more detail? I have a long bit of text I want to display with scrolling and I can't find a solution that will display all of the text, have it scroll, and have it at a good font size that doesn't need to be enlarged. Many forum threads have been posted about this problem, but none have a clear answer.
 
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boussyboo

New Member
dominateeye said:
@Fenrir I know this is an old post, but can you please explain in more detail? I have a long bit of text I want to display with scrolling and I can't find a solution that will display all of the text, have it scroll, and have it at a good font size that doesn't need to be enlarged. Many forum threads have been posted about this problem, but none have a clear answer.
Click to expand...
i was having this problem - really long amount of text scrolling happily,. then it wasn't

i copied the text, deleted the scrolling text, and started again (copying location, size etc)

working fine again now.....weir!
 
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boussyboo

New Member
Tre72bor said:
i dont see the scroll option or filter on my OBS how do i activate it
Click to expand...
i've just redone one for myself so:

- in your scene add a source "Text (GDI+)"
- c"reate new" and rename it etc
- add your text, change font size etc and select ok (it then appears on your screen)
- right click on the newly added source and select filters (at the bottom of the options)
- select "+" (bottom left of the pop up window) and select scroll - you can rename this here as well if you choose to
- you can then change the speed (left to right or vertical etc)

i use verdana (easiest to read screen font when i did some research and size 72 font). horizontal scroll speed i use is 180

you can move it around/change size and so on

if you want to be exact, right click on the source (on the screen) and then select transform - in this pop up you can accurately set location on the screen etc

for my purpose i have two near identical scenes, with a different set of text on either scene. I've set it exactly the same location/size so when i change scene the text changes, but the reset looks the same. using the transform option makes this part easy - be careful if you duplicate the scene and add the same source (but want different text on different scenes as I do) as changing the text in one source changes it every time that is used...helpful if you want the same text, not so great if you don't.

that should be it...hope this helps - i'm somewhere beyond a newbie...and an awful long way from accomplished, but i learn what i need to in order to make it do what i want it to do

andy b
 
X

xon

New Member
Just wondering if you guys found a decent workaround for the problem with the build in scroll filter character limitation? I tried everything mentioned above but without luck. It's just cut off after a certain amount of characters.

Any help is welcome!
 
4

4thgenrobot

New Member
So I just did a bit of fiddling and it looks like while there may be no character limit (or if there is, it's quite a lot) but there IS a vertical size limit. For instance, I can fit 310 lines of text at a font size of 55 but was able to fit all 380 in at a font size of 32. So you can probably use some math wizardry to figure out the best font size to suit your needs. A lengthy credits document, for example (using Patreon donors or what have you) could be difficult.

I was trying to scroll a short story and ran into that limit over the course of my stream. My own damn issue for not checking it first :P.

Anyway, I hope that helps!

-4GR
 
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PCCSF

New Member
I know this is old but I think I figured out the original poster's issue. If you do NOT set a specific font size and let the system do it's default font sizing, the limitation is pretty small because the default text size is 256! for a 1920x1080 output, 70 ish still gives a pretty crisp text image so you can probably get a lot more text in and the spaces at the top to keep it from showing at the start.
 
Keith Schneider

Keith Schneider

New Member
My discovery is that 2050 characters is the limit in OBS Freetype TEXT SOURCE - at least, in my application. I cannot figure out how/why 2050 is a limit but 1 character over 2050 and it fails (the rendering goes nuts and super tiny and fiddling with transforms makes no sense etc).

I have been wanting to make a scrolling chyron - a news headline scroller - basically just like seen on TV news media.

I have been working on a lua script to load a line of LONG text into an OBS TEXT (freetype) source at time intervals. While trying to set this up, I discovered the 2050 threshold/limit. I cannot make this work perfectly without getting a signal from the filter to tell me (it reaches the end of a line) to load the next line so I try it with a timer tuned to fit the length of the line of text at some given speed. I am pretty successful with lines of around 2400 characters and a font Bitstream of size 28. If I go one character over 2050, it all breaks. I settled in on 2400 to leave some margin. At a speed of 75 (whatever the heck 75 means!?!?!?!?!?! - I have looked and looked) it takes about 380 seconds to scroll a 2400 char line so at that interval, I load the next line.

All in all, I have a lua script with a php helper script (to scrape web headlines) that supports the chyron scrolling text source and it's working rather well and nearly all automatic. Settings I use are not at all complicated etc. At each timer interval (about 6m20s), the text still jumps a bit when the new text appears but otherwise its reasonably acceptable. I have studied the scroll.c source code and other aspects of OBS and at this time, think I am working within the limits of the software as it exists today.

If anyone wants the lua script etc. message me. I may put this stuff up at github and register the script as an extension if it seems useful for others.
 
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