Open Broadcaster Software Mac Cannot Record Full Desktop

Oct 10, 2019  OBS Studio aka Open Broadcaster Software Studio is very popular among YouTube users. You can use it to broadcast gameplay streams live or use it to record videos (which you may then upload to YouTube or other video hosting sites). Want to set up a camera and mic to record content for your vlog? You can do that too. More Powerful and Customizable: Open Broadcaster Software. We recommend using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for screencasts. It’s completely free and open-source and allows you to both stream live and record a screencast to a video file. It works with Windows 7, 8, and 10. Open Filmora Scrn and click 'Get Started.' Select whether you want to capture full screen or partial screen; Choose the game you want to record (Filmora scrn is available for most popular games, such as Minecraft, League of Legends, Overwatch, Dota and CS: GO) Select the fps. Set up audio. You can record using a microphone or just your computer.

Open Broadcaster Software Mac Cannot Record Full Desktop Update

In OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software), the capture window allows you to capture what is being displayed on your screen. You can capture the footage from any window on your computer and include it in your stream broadcast.

You could use this to capture the footage from a game during a live playthrough, capture the footage from Photoshop when you’re streaming your work in progress art, or capture the footage from some software as you stream a live tutorial for it.

OBS makes it easy to capture your window and this can all be set up with just a few clicks (click “Add Source” and follow the prompts). However, sometimes OBS breaks, preventing your window from being captured properly or making it so that you can’t see (and confirm) what footage is being broadcast.


The OBS capture window black issue isn’t an uncommon problem. Users say that when they’ve tried to capture footage from the Chrome window on their desktop, in OBS, it just shows up as a black screen.

However, it’s not just in Chrome. Some have also said that they have experienced the problem when trying to record or stream footage of their games. The games themselves are running as expected (according to posts about the issue on forums and on social media), but they aren’t showing up properly in OBS.

The issue means that when OBS users go to start streaming on Twitch, there are large black blocks in their broadcasts. A screenshot of the black capture window issue shows how one OBS user ran into the problem when trying to capture footage from a Chrome window, in order to display their Twitch alerts.

If the issue persists then it means that your viewers aren’t able to see what you’re playing, what you’re looking at on Chrome (if that’s part of your stream), and features of your stream that rely upon Chrome Window Capture won’t be available.

You will have to fix the problem and make OBS capture the footage in your windows properly so that you can broadcast professional, good-looking streams.

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How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue

There are several reasons why OBS is unable to run a capture window properly and why the footage from the window is being displayed as black. There are several different ways to fix the issue and we’ve outlined the most common reasons for the issue and the most common fixes here.

How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue With Chrome

Most people who have come across the OBS capture window issue say that they’ve experienced the problem with Google Chrome. The content of their tabs just refuses to show up and is replaced by a black screen.

The reason for this is something called “hardware acceleration.”

Chrome is a very intensive piece of software and Google uses a feature called hardware acceleration to make the most of your hardware and help Chrome to run properly. Chrome sends most of the graphical tasks to your computer’s GPU. By doing this, it frees up the CPU of your computer to handle other tasks. The GPU is also best equipped for these graphical tasks and should help to boost Chrome’s performance. Execute app from command line mac.

However, hardware acceleration may also be why OBS is unable to properly capture what’s being displayed in the Chrome window. Disabling hardware acceleration takes just a handful of clicks.

  • Click the three horizontal dots in the right-hand corner of Chrome to open the menu

  • Select “Settings” (it’s towards the bottom of the list)

  • Scroll down to the bottom of the Settings page and select “Advanced”

  • Under Advanced, find the category called “System” (it’s near the bottom)

  • Uncheck “Use hardware acceleration when available”

Once you’ve done this, restart Chrome and restart OBS so that the changes are reflected. Try using window capture on Chrome to see if the issue has been fixed.

How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue With Games

OBS users may also experience the capture window black issue when trying to capture gameplay footage. There are lots of potential causes for this problem with games, but we’ve listed fixes for the most likely causes below.

Disable Windows 10 Game Mode

When the Windows 10 Creators Update was released in 2017, it added a feature called Game Mode. Game Mode is designed to improve the process of your computer when playing games. Although it is a useful feature, many streamers have reported that it interferes with their broadcasts.

In our guide to streaming Apex Legends, we recommend disabling Game Mode because it can direct GPU resources away from OBS and cause viewer-side sluggishness. Game Mode may also be the reason for the OBS capture window black issue.

