OBS Scene Queue

Basic application to easily control a scene sequence for OBS

Screenshot which shows scene "Another screen" as the current active queue item. On the right, six Quick Access Buttons are shown.

Note: Que has been renamed to Queue. This might not be always the case, as for file names.

Requirements

• Installation of OBS
• Installation of OBS Websocket (at least v4.1.0)
• Installation of Java (at least Java 1.8 / Java 8) on the computer where OBS Scene Queue will be running

If OBS is running on another computer, make sure the computer where OBS Scene Queue is running on can reach the other computer. Use the Websocket Scanner built in OBS Scene Queue to quickly identify the other computer where OBS is running.

Build

You can download all versions from GitHub, or build this application yourself using Maven. Launch4j is used to generate .exe files from the compiled JARs (this is also integrated in the Maven package step).

OBS Scene Queue application setup

1. Download and install obs-websocket (>= v4.0.0) for your OBS application.
2. Make sure you have at least Java 8 installed.
3. Make sure your OBS websocket is discoverable by the computer you will run this application on. If it's the same computer, no worries.
4. Launch this application (by running the executable JAR file with Java or running the EXE file) and enjoy.
5. Edit the settings if needed. This can be done using the menu Application menu -> Settings or editing the obs-scene-queue.properties file. This file will be created after first launch of the application. Don't run the application when editing this file. Application restart will be needed after changing the application settings.

Features

Queue List

Creation

Create a queue by drag-and-dropping scenes or other queue items from the Sources panel (left panel) to the queue list (middle panel).

Queue files

To prevent any sudden loss of your Queue, every change is saved to the Queue file. This is a .json file and can be found by default in the same folder as the OBS Scene Queue application.

Queues can be saved to and opened from different files. The default file is 'default-que.json'. Opening a Queue file will save the current Queue and instantly load the new Queue.

Control

Control the queue by using the control buttons "Previous" and "Next". These buttons will show which queue item will be previous or next. Using the separate control window, the current queue item will also be displayed for clarity.

When a queue item becomes active (thus the new current queue index), it will be executed. This execution is different for each queue item type.

To set the current queue index to a specific queue item, use MOUSE DOUBLE CLICK to activate that item and set is as the new current queue index. You can also use ENTER key on a selected queue item. To set this item as the new queue index, but without activating that item, use CTRL + MOUSE CLICK on that item.

Note that settings can be changed in order to adjust the behaviour of activating 'Execute After Previous' queue items after activating a queue item using MOUSE DOUBLE CLICK or ENTER.

Execute After Previous

Mark a queue item to be executed after the previous queue item is executed. In this way, when a queue item becomes active, all the directly following queue items which are marked as Execute After Previous, will also be activated and executed in order.

When using the ENTER key on a selected queue item, the Execute After Previous items will be activated in order, as normal behaviour. When activating a queue item by DOUBLE CLICK, it will only activate that item and NOT its Execute After Previous items. This behaviour can be changed in the Settings.

Marking a queue item as Execute After Previous:

• SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW will mark a queue item to be executed after the execution of the previous queue item.
• SHIFT + LEFT ARROW will unmark a queue item to be executed after the execution of the previous queue item.

Quick Access Buttons

Drag and drop any queue item from the Source or Queue list onto a Quick Access Button to assign this item to this button. Clicking the Quick Access Button will execute the queue item. Note that this will not interfere with the queue at all. Use CTRL + MOUSE CLICK on a Quick Access Button to clear this button's state.

Display of the plugin icon in the button can be turned on/off in the settings.

Hot keys

You can use ALT + ... where ... is a value between 0 and 9, to toggle Quick Access Buttons. ALT + 1 will activate the first Quick Access Button, ALT + 2 the next, etc all the way to ALT + 0 activating the last Quick Access Button. Just like the horizontal layout of these numbers on your keyboard.

You can also use ALT + P to go back in the Queue or ALT + N for the next queue item.

List of hotkeys:

Key	Action
ENTER	Activate selected queue item
DELETE	Deletes selected queue item
ALT + P	Activate previous queue item
ALT + N	Activate next queue item
ALT + [0-9]	Activate the indexed Quick Access Button (with 1 being the first and 0 the last)
F11	Toggle fullscreen
ESC	Close popup
CTRL + W	Close popup
CTRL + Q	Quit application
SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW	Mark selected queue item as Execute After Previous
SHIFT + LEFT ARROW	Unmark selected queue item as Execute After Previous

Web Control HTTP API

The OBS Scene Queue application can also be controlled by its build in webserver. This server can be enabled in the settings. Application restart is required after enabling/disabling the server.

