Question / Help Select Application - can this be set to not change?

[frammelpie]

Hey all,

I'm wondering if there is some way to force the 'Select Application' field to always look at the game/program that you select, rather than dynamically changing to whatever is active at the time. That dynamic change is wonky and it's pretty much a crapshoot if starting the stream in any particular game is going to actually be broadcasting the game, or have something else in Windows selected.

Maybe I'm just not setting it up optimally but all I have is one source called 'basic game' and I only stream the content from that one source, pretty simple setup. But considering that I have to verify that it's got my game selected nearly every time by going into the properties of it and checking what it's focused on anyway, it seems less of a hassle to deal with the drawbacks of forcing it to only look at one app (if there are any). I'd actually be doing less by only having to switch the broadcasted game in the source properties and know that it's working rather than have to check every time I start the stream up.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[dodgepong]

From my experience, the game selected in that window does not change unless you open the game source while the game it was trying to capture before is no longer running.

Another solution would be to use the hotkey method, where you select the game you want to capture and press the hotkey to start capturing whatever game currently has focus.

 

[frammelpie]

Hi dodgepong,

That's pretty much what I do, is I start it using a hotkey during gameplay.
1. Start OBS
2. Update my dashboard at Twitch if need be, and close that out
3. Start the game
4. Start the stream with the hotkey

Having watched my own stream from another PC, sometimes this works, sometimes it just shows a black screen. It's those times that it shows a black screen where it has something from OBS selected as the focus, or maybe another window or... really whatever. It seems to randomly decide on what it's going to stream from.

So what I'm hearing is, that's not really normal?

 

[dodgepong]

Sorry, I meant game capture using a hotkey, not starting the stream using a hotkey. In the game capture options, you can set a hotkey instead of selecting the game. Then, once you're in the game you want to capture, you hit the hotkey to start capturing.

What game are you capturing?

 

[frammelpie]

Pretty much anything I'm feeling up to at the time, such as Project 1999 EQ, Amnesia A Machine For Pigs, Warframe, others... so far everything works except for RAGE, which crashes when I try to stream, but I looked into that and it's due to some incompatibility with ATI cards.

Anyway, I didn't know you could do that. So setting that hotkey will stop it from dynamically trying to home in on the selected application, and instead start streaming whatever you are focused on at the time?

That may work. Thanks for that tip.