Using OBS as a portable from multiple setups?

[MisterT]

Hello!

I am an advisor for a high school streaming club, where we stream all home events and games. We have 3 primary locations that we stream from, our theater, gym, and field. Each of these has their own specific setups, with the gym and field being near identical, and the theater being a slimmer version. We have very robust OBS installations with a few plugins. For our sports streaming, we have a fairly complex replay system that can handle 4 camera replays, we run advertising through a source with specific controls and scripts that run to switch scenes after an ad ends, and just generally a lot of complex setup to each streaming system.

I was wondering if there is a way to run OBS with all its included plugins, profiles, and settings (hotkeys especially important) on multiple machines, simultaneously when needed. We currently have the OBS installations local, and they pull files like stinger transitions, video ads, graphics, etc. from a connected OneDrive account.

If anyone has any ideas about this, or how to improve upon what we are doing, please let me know! We are in the down season and I'm looking for ways to make everything run just a tad smoother than it currently does.

Thanks!

 

[AaronD]

Thousands of people run OBS simultaneously, each on their own machine. Why would your three be any different? Or are you running all of them simultaneously on just one machine?

If they're separate machines, then the only potential problems would be streaming simultaneously on a shared internet connection, and pulling things simultaneously from the same cloud account.

For the cloud account, it's much better to have everything local anyway. Download all that you're going to need beforehand, and play it locally. Problem solved for that one.

For the simultaneous streaming, that's just something that you're going to have to try. Run some representative test streams, either private or with content that your viewers would be okay with during the down season, and see how it actually works...or not as the case may be.

 

[MisterT]

I guess I'm meaning from a OneDrive based portable install, that is located on our OneDrive but downloaded to the machine. I guess I kind of answered that one already, if each machine has the cloud locally downloaded or synced, it shouldn't be a problem running 3 machines on the same "install" of OBS.

The files are synced through OneDrive before OBS uses them, so they are downloaded to the machine when they are being used, nothing gets pulled from the cloud while we are live.

The main thing I want to know is if it is possible to install all our plugins, sync the settings with hotkeys, sync the scripts that run in order to make the stream function as intended, that sort of thing. I don't want to have to change 3 different installations at 3 different locations every time that we make an update to some part of our stream if it is possible to do so.

 

[AaronD]

Well, there's this thread, starting here, that might shed *some* light on it:

Bug in 31.0.2 when using multiple instance

Hi, I'm currently using 30.2.3 because all newer version got a bug when using multiple instance. abstract: I'm using 1 obs instance for virtual camera, while the second instance record my screen. This is usefull for using virtual camera in Zoom or Team, while recording the said team. Since obs...

obsproject.com

Essentially, OBS doesn't like something else writing to its settings folder, which includes another instance of itself. I would imagine that a cloud sync from another instance on another machine would also count as simultaneous?

The official solution is to run separate portable instances, for the purpose of keeping the settings separate while they're running. But if they're not simultaneous, according to the sync schedule (Close A, then Start B, *then* Sync A to B, is effectively still simultaneous), then you should be okay?

Also consider: if the sports and theater rigs are enough different, and they're synced, could someone optimize one in a way that wrecks the other?