OBS Studio Audio Track Hotkey Script

In December of 2020, OBS Studio update 26.1 was released and introduced a brand new feature: the ability to select which audio track is stored in the recording (“VOD”) of your Twitch stream. This gives streamers the power to separate audio feeds between what is broadcast live and what is stored for offline viewers. This is particularly useful for streamers who play rhythm games with copyrighted music and are looking to avoid DMCA strikes on their recorded or clipped content.

These track settings are straightforward for those that exclusively stream that sort of content, but doing these changes on the fly can be a pain for those who switch content types mid-stream. You need to open the “Advanced Audio Settings” GUI window, click the check boxes to change the selected audio tracks for the necessary sources, and then close the window.

I wrote a script to make things easier by mapping the audio track options to configurable hotkeys.

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Making an OBS ‘Mute’ Indicator

I have a friend who likes to stream on Twitch, and he has a problem. Every hour or two he likes to be healthy and take a five minute break – standing up, stretching, going to the bathroom, etc. During this time he mutes his microphone and puts on some background music to keep the audience entertained. But when he comes back he frequently forgets to unmute his microphone so that the stream can hear him. It’s not unusual for him to be talking to himself for five minutes or more until some kind soul in chat speaks up and says “you know you’re muted, right?”

To help him and others who frequently forget to unmute their microphone, I decided to build a physical indicator for the mute status in OBS Studio.

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FrameVis – Video Visualizer and Movie Barcode Generator

FrameVis is a Python script for creating visualizations from video frames, also known as “movie barcodes” due to their vertical striping. The script uses the OpenCV library to read from a video file, load frames into memory, and then stack them together to make a new image visualizing the entire film. The resulting visualizations are as fascinating as they are beautiful… you can see the flow of the color grading, the pacing of the editing, and if you know the film well enough you can even pick out certain scenes or even shots.

This script works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and is compatible with all OpenCV file types and codecs. You can download it on GitHub.

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