OBS Studio’s 30.2 update – Twitch Enhanced Broadcast, Hybrid MP4, new themes

OBS Studio has released its next major version, 30.2, and here’s everything that's new, with our take on it.

Want to see the raw release notes? Check them out here

The first big change is Multi Track video streaming – Twitch calls this enhanced broadcasting. What this means is you can now send multiple streams of video to Twitch at different quality levels, making it easier for viewers to watch your content no matter their connection, and with the hardware in your PC, the quality of the stream may be higher compared to Twitch’s own re-encoding. Check out Twitch’s article on enhance broadcasting.

Next is a really cool new video container called hybrid MP4 – Don’t let the name fool you, its still an mp4 file. Have you ever had OBS Studio crash on you while recording, and then you find out the mp4 file is corrupted? In the past you may have recorded to formats like MKV which are corruption resistant, but MKV isn’t a very common file format and some editors, website and mobile devices have issues with it. Enter Hybrid MP4 – Pioneered by Derrod, one of the OBS Studio volunteers, it combines the best feature of the MKV format, namely that OBS Studio can crash while recording and it will still work, with the very common mp4 format.

We’d say go ahead and set your recordings in OBS Studio to this format and never look back, but since its new and in beta, some programs or websites may not like the format. Give it a try and let the OBS Studio team know how its working for you. Learn more about Hybrid MP4

That’s it for the major changes you might encounter. There are several under-the hood improvements and bug fixes. Here are the highlights.

• The NVIDIA NVENC encoder has received native support on Linux. This means better performance and if you have an NVIDIA RTX 40-series GPU or newer, you can now encode in AV1
• On macOS, the default recording format has been set to fragmented MOV. This is like the new Hybrid MP4 format described earlier, but on Mac.
• On Windows, if you have an NVIDIA GPU, it will now be prioritized for any video decoding tasks by utilizing NVDEC.
• Volume meters got a new and improved look.
• When encoding HEVC and AV1, closed captions are now supported.
• That’s about it – There’s even more if you want to dig into all the details.
• This update is now out for Windows, Mac and Linx.

In summary, this update brings significant improvements across different platforms. Mac users will enjoy the new fragmented MOV recording format, enhancing their recording experience. Windows users with NVIDIA GPUs will benefit from optimized video decoding with NVDEC. The fresh look of the volume meters adds a modern touch, while support for closed captions in HEVC and AV1 encoding ensures accessibility for all. With these enhancements, OBS Studio continues to provide a robust and versatile tool for content creators.

To take advantage of these updates, simply open OBS Studio, navigate to Help > Check for updates, or download the latest version from the OBS website: https://obsproject.com/. Dive in and explore the full potential of these new features, making your streaming and recording experience better than ever.