libobs-wrapper

A safe, ergonomic Rust wrapper around the OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) Studio library. This crate provides a high-level interface for recording and streaming functionality using OBS's powerful capabilities, without having to deal with unsafe C/C++ code directly.

Features

• Thread Safety: Uses a dedicated thread to communicate with OBS, allowing safe cross-thread usage
• Resource Safety: RAII-based resource management for OBS objects
• Runtime Bootstrapping: Optional automatic download and setup of OBS binaries at runtime (functionality moved to libobs-bootstrapper)
• Scene Management: Create and manipulate scenes, sources, and outputs
• Video Recording: Configure and record video with various encoders
• Audio Support: Configure audio sources and encoders
• Display Management: Create and control OBS preview windows

Prerequisites

The library needs OBS binaries in your target directory for Windows and MacOS.

If you want to target Linux, you'll need to build and install OBS Studio from source. This can be done on Ubuntu using the cargo-obs-build tool (using cargo obs-build install), or by following the official OBS build instructions. Users of your application can just install OBS Studio via their package manager directly (tested and working for version 30+ on Ubuntu)

For Windows and Macos, there are multiple ways to set this up:

Option 1: Using cargo-obs-build (Recommended for development)

Install the cargo-obs-build tool:

cargo install cargo-obs-build

Add the following to your Cargo.toml:

[package.metadata]
# The libobs version to use (can either be a specific version or "latest")
# If not specified, the version will be selected based on the libobs crate version.
# libobs-version = "31.0.3"
# Optional: The directory to store the OBS build
# libobs-cache-dir = "../obs-build"

Install OBS in your target directory:

# For debug builds
cargo obs-build build --out-dir target/debug

# For release builds
cargo obs-build build --out-dir target/release

# For testing
cargo obs-build build --out-dir target/(debug|release)/deps

More details can be found in the cargo-obs-build documentation.

Option 2: Using the OBS Bootstrapper (Recommended for distribution)

For applications that need to bundle OBS binaries or handle runtime installation, we recommend using the libobs-bootstrapper crate.

This separate crate provides functionality to download and install OBS binaries at runtime, which is particularly useful for distributing applications without requiring users to install OBS separately.

See the libobs-bootstrapper documentation for detailed setup instructions and examples of implementing custom progress handlers.

Advanced Usage

For more advanced usage examples, check out:

• Monitor capture example with full configuration: examples/monitor_capture
• Runtime bootstrapping example: examples/download-at-runtime

For even easier handling, consider using the libobs-simple crate which builds on top of this wrapper.

Features

• no_blocking_drops - Spawns a tokio thread using tokio::task::spawn_blocking, so drops don't block your Application (experimental, make sure you have a tokio runtime running)
• generate_bindings - When enabled, forces the underlying bindings from libobs to generate instead of using the cached ones.
• color-logger - Enables coloring for the console. On by default.
• dialog_crash_handler - Adds a default crash handler, which shows the error and an option to copy the stacktrace to the clipboard. On by default. If turned off, OBS crashes will be reported via stderr, unless logging_crash_handler is enabled, in which case they will be reported via log::error!.
• logging_crash_handler - Sets the non-dialog_crash_handler default crash handler to report crashes via log::error!, instead of through stderr.

Common Issues

Missing DLLs or Crashes on Startup

If you're experiencing crashes or missing DLL errors:

1. Make sure OBS binaries are correctly installed using either cargo-obs-build or the bootstrapper
2. Check that you're using the correct OBS version compatible with this wrapper
3. Verify that all required DLLs are in your executable directory

Memory Leaks

The library handles most memory management automatically, but you should avoid resetting the OBS context repeatedly as this can cause small memory leaks (due to an OBS limitation). There is 1 memory leak caused by obs_add_data_path (which is called internally from this lib). Unfortunately, this memory leak can not be fixed because of how OBS internally works.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• The OBS Project for the amazing OBS Studio software
• Contributors to the libobs-rs ecosystem