OBS Studio, or Open Broadcaster Software, is a powerful open source screen recorder for Linux and other platforms which has been designed with live-streaming and recording in mind.
I have personally used OBS to live stream and record dozens of videos over the years. Its seamless integration with platforms like YouTube and Twitch makes it a reliable choice for both streaming and content creation.
Join me as I dive into the major updates and enhancements in the newest OBS Studio 31.0 release. 😃
🆕 OBS Studio 31.0: What's New?
OBS Studio 31.0 running on Ubuntu 24.10.
For starters, this release features a new NVIDIA Blur Filter and Background Blur based on NVIDIA Video Effects that works on NVIDIA RTX GPUs for applying a blur effect to a subject in a video.
The browser source and docks in OBS Studio have been updated to CEF 6533 (Chromium 127) across all platforms, with newly added support for the v210 format for AJA device capture, and integration with Amazon IVS.
On the user experience side of things, there are new preview scrollbars and zoom/scale indicators, allowing users to easily work with video previews. Next up are the new first-party YouTube Chat features that facilitate better management of live chats with tools for Polls, Q&A, Rich Emoji inputs, and Moderation.
In contrast, some support has been removed as well.
Going forward, OBS Studio's NVENC implementation won't support NVIDIA Kepler GPUs (600 and 700 series), and the legacy YouTube chat integration is no longer supported.
Similarly, official build support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has been sunset, legacy QSV code for some old devices and Windows 7 removed, and FTL support deprecated.
🛠️ Other Changes and Improvements
In addition to the ones mentioned above, here are some other changes that you should know of:
A memory leak in the PipeWire plugin was plugged.
Crashes with the QSV encoder on Linux were fixed.
Fix for a crash on Linux when importing a scene collection created on Windows.
The deadlocks in the MP4 muxer and when shutting down muxer have been resolved.
The official release notes have more technical details if you are interested in learning more.
📥 Download OBS Studio 31.0
This release is available for Ubuntu (22.04+), Windows, and macOS on the official website. For users of other Linux distributions, the official Flathub version is usually a great choice, but it hasn't been updated to the latest release (as of 12 Dec, 2024).
Ankush Das
