obs-headless

C++ program based on libobs (from obs-studio), designed to read RTMP streams and compose them as sources in different scenes. This implementation is a gRPC server with a test client .

QT dependcy

The test program depends on QT5 because libobs doesn't seem to initialize OpenGL properly (segfault in gl_context_create when calling obs_reset_video). Calling the QT init function beforehand seems to bypass this issue.

This could be a bug in libobs, the main obs frontend is not affected because it uses QT.

Using macOS, Qt is not needed, you can delete all references in the code and CMakeLists.txt.

Installing gRPC

You need to install protoc and grpc with the C++ plugin (grpc_cpp_plugin).

On Ubuntu, simply install the following packages: libgrpc++-dev libgrpc++1 libgrpc-dev libgrpc6 protobuf-compiler-grpc

Installing OBS

You need to build OBS from the sources. You can follow instructions from obs-studio on Github but watch out:

• ⚠️ At the moment, obs-headless only works with old versions of libobs. Please use git checkout 23.2.1 to use this old tag until this issue is resolved.
• Using Ubuntu 20.04, you need the following packages to compile OBS, which is not mentionned in the doc at the moment: libx11-xcb-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libqt5svg5-dev
• Using the given cmake command-line, files are installed in $HOME/obs-studio-portable . If you change this path, you need to update OBS_INSTALL_PATH in ./config.sh to values relevant to your setup.

Building and running obs-headless

Now that OBS is installed, build and run obs-headless:

• Run ./compile.sh
• After compiling, set up your configuration in config.txt
• You can now start the server with ./run.sh
• You can also start the server gdb with ./run.sh -g
• Start the test client with ./build/obs_headless_client

TODO

• [fix] Playback stops when switching source!
• [fix] green screen when using OBS version > 23.2.1. At the moment, using (for example) v24.0.0 gives a green video output (audio is fine)
• [build] Fix runtime path; currently we need to cd into obs's install path (see run.sh) for obs to find the *.effect files in find_libobs_data_file()
• [build] CMake: set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++17 -Wall -Werror -Wno-long-long -pedantic")
• [config] Support more transitions: [cut/fade/swipe/slide/stinger/fade_to_color/luma_wipe]_transition
• [feat] rescue
• [deps] fdk-aac, x264 / ffmpeg. explain ffmpeg_nvenc
• [style] fix mixed snake_case and camelCase
• [feat] trace level and format from env

Docker

Run obs in docker will be very useful for local development, testing or even for production (Need more work and verification).
You can follow these steps to run obs docker in your local machine:

• Build docker image

docker build -t local/obs-headless:dev .

• Create a config.txt file locally, and change server url, stream key ... for your local env.

cat > config.txt << EOF
server rtmp://host.docker.internal/live/
key <your stream key>
transition_type cut_transition
transition_delay_sec 10
transition_duration_ms 990
video_hw_decode false
video_hw_encode false
video_gpu_conversion false
video_bitrate_kbps 800
video_keyint_sec 2
video_rate_control CBR
video_width 640
video_height 360
video_fps_num 25
video_fps_den 1
audio_sample_rate 48000
audio_bitrate_kbps 128
EOF

• Run docker

docker run --rm -p 50051:50051 -v $(pwd)/config.txt:/config.txt local/obs-headless:dev

Debug

For VS Code

1. Open project in conatiner (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/containers)

2. Run xorg in background Xorg -noreset +extension GLX +extension RANDR +extension RENDER -config /etc/xorg.conf $DISPLAY &

3. Compile and run obs-headless ./compile.sh && ./run_server.sh

4. (Optional) Add debug configuration in launch.json

   "configurations": [
       {
           "name": "debug",
           "type": "cppdbg",
           "request": "launch",
           "program": "${workspaceFolder}/build/obs_headless_server",
           "cwd": "/root/obs-studio-portable/bin/64bit/",
           "MIMode": "gdb"
       }
   ]
   

5. Add break point, and run debug configuration