OBS to Lights
Send the OBS Studio program feed to Spectralite over NDI using the DistroAV plugin, and drive room lighting from your stream.
OBS already composites everything your audience sees. When you send that feed to Spectralite over NDI, the lighting in the room follows the stream. A scene change on camera then changes the practical light around it.
Install DistroAV
OBS needs the DistroAV plugin (formerly obs-ndi) to send NDI. Install OBS Studio first. Then install DistroAV and restart OBS.
Turn on the NDI output
Open Tools > DistroAV NDI® Settings. Tick Main Output to broadcast the program feed, which most setups use. Preview Output sends the preview scene. Use it in Studio Mode when the lights should follow the cued scene.
Give the output a name that you will recognize, such as OBS-StreamPC. Other machines show that name when they list NDI sources. Apply the settings and close the dialog.
If the DistroAV menu is missing, restart the computer. Then check that your OBS Studio, DistroAV, and NDI Runtime versions all match DistroAV's current requirements. A mismatched NDI Runtime stops the plugin from loading without an error, so it is easy to miss. NDI publishes its own OBS setup guide with the same steps.
Pick up the stream in Spectralite
Open Edit > Inputs > NDI. Turn on NDI input enabled and Auto-discover sources.
Put the video on your fixtures
Add a Timeline layer with the built-in NDI Input effect. To build a custom effect, use an NDI Input node in the Node Editor instead.
Preview output as a lighting cue
In Studio Mode, the two outputs behave differently. If you send Preview Output to Spectralite, the room reacts when you cue a scene, a beat before you transition it on camera. If you send Main Output, the light stays locked to what viewers see. If you enable both, you have two named sources to choose from.
NDI encoding costs CPU on the OBS machine, and that machine already encodes your stream. If frames start to drop, lower the OBS output resolution before you blame the network.
Related
- Receive video from another app: performance and troubleshooting for every NDI source.
- NDI input dialog: what each setting does.
- Connect Your Software: guides for other applications.