Question / Help Question about Plugins, Scripts, etc - for displaying specific game info on my stream

Trouble

New Member
I have no idea if this is the appropriate place for this inquiry, but here goes my question...

I'm very, very, very new to using OBS... and only very, very new to the whole streaming thing altogether. I bought an Elgato HD60 capture card, and was using the streaming program that it said to download off their site. It was really awesome, except that I know nothing about any of this, didn't know that streaming and such was (or could be) so hard on the CPU, and didn't know lots of other things as well, but anyways... I could never stream my game - Rock Band 3 on my 360 - AND use my webcam at the same time. Apparently the program didn't think my laptop could handle it. And maybe....it shouldn't be handling it, but with OSB, it DOES handle it... and with tweaking some settings and whatnot, it actually looks pretty good...to me, and the people who were watching (being my guinea pigs for my trial/error run of fiddling with OBS and such). So I see there's all these plugins, scripts, tools, etc... And my question is this:

Does there exist a plugin, or script, or some sort of doo-dad that would display the information (song name and artist name) of the song I'm currently playing in RB3 on my stream? I see these different plugins and such that display music info and whatnot, but I don't imagine those are for the purpose I'm looking for? If this plugin exists... could someone show me where? :) And if it doesn't exist, is it possible that this sort of plugin could be made, or no? If not, why not?

Anywho... thanks for any help, advice, suggestions, answers, anything else...in advance! :D And thank you to anyone/everyone for this OBS.... it's been awesome! A world of a difference compared to the program I was using before. I love the Elgato capture card I use...but not so much love for the program on their site. Lol.
 

c3r1c3

Member
1. The reason you can't use your elgato and webcam at the same time isn't CPU usage so much as USB bandwidth & interrupt overload.

2. If you think the elgato rocks, wait until you get real/proper capture card. You'll be in heaven.

3. As to RB3 syncing with an external server/service, the game doesn't put out that info into any known form for you or a 3rd party service to grab (and consequently use in OBS).

4. if you're good with web programming you could use NodeCG and enter your song info into a database with an interface to recall said info and display it in OBS, but it wouldn't be automated. You'll have to tell NodeCG to bring up the graphic for each song, OR enter the lengths of the songs in and build a playlist that NodeCG would display.
 

Trouble

New Member
1. The reason you can't use your elgato and webcam at the same time isn't CPU usage so much as USB bandwidth & interrupt overload.

2. If you think the elgato rocks, wait until you get real/proper capture card. You'll be in heaven.

3. As to RB3 syncing with an external server/service, the game doesn't put out that info into any known form for you or a 3rd party service to grab (and consequently use in OBS).

4. if you're good with web programming you could use NodeCG and enter your song info into a database with an interface to recall said info and display it in OBS, but it wouldn't be automated. You'll have to tell NodeCG to bring up the graphic for each song, OR enter the lengths of the songs in and build a playlist that NodeCG would display.

What do you mean.....real/proper capture card?? What are the real ones?! I must know! :O Lol. I was told by many sources across different forums and just different people and whatnot, that Elgato was really good. I would've gotten the next one up from the Elgato HD60 (I think it's either the HD60 S, or the HD60 Pro, I dunno) but it said it required a 3.0 USB and I wasn't sure I had that or not (turn out I do though, didn't find that out until the day before my capture card arrived in the mail). So, what capture cards are the real deal?

As for the RB3 and displaying info and such... I kind of figured that this might sorta be the case, that there wasn't going to be any way for any sort of program or for OBS to find out from RB3 which song it is I'm playing. However... each song (maybe except for disc songs, I suppose) does have it's own file within my 360's hard drive, or within the USB drive that's also plugged into my 360 with more songs on it... there isn't any way for a program, plugin or anything to somehow....scan or check or read those files and know which one is being played currently, as I'm playing it? Or at least knowing which one I select within the song library screen? As I said, I know nothing about any of this... so all I can do is speculate about how such things work. Lol. I still haven't really figured out which plugins, scripts, tools, etc. would be good for me and my streaming. Right now it's just...basic. My game (rb3), with me rocking out on my guitar, in the corner of the screen on Twitch. Lol.
 

c3r1c3

Member
1. USB 3 capture cards are MUCH better then 2.0 cards.

2. Elgatos are actually decent capture devices if you only use their software. The moment you try to use anything else with them you run into weird issues. Most of this is because of their drivers, and partially them being on a USB 2.0 interface.

3. Mac+Elgato is a very poor combo when going outside of their software because they don't export the proper modern OSX avcapture interface. So you have to use Window capture or display capture. Window capture is horrible on OSX (thanks Apple!), and display capture tends to get bogged down (esp. with Intel GPUs).

4. What would be better? Well that depends....

Avermedia on USB 3.0 is pretty good.
Most PCIe capture cards are good (BMD and Avermedia are my usual recommendations, but Magewell I hear good things about). Mircomsoft is good if you need to capture old-school analog consoles.
For Thunderbolt, it's pretty much BMD or bust.
 

Trouble

New Member
Yeah, I've noticed that it's taken a lot of fiddling with of OBS to make everything seem...'right', I guess as to how I want it. And sometimes I'll do something in the OBS settings, and yet it seems sometimes like those settings don't stick... or just don't want to work or something, and then I look at the driver settings or whatever Elgato settings (when I click Configure next to where it says Elgato-blahblahblah, for Sources)...and those settings don't sometimes match up with what I set in OBS - I found that trying to set the FPS was the most difficult with this. Elgato wanted my FPS to be one thing, and OBS wanted it to be another... and ...grrrr, to say the least. Lol. But I've managed to make it work for now. :) Now I'm just having trouble getting my stream and webcam to not be so choppy looking when I'm playing really intense parts in RB3 with lots of notes. Seems whenever there's a lot moving around in the game and/or on the webcam - like when my dog decides to show up and make her presence known on the webcam, lol - everything gets a choppy and not as clear. But if I'm sitting in the Song Library screen and not much is going on... the image, for my game and for the webcam, are crystal clear. And, having basically no knowledge or experience with any of this, I've been finding it to be a lot of trial and error... lol.
 
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