OBS Studio Portable for Linux

OBS Studio Portable is an OCI image that provides current OBS Studio, for Linux, pre-loaded with extra features and a curated collection of 3rd party OBS Studio plugins for live streaming and screen recording.
Made with 💝 for 🐧

OBS Studio Portable for Linux

OBS Studio Portable is built from toolbx-images/images and wimpysworld/obs-studio-portable using Ubuntu. Additionally, OBS Studio Portable for Linux includes the following features:

• Includes 50 of the best 3rd Party plugins for OBS Studio!
• Chromium Embedded Frameworks (CEF) to enable Browser Sources
• NVENC (NVIDIA) and VA-API (AMD & Intel) accelerated video encoding
• Shader and GStreamer effects filters
• Fraunhofer FDK AAC Codec
• Pipewire application specific audio capture
• VLC and GStreamer Media sources
• AJA NTV2 SDK
• WebSockets 5.x and 4.9.1-compat are both included
• NewTek NDI™ integration and Teleport support
• SRT & RIST Protocol support
• Markdown, Pango and API text sources

Using this container image of OBS Studio Portable it is possible to run an isolated OBS Studio on any Linux distro.

• A complete OBS Studio for Fedora Silver Blue users.
• A fast-moving and compatible OBS Studio software stack for NixOS users.
• Run current and fully equipped OBS Studio on Debian stable.
• Run OBS Studio built with current Ubuntu interim releases with new OBS features enabled (thanks to access to newer libraries) on current and old Ubuntu LTS.

Installation

Use Distrobox to run OBS Studio Portable on any Linux 🐧 distro.

• The OBS Studio configuration is exposed in your home directory on the host via the ~/.config/obs-portable directory.
• Launching multiple instances of OBS Studio Portable containers is not recommended as the configuration location is shared.

Running a single instance of OBS Studio Portable works great!

1. Install Distrobox (1.4.2.1 or newer) and Podman (recommended) or Docker.
2. Create a Distrobox container for OBS Studio Portable.

distrobox create --image ghcr.io/ublue-os/obs-studio-portable:latest --name obs --pull

NVIDIA support

The appropriate NVIDIA libraries on the host should be automatically be linked inside the container 🪄 However the capability for Distrobox to automatically connect NVIDIA libraries was recently added in Distrobox 1.5.0, and is also not supported on all distros; NixOS for example.

Therefore, if your are running an older version of Distrobox or the NVIDIA drivers are not automatically linked inside the container you can install them as follows:

• Change the version number (535 in the example below) to match the version of the NVIDIA drivers you have installed on the host.

NVIDIA complete driver stack

Required if the display is rendered by an NVIDIA GPU.

distrobox create --image ghcr.io/ublue-os/obs-studio-portable:latest --name obs --pull --additional-packages nvidia-driver-535

NVIDIA compute only

Suitable for multi-GPU systems where the NVIDIA GPU is not rendering the display and only being used for compute.

distrobox create --image ghcr.io/ublue-os/obs-studio-portable:latest --name obs --pull --additional-packages libnvidia-encode-535 nvidia-headless-no-dkms-535

3. Run the initial setup.

```bash
distrobox enter --name obs -- true

4. From now on, launch OBS Studio Portable using the obs-portable launcher.

distrobox enter --name obs -- /opt/obs-portable/obs-portable

If the OBS Studio Portable container cannot connect to the host X11 server, add xhost +si:localuser:$USER to ~/.distroboxrc.

More information

This container image of OBS Studio Portable is maintained as a collaborative effort between Universal Blue and Martin Wimpress, the maintainer of OBS Studio Portable for Ubuntu.

OBS Studio Portable Plugins

Thanks to the OBS Studio developers and developers of the growing list of excellent plugins. OBS Studio Portable for Linux celebrates the best of what's available. Thank you! 🙇

Here are the 3rd party plugins that come bundled with OBS Studio Portable for Linux:

Audio 🔉

• Audio Pan plugin; control stereo pan of audio sources.
• Local Vocal plugin; local speech and text AI processing routines and AI transcription.
• Mute Filter plugin; to mute audio from a source.
• PipeWire Audio Capture plugin; capture application audio from PipeWire.
• Scale to Sound plugin; adds a filter which makes a source scale based on the audio levels of any audio source you choose
• Soundboard plugin; adds a soundboard dock.
• Waveform plugin; audio spectral analysis.

Automation 🎛

• Advanced Scene Switcher plugin; an automated scene switcher.
• Directory Watch Media plugin; filter you can add to a media source to load the oldest or newest file in a directory.
• Dummy Source plugin; provides a dummy source to execute arbitrary commands when a scene is switched.
• Source Switcher plugin; to switch between a list of sources.
• Transition Table plugin; customize scene transitions.
• Websockets plugin; remote-control OBS Studio through WebSockets.
  • 5.x and 4.9.1-compat are both included

Effects ✨

• 3D Effect plugin; 3D effect filter.
• Browser Transition plugin; show a browser source during scene transition.
• Composite Blur plugin; comprehensive blur plugin that provides several different blur algorithms, and proper compositing.
• DVD Screensaver plugin; a DVD screen saver source type.
• Downstream Keyer plugin; add a Downstream Keyer dock.
• Dynamic Delay plugin; filter for dynamic delaying a video source.
• Face Tracker plugin; face tracking plugin
• Freeze Filter plugin; freeze a source using a filter.
• Gradient plugin; adding gradients as a source.
• Move Transition plugin; move source to a new position during a scene transition.
• Multi Source Effect plugin; provides a custom effect to render multiple sources.
• Pixel Art plugin; create retro-inspired pixel art visuals.
• Recursion Effect plugin; recursion effect filter.
• Replay Source plugin; slow motion replay async sources from memory.
• RGB Levels plugin; simple filter to adjust RGB levels.
• Scene as Transition plugin; use scenes as transitions.
• Shader Filter plugin; for applying an arbitrary shader to a source.
• Stroke Glow Shadow plugin; provide efficient Stroke, Glow, and Shadow effects on masked sources.
• Time Shift plugin; time shift a source using a filter.
• Time Warp Scan plugin; a time warp scan filter.
• Vintage Filter plugin; a filter to make source black & white or sepia.

Encoding & Output 🎞

• Game Capture plugin; Vulkan/OpenGL game capture.
• GStreamer plugin; feed GStreamer launch pipelines into OBS Studio.
• NDI plugin; Network A/V in OBS Studio with NewTek's NDI technology.
• Source Record plugin; make sources available to record via a filter.
• StreamFX plugin; unlocks the full potential of NVENC along with encoders for Avid DNxHR, Apple ProRes and CineForm.
  • Only the stable StreamFX encoders, Color Grading and Dynamic Mask filters are enabled in OBS Studio Portable for Linux.
• Teleport plugin; open NDI-like replacement. (not NDI compatible)
• VA-API plugin; GStreamer-based VA-API encoder implementation.
• Vertical Canvas plugin; make content for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Live, and more without the fuss.

Tools 🛠

• Scene Notes Dock plugin; create a Dock for showing and editing notes for the currently active scene.
• Source Clone plugin; add source cloning
• Source Copy plugin; adds copy-and-paste options to the tools menu.
• Source Dock plugin; adds browser sources as custom docks.

Text 📝

• Markdown plugin; add Markdown sources
• Text PThread plugin; Rich text source plugin with many advanced features, including multi-language support, emoji support, vertical rendering and RTL support.
• URL Source plugin; fetch data from a URL (API), parse and display live update in scene.