Thanks Lawrence. I think I've got it installed now successfully.
congrats
I'll heed your warning and not upgrade again - I stick with what works. My needs are not complex.
Not at all what you should take from my post.
What works today will stop working at some point, almost guaranteed (as I'll explain below).
OBS Studio if Free, Open-Source software (FOSS), which means the onus is on the user to do more due diligence. Users fail to do this regularly, to their peril. In the case of OBS Studio, you have to do your homework before upgrading, not that upgrading itself is the problem. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't be streaming from an unsupported, patched, secured Operating System (OS). And OS changes over time mean not updating applications, especially one that dives this deep into lower-level aspect of code to facilitate efficient screen captures, means you are more than likely going to HAVE to update OBS Studio over time.
Especially in smaller, HoW scenario, with volunteers, I'm all for 'don't fix what isn't broken' approach, but that doesn't mean 'not upgrade again'. that is NOT viable, you just need to plan accordingly. I have no need, and actually a strong bias towards NOT chasing latest app updates, if the changes don't impact me (and not security related threat I'm vulnerable to - and yes, that takes some expertise to evaluate/determine). However, getting to far behind is also its own problem. For example, a OS change means a plugin stops working, and you are on old version of plugin and OBS Studio ... but the fix is only in a more current plugin release, which has a requirement for recent OBS Studio... now you hare forced to rush a full OBS Studio environment upgrade (possibly Sun AM before service).
For OBS Studio, v28 was a big change, and I'd argue it was not well communicated. If one was 'in the know, following this forum or similar and BETA release discussions', then yes, but otherwise real easy to get caught out as you were (though you did have to ignore a warning when you upgraded). There are bound to be other future significant version changes as well, especially if the industry moves even further from x86 instruction set to ARM based. IF you have a streaming setup that works, I'd be inclined to say being a Full version or two behind is ok, but after that, the effort required for adequate oversight/mgmt of the environment (if it is going to remain stable/reliable, and available) is going to go up (no free lunch). Windows 10 support will end soon, meaning Win11 migrations for many. so one can defer maintenance for a certain amount of time, but as the old saying goes, 'pay me now, or pay me later' and later usually costing a LOT more .. take your pick
What would be nice is if there was a curated site that posted known current issues (there have been OS and video driver updates that have caused issues). Always nice to be forewarned vs tripping up right before a service broadcast. I follow these forums, so I haven't bothered to search to see if anyone maintains such a 'list'. The OBS Studio Release Notes cover new features and fixes, so always a good idea to review that with every release.
In your case, what I'd advise is somethign to similar to what I've done, which is to document the streaming environment and how to run it (for other volunteers). Then there is more detailed technical documentation of exactly what is installed and how it is configured, including plugins. In the 'keep-it-simple' approach, if one has limited number of plugins (I think I set up 2, maybe 3), then researching plugin updates _before_ doing an OBS Studio update gets relatively easy. With OBS Studio v28, it took days/weeks/months, but eventually plugin authors and/or the community would post concise instructions on upgrade path (and some bug releases of OBS Studio itself, which is normal). One simply needed to map out which plugins to update before OBS Studio, which ones to uninstall first, and those that needed to be disabled, but upgraded later, and those that wouldn't cause OBS Studio startup problems after upgrade, and those plugins then could be promptly updated afterwards. I'm sure the recent addition of an OBS Studio startup safe mode was driven in part for this very reason.