To disable Game Mode in Windows 10, you can go into the Settings menu, type “Game Mode” in the search bar, and toggle the feature off. Then, restart your computer to make sure the changes have been performed and OBS will no longer be affected by it.

Open Broadcaster Software Mac Cannot Record Full Desktop 2017

Capture Footage With Game Capture, Not Window Capture

Another solution that may work, is if you tell OBS to capture the gameplay footage with the Game Capture option, not the Window Capture option. Game Capture is designed for capturing gameplay footage and is recommended.

Open Broadcaster Software Mac Cannot Record Full Desktop Download

You’ll also want to put the game in full-screen mode, not windowed or borderless.

Run OBS as an Administrator

Our final suggestion for fixing the OBS capture window black issue is to run OBS as an administrator. Running a program as an administrator in Windows 10 is a standard process.

Just right-click on the OBS icon (or wherever it’s listed in your computer’s files) and select “Run as Administrator.” Follow the prompts to run OBS as an administrator.

How OBS.Live Supercharges Your Streaming

Capturing window footage is just one awesome feature that you get from OBS Studio, but why not take it to the next level? StreamElements OBS.Live is an add-on (not an OBS alternative or a fork) that supercharges your streaming by adding lots of helpful features:

  • Activity Feed and Chat integrated into OBS

  • Media Request, to let your viewers suggest YouTube videos to play during your stream

  • Alerts Management (skip, replay, and mute)

  • Custom Bot Name

  • Access all of your favorite StreamElements tools like Tipping, Chat Bot, and more

Full

Legendary Support, 24/7

For more help with streaming or using OBS.Live, message us on social media and join our fun and friendly Discord community. Other StreamElements users are happy to answer your questions and our legendary support team is on hand 24/7 too.

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Subscribe to our YouTube channel for helpful video tutorials going over the basics, features, and news on upcoming, or new features. StreamElements is always working hard to make streaming better for YOU.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been discussing Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), an open-source video product application. You can catch up on the previous articles and learn how to use this free application:

  • Video Production with OBS: What It Is and Why You Should Use It
  • Open Broadcaster Software (OBS): Installing and Configuring
  • OBS Chapter 3: Sources and Scenes
  • Open Broadcaster Software – Part 4: Recordings and Streams
  • OBS Chapter 5: Hotkeys, More Sources, and Resources

Now, OBS is quite powerful and adequate for many consumer and even professional video live-streaming or recording use cases, but it can have its limitations. In today’s article, we’ll discuss why it may be more advantageous to look at commercial apps and talk about the features of some of the more popular Mac video production apps. In addition, if your budget is limited to the free OBS application, we’ll talk about how to get support.

Reasons to Not Use OBS

At the end of the last article in this series, I noted that “while OBS is a great way to start getting into livestream production, it’s an example of ‘You get what you pay for’ in that it lacks good support, unexplainable bugs sometimes crop up, and it doesn’t have built-in features that can make your livestream work even easier.

One of my pet peeves was when I was looking for plugins for OBS. I’d see one that added a feature I really wanted, only to find out that it was only available on the Windows version of OBS. When I run apps, I no longer want to run them in a virtual machine or have to reboot my Mac into Windows running on Boot Camp. Especially with video, the best performance comes with a native app or plugin. Not having access to many of those plugins will crimp my style a bit, but at this time I’ll have to make do with those plugins that work on the Mac platform.

For companies or individuals who are using OBS for profit, support can be an issue as well. Let’s say you have a scheduled show ready to go live in two hours, and all of a sudden OBS is crashing every time you boot up. Although you can get support through the OBS community, chances are good that your show will not happen. Commercial software companies can provide you with real support, although that often comes at a cost.

Finally, there’s another limitation — the user. Many people just getting into live-streaming can find sources, scenes, overlays, and even just setting up a single stream to something like YouTube to be overwhelming. The user interface of OBS isn’t exactly its top selling point, and trying to remember hotkeys or even which Stream Deck button to push can be confusing in the middle of an on-air interview.

Let’s take a look at three alternatives to OBS.

mimoLive

The first alternative I’ll discuss is mimoLive from Boinx Software. The app is free to try for 14 days, and if you’ve tried OBS as a result of this series, you’ll be familiar with the setup and terminology. Pricing is $20 per month for non-profit organizations (mimoLive Non-Profit), $70 monthly for commercial use (mimoLive Studio), and $200 per month for broadcast organizations (mimoLive Broadcast). Boinx offers discounts for annual and three-year purchases that are quite reasonable.

