[Suggestion] Follow current active window

[xavizus]

Hi developers of OBS!
First of all, I want to thank you for your wonderful work with OBS! I really like how easy it is to get started and stream in quality.
And secondly I want to apologize if my English ain't perfect, this is not my native language and hope you have indulgence for this.

As I tried to search for similar request for my suggestion of function, I could not find any suggestions like mine (or that I am just a bad searcher).

Anyways, what I would like to suggest to you are to implant the following function:
To be able to record the current active window and automatically change window when the active window changes , without needing to set up multiple "windows captures" or "game captures".

For example:
If I currently write in Notepad++ and switch to Adobe Dreamweaver, then OBS should automatically change to Adobe Dreamweaver and then if I change again, to Chrome, OBS should change it's screen to Chrome.

I hope you understand this concept if not, I will try my best to explain it better!

Lastly I would like to wish you and the development team a happy new year!

Sincerely
Xavizus

 

[Lain]

I think I see what you're saying, and I agree it needs a better solution. I'll see what I can do in the future about it, though I might not be able to get to it right away. I definitely will get this in at some point though, thank you very much for the suggestion.

 

[xavizus]

I thank you for your reply!
I do understand that this ain't easy to fix right away, and this is a suggestion not a request :)

 

[dodgepong]

There are some quirks to implementing this as-described, in my mind. First, all windows have different sizes and aspect ratios, so ever time you change active window, it would change the source size in the OBS window. You'll end up with a bunch of empty areas if you change to a window that is a different aspect ratio than your OBS base resolution.

Also, there might be some odd behavior when opening sub-windows, options windows, and modal dialogs in some windows; for example, if you're in Notepad++ and open up the Options window, suddenly the OBS window only shows the Options window, rather than all of Notepad++ with the Options window overlaid on top of it. This may or may not be desired behavior, but that could vary from person to person.

Finally, the other big issue I can think of is when the active window is a window that can't be captured by Window capture, namely fullscreen games. I can imagine a lot of LoL players using this auto-switching source to play LoL, but if it switches to the in-game window, they will be confused when it doesn't capture properly if they don' thave the game set to be in Windowed mode.

It's not a bad idea, but has a lot of quirks to it. Personally, for simplicity, I would recommend just using a Monitor capture instead.

 

[devinvisible]

I found this thread after googling "OBS stream active window".

My use case is that I'd like to broadcast my programming and reverse engineering adventures. I want to stream the application that I've last clicked and am talking about but I need the application windows maximized and I also need to see them concurrently.

Active window source seemed like it would be the perfect solution but I agree with dodgepong that there are some implementation details regarding rescaling on active window change.

I think I have a decent alternative that could be managed and perhaps implemented easier: Active Monitor source. "Active" could be a new item in the Monitor drop down list on the Monitor Capture window. When your cursor moves from one monitor to another it would change the source. The resolutions of the monitors are unlikely to change and would often be the same size.