I’ve spent a lot of time updating my stream overlay to make use of nested scenes, this allows me to have my elements drag and drop on the final scene and allows me to make global changes quickly and easily without reproducing the same steps on many different scenes.
And with the release of OBS version 27 and the all important source transitions I’m really glad I did as I’ve found in conjunction with the StreamDeck and the GoXLR Mini I have a killer combination to make my stream professional and unique and more interactive.
Out With The Stingers!
Like many starting out I wanted more than the basic fades during scene transitions so I grabbed some free stingers from Nerd or Die adjusted the hue in DaVinci Resolve to match my colour scheme and away I went! Don’t get me wrong, they looked good, but there were plenty of other streamers using the exact same stingers and they were just longer transitions that had no real relevance to my stream.
With OBS 27 came a more flexible stinger transitions, allowing for parts of both incoming and outgoing scenes to be shown at the same time during the transition which I’m sure people will do amazing things with, but what I was really excited about was source transitions, no longer do I have to switch my whole scene just to show or hide a new element without a hard cut, When changing scene, I can fade out the full screen camera, to reveal my game screen, then have my camera swipe in from the right of the screen while the chat swipes in from the left. I can also toggle panels so the chat can swipe out again, and be replaced by something else.
Sound Transitions Too?
One thing I had issues with was audio volume for different scenes, when on my main game screen I want the game volume to be loud and the music to be low, during my intermission scene I want the game audio to be much lower than the music.. it look a lot of remembering and fiddling while live to get the levels right and I generally didn’t do it very well, it certainly wasn’t a smooth professional process.
The GoXLR Mini solved this issue for me, as I can set up profiles, adjusting what sound sources were active during each scene and the volumes they are set to
Pulling It All Together
To pull all these elements together quickly and professionally I don’t want to be tabbing out of my game to click many buttons on obs, then tab to the GoXLR App to change audio profile to each time I change scenes, I can’t do that while maintaining a conversation with my audience and without forgetting a step which is why StreamDeck’s multi actions are an absolute godsend!
I changed my simple scene triggers into multi-actions comprising of sources being hidden from the upcoming scene before the scene is switched to and then sources being shown with delays to ensure all the transitions look smooth.