OBS Studio Transitions | Cuts, Fades, Slides, Stingers, Move and more!

OBS Studio Transitions

Hi OBS Fam!

This week on OBS Obsessed, we're looking at OBS Studio Transitions.

Transitions are the visuals (and sometimes audio) that happen between scenes. They can be subtle (such as a gradual fade) or as simple as a cut, or as elaborate as a stinger or an animated rearrangement of elements inside your frame.

As a general rule, I think "less is more." There are some super fun transitions out there, but if you're triggering them every 30 seconds, it'll likely annoy your audience more than it will endear them. But that said, the careful use of transitions can make for a more visually dynamic presentation.

The Scene Transitions dock

The Scene Transitions dock is where the magic happens. If you can't see this particular Dock, go to the Docks menu and make sure you can see it.

You can click and drag the dock wherever you like. You can also dock it into certain positions within the OBS Studio user interface.

By default, you'll see two basic transition options.

1. Fade: As the name suggests, it will fade between scenes. You can specify the duration of the fade in microseconds. This is probably a good default to embrace.
2. Cut: This is almost a lack of transition. It will just go from scene to scene with nothing really inbetween.

If you click on the plus sign (+) in the Scene Transitions dock you will see other options. How many you see here will depend on whether or not you have other plugins installed or not. But in a fresh installation of OBS Studio you'll likely see these options.

• Swipe: Left, Right, Up, Down.
• Slide: Left, Right, Up, Down.
• Stinger: This option gives you the ability to play a video and switch scenes some point during the video playback. This can be especially great if your video incorporates some element of transparency. (Quicktime MOV and animated GIFs support transparency.)
• Fade to Color: This will use a solid colour as a transition. You'll see Scene A, a flash of colour and then Scene B.
• Luma Wipe: There are an extraordinary number of visual transition effects buried under this one option. I can barely summarise them here, let me just list them for you below.

Luma Wipe has the following options (and you can play with these and use the Preview Transition button to get a better sense of what they look like):

• Barndoor (Bottom Left, Horizontal, Top Left, Vertical)
• Blinds Horizontal
• Box (Bottom Left, Bottom Right, Top Left, Top Right)
• Burst
• Checkerboard Small
• Circles
• Cloud
• Curtain
• Fan
• Fractal
• Iris
• Linear (Horizontal, Top Left, Top Right, Vertical)
• Parallel Zigzag (Horizontal, Vertical)
• Sinus 9
• Spiral
• Square

The Luma Wipe transitions are really fun, but again I'd encourage using them sparingly.

Stinger Transitions

Stinger Transitions can be a great opportunity to really brand your content. Here's an example of a stinger transition with my "John Lacey" logo.

See how I created this Logo Stinger in DaVinci Resolve and then implement it into OBS Studio here.

Transition Overrides

By default, the transition type you specify via the Scene Transitions dock will apply every time you switch scenes. This may not be desirable. There are a few different ways to override transitions.

• Transition Overrides: Right-click on a scene from the Scenes Dock and go to Transition Overrides and select a particular transition. This will be used each time you switch to that scene (until you turn it off).
• Studio Mode: Studio Mode lets you see your program scene (which is the scene your audience is seeing) and a Preview Scene (which is the scene you'll switch to). You can add any of your transitions as Quick Transitions. That transition will appear as a button. Once you can click on it, that transition will be applied and the audience will see the scene you're switching to. You can also create Elgato Stream Deck buttons to do this.
• The Transition Table plugin: The Transition Table plugin will let you create a list of transitions for when you move from one specific scene to another specific scene. This can be super useful.

The Move Plugin — Move Transition

I've spoken about the Move plugin a lot on the show because it's genuinely amazing. (And frankly the Move transition powers the entire OBS Obsessed scene collection.)

While you can setup move filters that you can trigger via keyboard shortcuts or Stream Deck buttons, the Move plugin started life as a transition style and this functionality is still available to us all.

Once the plugin is installed, you can create a new "Move" scene transition via the Scene Transitions dock. There are a bunch of settings you can play with here, but for the most part I let the plugin itself do the math for the animations.

I highly recommend creating a scene, duplicating it, and then rearranging the elements within it. Make things so large that they are no longer visible. Move some things to the right, others to the left. Bring things in and out of your video canvas. Then click between the scenes with the Move transition enabled. It can be so cool and you haven't had to code anything or understand animation or do any math.

The Doom Transition (no, really)

You will find a number of other transition options via plugins. Remember to check out the Plugin repository.

One particularly fun option I wanted to mention though was the Doom Transition plugin. It will melt your scene into pixelated goodness in a way that is deeply nostalgic for those of us who grew up playing this particular game.

Join me live

Check out the event links for the date and time in your local time zone. Remember, you can always watch the recording later if it's not a good time or you're otherwise busy.

• OBS Studio Transitions (Watch on YouTube)
• OBS Studio Transitions (Watch on LinkedIn?)

Have a great week!

I hope you have a great week.

Remember, if you're interested in video, content creation and livestreaming:

• Connect with me here on LinkedIn?
• Subscribe to the Learn Livestreaming channel on YouTube. (Currently sitting 694 subscribers —woohoo! Thank you! ??)
• Follow JohnLacey.com for even more content.

BONUS: OBS Studio Plugins | Move, Source Clone, Advanced Masks and More!

Watch "OBS Studio Plugins" on YouTube