Question / Help Working with Skype in OBS

[SL_CAL10]

The organization I work for wants to use OBS to livestream virtual events by having panelist/speakers call into skype and bringing their video feeds into the program. We've been running tests with the setup, and would love some help addressing the following issues:

1. I noticed that there is resizing issues happening on some of the skype source feeds. The video will quickly resize smaller than back to the original size. I've seen some information on this being resolved by using the Edit Transform option, but would like some clarification on best practices to solve the resizing issue.

2. We're trying to avoid having people use headphones to monitor the audio, but as you can imagine this leads to feedback when the audio is played out through the speakers and picked up by individual microphones. Are there any options/workflows that will allow us to not use headphones for monitoring and avoid the feedback issue?

3. When we switch between scenes the audio mixer attached to the sources for each scene will switch as well, resulting in the audio cutting out for a split second during the transition. Is there a way to only have the visuals switch/transition, and to have a master "mixer" with all the tracks on throughout the broadcast (then just mute tracks we don't want to play)?

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!

 

[koala]

1. As default, OBS dynamically resizes a source to the original size a source is reporting for itself. If the device (or media, or game) behind a source changes resolution, OBS resizes the source accordingly. You can revert any source to this behavior by right-click->Transform->Reset transform.
To inhibit this behavior and keep the source at a fixed predefined size, right-click the source->Transform->Edit transform and activate one of the bounding box scaling options, as well as enter a size for the bounding box. To minimize data input, do Transform->Fit to Screen (this maximizes the source) instead and resize the source to the desired size. By doing this, the bounding box handling is activated automatically. To verify the fixed scaling look into the transform data and make sure some scaling option is given in "Bounding Box Type" that is not no bounds.

2. Whatever audio is played back in a room, is picked up by a microphone in the same room. Separate people who monitor from the people who speak to different rooms. If the microphone isn't within a few cm from the mouth of the speaker, it picks up any ambient audio and you can do nothing about it. Some microphones have a directed pickup pattern that suppresses ambient audio a bit, but usually you monitor audio with headphones to avoid echo and feedback.

 

[SL_CAL10]

1. As default, OBS dynamically resizes a source to the original size a source is reporting for itself. If the device (or media, or game) behind a source changes resolution, OBS resizes the source accordingly. You can revert any source to this behavior by right-click->Transform->Reset transform.
To inhibit this behavior and keep the source at a fixed predefined size, right-click the source->Transform->Edit transform and activate one of the bounding box scaling options, as well as enter a size for the bounding box. To minimize data input, do Transform->Fit to Screen (this maximizes the source) instead and resize the source to the desired size. By doing this, the bounding box handling is activated automatically. To verify the fixed scaling look into the transform data and make sure some scaling option is given in "Bounding Box Type" that is not no bounds.

2. Whatever audio is played back in a room, is picked up by a microphone in the same room. Separate people who monitor from the people who speak to different rooms. If the microphone isn't within a few cm from the mouth of the speaker, it picks up any ambient audio and you can do nothing about it. Some microphones have a directed pickup pattern that suppresses ambient audio a bit, but usually you monitor audio with headphones to avoid echo and feedback.

Super helpful! Thank you! Do you have any insight on the third point about a master mixer? Many thanks!

 

[koala]

Sorry, no. If I knew something valid about this, I'd written it.

 

[codetastik]

1. As default, OBS dynamically resizes a source to the original size a source is reporting for itself. If the device (or media, or game) behind a source changes resolution, OBS resizes the source accordingly. You can revert any source to this behavior by right-click->Transform->Reset transform.
To inhibit this behavior and keep the source at a fixed predefined size, right-click the source->Transform->Edit transform and activate one of the bounding box scaling options, as well as enter a size for the bounding box. To minimize data input, do Transform->Fit to Screen (this maximizes the source) instead and resize the source to the desired size. By doing this, the bounding box handling is activated automatically. To verify the fixed scaling look into the transform data and make sure some scaling option is given in "Bounding Box Type" that is not no bounds.

2. Whatever audio is played back in a room, is picked up by a microphone in the same room. Separate people who monitor from the people who speak to different rooms. If the microphone isn't within a few cm from the mouth of the speaker, it picks up any ambient audio and you can do nothing about it. Some microphones have a directed pickup pattern that suppresses ambient audio a bit, but usually you monitor audio with headphones to avoid echo and feedback.

I've been having this issue as well, and changing the Bounding Box Type has not stopped the automatic resizing from happening. I've tried the "scale to inner bounds" and "scale to outer bounds" options. I think "Maximum Size Only" may work, but I can't seem to maintain the proper size ratio so I'm ending up with stretching. Do you have any other ideas about what may work?

 

[koala]

First reset the transform by right-click source->Transform->Reset transform. Then right-click the source->Transform->Fit to screen. This will maximize your source and tell OBS to the keep aspect ratio of the source while resizing. Then drag the edges of the source with the mouse to the size you want. The visual size of the source will be kept as long as the aspect ratio of the source doesn't change. If the aspect ratio changes, the source will get smaller horizontally or vertically, of course.

 

[codetastik]

Ok thanks, I'll try that during my next interview call. Your instructions end up setting the Bounding Box Type to "Scale to inner bounds", so I am hoping there is something else that changed to stop any auto resizing.

For my own setup, after getting the right height, I need to crop the video source to fit in one box of my two person box graphic. After the cropping, there are gaps between the right/ left sides of the video and the resizing controls. I'm wondering if those need to be reduced to where the red resize frame is the same size as the video source itself.

 

[Michael_mk2]

that solved my problem Skype resizing from time to time !! Thanks
in German it is: An Bildschirmgrösse anpassen. The edging is only symmetric and
the adjusting is a bit strange ,but works for me.