For your average person or business that wants to set up a daily or weekly livestream, monetize a livestream on YouTube, government organizations and universities, churches, and so on, the Studio version is perfect. That $70 monthly subscription gets you a lot — an app that is optimized for Mac and constantly updated, has a wide range of built-in features, and support. The Broadcast version comes with what’s called “Fastlane Support”, which is expedited support for those TV stations and other broadcast organizations that need answers immediately.

What you get with mimoLive is a full-featured live video suite. As you can see in the image at the start of this section, you have the familiar “Program Output” window, which is what the audience will see, as well as a number of other sources. Boinx provides other sources as well — mimoCall is a way to have other guests show up on your show (audio only) by just opening a URL in a web browser, while mimoLive Reporter is free iOS software that works with mimoLive to give “roving reporters” a way to send video back to your studio.

Many of the fancier features of mimoLive are based on its ability to “stack” various sources: start with a live feed, then add a lower-third graphic or perhaps an animated news ticker. The graphic below shows a “news show” with an anchor live feed, an animated green screen backdrop, and an “infoboard background” with titles in the corners and a lower-thirds graphic.

eCamm Live

Next up as an OBS option is eCamm Live from eCamm Software. Like mimoLive, eCamm Live also comes with a 14-day free trial. There are two versions: Standard ($15/month or $120/year) and Pro ($25/month or $240/year). The difference between the two versions is that the Pro version offers a virtual webcam, 4K streaming, widget overlay support, live video monitoring to any display, auto Facebook page crossposting, real-time bandwidth statistics, and VIP tech support.

Of the OBS alternatives we’re looking at, eCamm Live seems to be the best for people who don’t want the complexity of a solution like OBS or mimoLive, and just want to have good looking streams with anywhere from one to six people participating in a discussion.

eCamm seems to have put a lot of work into making sure that many popular DSLR and mirrorless digital cameras can be used as high-quality video sources, and it’s the only product to add support for Restream.io’s chat aggregation. The latter feature means that you can see and even display chat comments from up to 20 different social media platforms.

eCamm Live also records the video locally for posterity, editing, or redistribution to other sources, and is probably the most “Mac-like” of the OBS alternatives. My only concern is eCamm Live’s use of Skype for video connections — in my experience, Skype is about the least useful and most technically problematic of the video conferencing apps.

Wirecast

Really want to go pro? Telestream’s Wirecast is a solution that’s used by such big names as Fox Sports, the British Prime Minister’s office, and France Télévisions, as well as by some top vloggers. Available in both Studio ($599) and Pro ($799) versions, Wirecast is quite impressive in what it brings to the game.

Wirecast users can add an unlimited number of inputs and use a proprietary videoconferencing system called Wirecast Rendezvous to bring up to 7 remote guests (2 for Studio) into the broadcast. It handles up to 4K project resolution and can encode at 4K as well, features social media integration, and can provide users with custom transitions or video playlist capabilities.

I think one of the best features of Wirecast has to be its integrated Stock Media Library. Let’s say you’re doing a livestream and talking about farming. Want some stock footage of a farm harvest or wheat waving in the wind? You’ve got it — access to over 500,000 royalty-free images, videos, songs, lower thirds templates, and more. That access is dependent on a support contract ($299 annual cost) but is well worth the cost to livestream professionals.

Telestream also adds NewBlue Titler Live Express for creating your own animated titles and graphics, and the Pro version upgrades that software to Titler Live Pro.

Wirecast also supports unlimited output destinations and the ability to record the stream to multiple disks simultaneously. For the most efficient bandwidth usage, you’ll probably still want to use Restream.io or Telestream’s own Telestream Cloud service to send your stream to multiple services.

Having used a previous version of Wirecast, I know that it has a bit of a learning curve. Spending some time going through the huge number of video and PDF resources about Wirecast is a great idea if you want to learn how to use this tool.

We hope you have enjoyed this series on Open Broadcaster Software. If you are currently using OBS or another video production alternative to livestream a show, please let us know about it in the comments.

Related:
• Video Production with OBS: What It Is and Why You Should Use It
• OBS Chapter 2: Installing and Configuring the App
• OBS Chapter 3: Sources and Scenes
• OBS Chapter 4: Recordings and Streams
• OBS Chapter 5: Hotkeys, More Sources, and Resources
• OBS Chapter 6: Open Broadcaster Software Limitations and Alternatives

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