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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Twitch Chat OwO Browser Extension

The news is currently very bleak. Just the pandemic alone is enough to make you want to never read the news again. Thankfully there’s a solution: “Bweaking NuwuS” (@BBCBweaking), a Twitter account that posts news stories passed through an “UwU” kaomoji filter to make them “cutesy”. The result is some serious dark comedy, with posts about corruption, sickness, and death translated into something exceedingly saccharine.

After reading a bit about the automation behind the news account, I thought it would be fun to do something similar and make a browser extension to convert Twitch chat into “OwO”-speak on the fly.

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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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Building a DIY Stream Deck (Mini Macro Keyboard)

I’ve been doing a little streaming on Twitch, and a lot of streamers I follow have something called an Elgato Stream Deck. The Stream Deck is a small device with 15 buttons, each of which has its own customizable RGB icon. By configuring the bundled software, users can set button icons and macros to control your casting software, send messages in the stream chat, launch programs, and much much more.

Unfortunately the Stream Deck is out of my price range, at a whopping $149.99 retail.  Fortunately I think I can make something that replicates the basic functionality for a fraction of that price: what I’m calling a “Stream Cheap”.

Although I’m focusing on using this as a replacement for a Stream Deck, at heart this is really a custom macro keyboard. It could be used as a hotkey board for any program. I’m just using it for OBS and Twitch.

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Building a ‘Twitch Clips’ Button

Last spring before this blog was a thing, I created an “Oddshot Button” using a hacked Staples Easy Button. The button was simple – while watching a Twitch stream, a press of the button would instantly create a video clip of the last 30 seconds using the Oddshot service.

A few months later Twitch debuted their own ‘Twitch Clips’ service, and Oddshot has since fallen out of use. So I decided to remake this project to work with Twitch Clips!

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