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OBS Studio 22 brings new features and improvements for streaming and recording

Some big quality of life improvements make this the best version of OBS Studio yet.

August 22, 2018 11:05 AM

Streaming and recording video games is an incredibly popular hobby, but also big business. If you’ve ever spent time on Twitch.tv and wondered how most of the professional-looking streams are produced, the answer is most likely OBS Studio. OBS Studio helps streamers and content creators capture and broadcast gameplay while offering the tools needed to make slick looking broadcasts. This week, OBS was updated to version 22, bringing a host of new features and improvements.

Headlining the changes in version 22 of OBS Studio is the re-working of the browser source. The browser source allows streamers to incorporate web pages and applications into their productions. OBS Studio 22 adds support for hardware acceleration to the browser source, improving performance and reducing the strain on the streaming PC. The addition of source grouping will greatly optimize the workflow for anyone who has stream or recordings that use lots of sources. A rundown of the major changes in OBS Studio 22 is as follows:

Major improvements to the browser source:

Added hardware acceleration to the browser source on Windows for greatly improved performance, reduced resources, and allowing advanced rendering functionality such as WebGL. This reduces CPU usage, reduces RAM usage, and even reduces GPU usage. This option is enabled by default; it can be disabled in the advanced section of settings if needed if there are any unexpected issues.
Updated to Chromium version 68
Refactored the entire plugin and pruned approximately 13,000 lines of code
The browser source now has accurate frame synchronization on Windows
Fixed all memory leaks of the browser source
Added the ability to use web browsers as widgets

Added source grouping, allowing the ability to group multiple sources together as a single transformable group:

To add a group, you can either select a few sources and then right-click and choose "Group Selected Items", or you can create an empty group in the Add menu
You can seamlessly drag and drop items in and out of groups
You can ungroup a group without affecting the group in other scenes by right-clicking the group and choosing "Ungroup"
Groups show their list of sources as a sub-list within the main scene list, which can be collapsed and hidden if desired
Groups can be referenced (shared) between multiple scenes like any other source
Groups can have their own effect filters applied to them

Added the ability to set a custom background color to items within the source list to color-code them for improved organization:

To set the item's background color, right-click the source item within the source list, and go to "Set Color"
You can use a preset selection of colors within the menu, you can choose a custom color, or you can reset it to default

Added a "Vertical Layout" option to the mixer's right-click context menu to make the mixer display vertically rather than horizontally
The multiview can now be configured to show up to 24 scenes at once in general settings if desired

You can find the full patch notes for OBS Studio 22 on its GitHub project page.

Chris Jarrard

Contributing Tech Editor

Chris Jarrard likes playing games, crankin' tunes, and looking for fights on obscure online message boards. He understands that breakfast food is the only true food. Don't @ him.

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