What's up guys, welcome back once again
to the Gaming Careers YouTube channel,
where we teach you everything that you
need to know in order to make a
profession from live-streaming or
content creation in the gaming niche and
today we're going to be looking at how
we can set OBS up so that it
automatically switches scenes based on
which windows are open. Now the most
common use case for needing to switch
scenes automatically is for games that
have two separate programs, one which is
sort of the client and arranging and the
lobby, and the second which is the actual
game that you play. Games like League of
Legends is probably the most popular
that has this kind of client and game
side programming and we can set up OBS
to automatically switch based on which
one is open. Specifically what we'll be
learning in today's video is how you can
set OBS up so that when the game
launches it swaps to a certain scene,
say your game scene, and then when the
game finishes and the game closes you
can get OBS to automatically switch back
to the client scene. This helps prevent
those embarrassing moments when you
forget to swap to the right scene and
your chat is just watching your
client whilst you're playing the game.
This can also be useful for people
not using games, but want to swap scenes
based on which program they are
highlighting, so if you have multiple
monitors and you're doing a
stream where you're using applications
on each monitor and you want OBS to
automatically switch based on which
application you have highlighted, this
can also be useful for that use case too.
Now I know this might sound a little
complex but I promise you the setup is
actually super simple so let's dive in!
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So for this video I'm going to be using
League of Legends as an example since
it's one of those games that has a
separate program for the client and a
separate program for the game and I know
many of you watching probably don't want
to stream league of Legends but this is
also a useful exercise to watch and
learn as you can apply it to any two
programs or any number of programs not
just League of Legends. So what I would
recommend doing if you are setting this
up in something like League of Legends
is opening up your client and starting a
training game just so that we can have
both the client process and the game
process running on our computer. I'm just
going to change my game settings so that
it runs in a smaller window resolution
just purely so that it's easier for you
guys to visualize exactly what is going
on, you don't need to do this you can
leave your game running at full screen
or at full resolution.
I'm just purely doing this so it's
easier for you guys to understand. Once
you have both the game and the client
running let's go into OBS. In OBS I'm
just going to quickly create my two
scenes, my first scene called game is
going to be for when I'm actually
playing the game and my second scene
called queue is going to be for when I'm in
queue or when I'm in lobby and I want
the client to show. In my game scene I'm
going to capture the game by going to my
sources clicking the little plus icon
and selecting Game Capture. I'm going to
name this LoL game and click OK, then
I'm going to make sure that the mode is
set to capture a specific window and the
window that I choose is this one which
is "League of Legends exe League of
Legends trademark client" now don't ask
me why riot who are the developers of
League of Legends, have decided to name
the game process League of Legends
client, because this makes absolutely no
sense since it's not the client it's the
game. Really here I guess you just want
to be focusing on what the executable
name is which is in square brackets,
which is League of Legends exe, that is
the right process so we're going to
select that see our preview update with
the game preview and click OK. I'll just
make this fullscreen in OBS by pressing
ctrl F. Next we can move into our queue
scene and here we are going to add the
actual client by going to sources,
clicking the little plus icon and
choosing window capture.
I'm going to name this LoL client and
click OK. Here we want to select the
right window to capture,
so we are looking for the one which is
called "league client Ux exe League of
Legends". You see here the executable name
is the client, click OK and hopefully we
should see our client appear in OBS. Now
obviously at this stage I would
recommend that you style this scene so
that it's a little bit more interesting
to look at for your viewers
whilst you're in queue or whilst you're
in lobby but for the purposes of the
video, this boring scene will be fine.
So you should now see that we have two
scenes that we can swap between; our
queue scene which shows the client and
our game scene which shows our game. Now
it's time for the clever step which is
to setup OBS so that it automatically
switches between them. How league of
Legends and most other games that have
two separate executables work is that
you have the game executable which is
only launched once the game has been
found and your lobby system with
your picks and bans has finished.
Once your game has finished and you've
either won or lost, the game executable
gets closed and you'll return back to
the lobby client with your post match
results. So what we want OBS to do
is to automatically switch the game
scene when it finds the game executable
running and as soon as the game
executable stops running we want to come
back to our queue scene with our client.
So how we're going to do this is we go
up to the Tools menu and select
automatic scene switcher,
here we can select which window we want
OBS to be looking for and which scene to
swap to when it finds this window. So
what we're gonna to do is we want OBS
to look for the league of legends game,
which remember is stupidly named League
of Legends trademark client and I know
that this seems super counterintuitive
because it isn't the client it's the game.
I'm sure someone at Riot must have been
half asleep when they named them, and
when OBS finds this game we want to
switch to our game scene so we select
that over here. Next down in the options
we want to choose what we want OBS to do
when no window above is found, so since
we want OBS to swap to our queue scene
when the game isn't running we will set
this to switch to queue. Now a little
caveat that's worth noting here is that
this will work for my current setup,
since I only have two scenes but if you
have other scenes like a stream
starting soon scene or maybe have a
scene with your webcam fullscreen or
anything else that you want to use then
this setup won't work because it will
always swap to the queue scene when the
game isn't running
and always swap to the game scene when
the game is running. So if that is the
case for you what you want to do is to
add another automatic switcher which is
looking for the client, which is the
window called League of Legends and we
want to switch to the queue scene when
that window is found. Then you can set
the when no window matches option to
don't switch. You can also here change
how often you want OBS to check for the
window title but you can absolutely
leave this on the default, it seems to be
fine for me and finally you can start
and stop the automatic switcher. It's worth
noting that once you have started it, it
will stay switched on even when you
restart OBS or when you restart your
computer so you shouldn't ever need to
come back in here and start it again. Now
finally let's test it, I'm just going to
make sure that we're on the queue scene
and then start another game from the
client. Once the game launches we should
see OBS automatically switch to our game
scene and display our game.
If we now quit our game we should see
OBS automatically switch back to our queue
scene displaying our client
and there you go, it works perfectly.
Seamlessly automatically switching
scenes in OBS. Now as I said at the
beginning this process will work for any
number of different windows and it
doesn't have to be League of Legends or
it doesn't even have to be a game at all,
you can have OBS automatically switch
scene based on whatever window you have
selected or open. Hopefully now you can
avoid those embarrassing moments where
you don't remember to swap scene when
your game launches and you now have
something set up with a little bit more
automation, so you don't always have to
be changing scene yourself
in OBS or by using hotkeys. Finally I
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Peace!
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