School news Program

[misterbreon]

Hi! During our school news program, we have a picture-in-picture setup, but I want the inset photos to be hosted online and I want them to be changed on another machine other than the one running OBS. So while the announcer is reading the news stories, another student is 'flipping' through images that relate to the stories. I don't want this job to fall to the student running OBS, as I want them focused on the audio and camera feeds.

Is there a way to do this?

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Can you? yes, definitely. BUT... with training, OBS operator should probably be able to handle this [for my environment, OBS operator handles PTZ camera, audio, and slide show on a dual-screen setup.. intimidating at first, but easy enough to get a handle on]... then again.. minimally trained (or easily distracted) youngsters... I get keeping it simple

My inclination would be just that.. keep it simple. Have the slide show on the OBS PC. Then setup something like stream deck, or similar, to act as an external to PC mouse/keyboard trigger to slide show changes... presuming all you need is simple back/forward??
Something like this could also be setup using websockets and a remote device (mobile device, PC, etc)

The next approach would be to run slide show on another device and send that top OBS PC. Again, multiple options, I'm sure there are other options, but the ones that come quickly to mind is
- Slide Show device (PC, tablet, mobile?) configured to output NDI, and OBS set for NDI input (or other streaming protocol). Personally I use NDI PTZ camera, but vendor has a Virtual USB driver so I don't have to deal with any of the NDI -OBS integration issues. There are other protocols that would work fine. But for future operations, if there is the technical expertise to use NDI, I'd probably go that route *if* the network transmit approach is selected (as future cameras and other tech likely to use NDI or similar low-latency, good fidelity, protocol).
- OBS PC could be configured to show a web page image (which has pictures), and that web page controlled remotely (innumerous ways to do that). However, this would be a lower-resolution rendering, I'd think so not something I'd pursue (but might be something already available?)
- Slide Show device (PC, tablet, mobile?) configured to output HDMI, and OBS setup with HDMI capture device

I hope this helps and gives you something to think about.
As students get more familiar/comfortable with OBS, single student operation should be doable, hence my personally liking (at first glance) the keeping all on OBS PC, and simply enabling remote control of the slide show

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Another option, if/when sophistication level increases
- there are ways to send/receive commands between PowerPoint and OBS Studio.
For example, you could have settings in the PowerPoint slide show file that sends WebSocket commands to OBS Studio (change Scenes, etc)
I've read recently of someone using 3rd party plugin Advanced Scene Switcher (AdvSS) to look for a color bar in the slide (cropped out of the composite preview screen, but which AdvSS can see, and use that color 'signal' to automate actions in OBS Studio

The flip is also true (though interesting/challenging with modern MS Office security paradigm vs 'old days') and send commands from OBS Studio to PPT to advance slide (whether this would be of interest probably depends on OBS Studio Scene setup.. ie if Scenes are essentially sequenced)