Working with virtual studio technology (VST) plugins is tremendously convenient, but a lot of the best VST plugins out there are very expensive. If you're looking to expand your library of VST instrument (VSTi) plugins, or tweak your mixes with some great effects or MIDI effects VST plugins, you can do it for free.
There are many ways in which you can improve your streaming experience for your audience and for yourself on Twitch. You can have a streaming schedule you follow thoroughly, or you can have nice giveaways for your viewers.
Either way, those are the BIG things that everybody knows and talks about. What is something that is not talked so much about, but that can draw a clear distinction between you and the competition? Well, you are in luck because we have the answer right here, and that answer is OBS plugins.
Before we even start discussing OBS plugins it is important to note that not all of these plugins may work as intended in SLOBS. The plugins SHOULD work just fine as Streamlabs OBS plugins but we can only guarantee the 100% performance on OBS Studio.
This situation could also serve as an encouragement for all of you people that use SLOBS to move over to OBS Studio since it can offer greater expandability through the OBS Studio plugin repository. The rumors of OBS Studio being very hard to learn are somewhat exaggerated since after you have used SLOBS for a while, in our honest opinion moving to Studio is not impossible.
So what exactly are OBS plugins? OBS plugins are extensions that you can download and use to enhance the default experience of OBS. This is specifically why OBS Studio is considered such a powerhouse when it comes to streaming.
If in other software you are limited to whatever the developers give you, in OBS Studio you have endless possibilities with community developed plugins.
Without further ado, let’s just dive into what are the plugins we would recommend to any aspiring streamer!
This is an extremely neat plugin that introduces NewTek NDI capability to OBS. What this plugin does, is it provides video input and output for OBS over the network, effectively creating a situation where you don’t need a capture card!
This OBS plugin is useful if you want to use the OBS preview as a webcam in other communications software. This means all of your cool effects and convenient settings from OBS can be used in other programs without having to fiddle with anything!
A big separation between a novice streamer and a professional streamer is their audio quality. The VST suite of effects can really level up your audio game once applied as an OBS plugin. This can be an effective Streamlabs OBS plugin and also a great OBS Studio plugin.
StreamFX is an absolutely fun plugin for your stream that adds new sources, transitions, and your own personally customized shaders. This will allow you to greatly improve how your stream looks and feels beyond what the default OBS Studio can offer!
Even though these are 2 different plugins we decided to group them since they have similar functions for your stream. What these OBS Studio plugins do is they show the current playlists and songs playing on your stream.
This is useful for streamers because in many cases the viewers want to know what songs their favorite streamer is playing, so instead of constantly being asked you can just include these plugins for each platform.
This OBS plugin is extremely useful for the people that do not own a stream deck. This allows them to use their old phone or tablet as a customizable stream deck over their local network. The setup is simple and you really have no drawbacks on this one!
Overall there is no question that if you want to become a big streamer with a growing number of followers and subscribers you need to look beyond what a stock OBS experience can offer for your stream and invest in finding the best OBS plugins for you!
OBS Studio is a free and open source software made for live streaming and video recording. It’s available on Windows, Mac and Linux. As OBS Studio is open source, almost anyone can develop plugins for the software. This is especially important for streamers who use this software everyday as plugins can improve functionality of OBS Studio
Now that we know what’s OBS Studio and why we need plugins, let’s get to the list of our five best OBS plugins (you might find some bonus stuff too????)
StreamFX is a plugin developed by Xaymar , you can find it here (StreamFX)
This plugin adds some really important functionality like Blur and 3D Transform. Now you can blur out sources you think maybe questionable to your stream, add 3D effects to your stream. Possibilities are endless.
Let us talk about some of its highlighted features
Blur: This filter comes with various types of blur (Box, Gaussian, Dual Filtering) and even goes an extra mile by allowing you to choose how you want the blur to be applied (Area, Directional, Rotating/Rolling, Zoom) and also lets you mask out the area you want to be blurred based on various types of masks.
Displacement Mapping: Displace the pixels of the Source, in any way you want – create a whirl, zoom in and more.
Source Mirror/free-vocoder-vst-2016.html. : Source Mirror duplicates the video and optionally also the audio of any source, allowing you to apply filters to either without affecting the original source. It also can rescale the video to fit your target region using any of the obs supported scaling modes. There is no limit on the number of Source Mirrors you create for one source, so go wild!
3D Transform: a filter for you to use, move, rotate, scale and shear your Source in 3D space at will! Create reflections of your video camera on a floor, table, or place your video camera in a room – the possibilities are endless and you can choose what you want to do!
OBS.Live is created by folks over at StreamElements, you can find it here (Download OBS.Live)
This plugin adds integrated StreamElements Activity Feed, Chat and integrates OBS Studio with StreamElements seamlessly.
OBS.Live lets you see how many viewers you have, Manage Alerts, refresh overlays, have Media Requests and much more.
It works with YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, and Facebook.
OBS WebSocket is developed by Palakis , you can find it here (OBS WebSocket Plugin)
This plugin allows other programs to connect to OBS to offer more functionality
Where do we find apps that’ll get the best of this plugin? We’ve got you covered
We have 2 App suggestions that’ll mimic Elgato’s Stream Deck
Deckboard: Created by Riva Farabi, this app requires an Android Phone and a Windows Computer and is one of the best designed apps I’ve seen over the years. This app has Twitch, Spotify support (it even supports StreamLabs OBS). You can find it here (Deckboard Website)
Touch Portal: Touch portal is another app like deckboard but it’s far more accessible and in some ways superior, this app works with Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. This app works with SLOBS, XSplit, Adobe apps like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, Aseprite and more. You can find it here (Touch Portal Website)
BONUS : You can improve the way Deckboard/TouchPortal looks by using Aurora – Stream Deck Key Icons made by folks over at Nerd or Die ( Get it here )
This plugin is created by GitHub user Ratwithacompiler , you can find it here (GitHub)
This plugin provides Closed Captioning via Google Cloud Speech Recognition API as a standalone OBS Plugin, no other tools required. It integrated with Twitch’s inbuilt CC Support so viewers can click on CC button to enable it the same way it works on Twitch’s self-hosted event streams like TwitchCon and more. https://cleverscuba636.weebly.com/blog/cuphead-free-download-mac-os. You can find instructions to use this plugin from here
This plugin works live and in VODs, no twitch extension required. It’s completely optional to the viewer and Supports multiple Languages. I think this plugin would be one of the best ways to make your streams more accessible.
Audio is really important when you are streaming or video recording, sometimes people won’t stay if your audio is terrible. It’s one of the most important aspects of Streaming. OBS Studio includes a ton of audio filters already and can give you really great results, but what if I told you we can take it one step further?
OBS Studio supports VST Plugins, one of the most popular Free VST Plugins source is Reaper, also known as ReaPlugs VST FX Suite, You can find ReaPlugs here (Get it here)
Let’s talk about some of my favourite ReaPlugs
ReaComp: An Ultra-configurable Compressor with sidechain filters and much more.
ReaEQ: An Unlimited band IIR based equalizer.
ReaGate: An Ultra-configurable gate that’s far superior than the one found on OBS Studio.
ReaControlMIDI: Flexible MIDI controls in VST Format.
We hope these plugins will help you get the best of OBS Studio. Happy Streaming !