For more info about using this server, see the API documentation.

A very basic control webpage is implemented. Navigate to the /control endpoint for this very basic Queue controller. Note: use the IP address of the computer on which OBS Scene Queue is running, like so: http://192.168.178.100:8080/control.

Network Scanner

When using OBS Scene Queue on another computer as OBS projector itself, it can be quite a struggle to figure out the correct IP address of the OBS projector computer. Head to Application menu -> Network Scanner to let OBS Scene Queue scan for any possible OBS projector hosts on your local network. This scanning is done by querying the default OBS websocket port 4444 on all possible IP address available on your local network(s).

The default timeout used for the scanning progress is 200 ms. This value can be increased in the Network Scanner window if no OBS websockets are detected. Users of slow local networks may need do increase this value.

Auto reconnect

When connection to OBS is lost, OBS Scene Queue will continue keeping track of time, no matter what. Even after connection with OBS is re-established, the time for the same scene is still correct. Of course, the application cannot detect any scene changes while disconnected with OBS.

OBS Scene Queue will not attempt to reconnect immediately, but during a continuous interval of 3 seconds (as specified in the properties).

If you want to start OBS Scene Queue in 'offline' mode, thus without trying to connect to OBS: use the --offline command line argument like so: java -jar obs-scene-queue.jar --offline.

Themes

An application theme can be set in Application menu -> Settings. Currently, only Light theme is available and Dark theme is experimental. You can develop your own theme by extending the BaseTheme class and creating a pull request to the develop branch.

Notifications

When an error or something else interesting occurs, a notification of this event will be available. Click on the "Notifications" button to show all these notifications. The user will be alerted for new notifications by the number of new notifications being displayed on this button.

Plugins

Plugins can be added to enable the use of different queue item types which can perform different actions on execution/activation. The following plugins are internally installed:

• OBSPlugin: lets you activate OBS scenes and do other OBS stuff.
• UtilityPlugin: gives you the tools to clarify your Queue list with Text items or let you sit back and relax by using Delay items to automatically activate the next Queue item after a certain delay. Once activated, the Delay item will wait for the specified amount of time before automatically activating the next Queue item.
• HttpPlugin: perform HTTP requests to activate another device, for example.

To install new plugins, just place their .jar file in the plugin directory (see settings for where this directory is). If this directory doesn't exist, you can create it: create a directory in the same directory as OBS Scene Queue and name it "plugins".

You can also create your own plugins using this guide.

Some known external plugins are (mostly still under development):

• EasyWorshipPlugin: controls EasyWorship projection software
• SceneTimerPlugin: currently just a simple scene duration timer
• KeyStrokePlugin: focus windows and send key combinations to them
• IpCameraPlugin: lets you control your IP camera using its own presets
• MidiControlPlugin: use a MIDI device to switch between queue items

Settings

Most settings can be changed using the GUI. All settings are visible (and configurable) in the settings file: obs-scene-queue.properties. Some of these settings will be explained below.

Don't run the application while editing the obs-scene-queue.properties file (and before saving your changes), as your changes won't be loaded until the next launch of the application. Also, the application will overwrite your changes if it is still running.

By deleting this file, all properties are reset to default.

Note: Application restart is required to load any changes to the settings.

If you've been using OBS Scene Queue version 2.6.0 and/or previous versions, the properties file will be named obs-scene-que.properties.

Some settings explained:

Connection settings

• obsAddress (string) (default: ws://localhost:4444): holds the full address of the OBS websocket server. This server can be on any computer in the same network of even over internet, as long as it can be reached by the obs-scene-timer application.
• obsPassword (string) (default: <empty>): the password needed to connect to the OBS websocket. Please note that this password is stored as plain text in the properties file and therefore is readable by anyone with access to this file.
• obsReconnectionTimeout (milliseconds) (default: 3000): if connection with OBS failed or is lost, OBS Scene Timer will try to reconnect to OBS after this time in milliseconds.

Other settings

• controlWindowLocation: Pixel coordinates on where the control window will be located. To set the default location for the Control Window to the center of the main window, manually set the property controlWindowLocation to -1,-1. Other values will be interpreted to absolute coordinates relative to the left upper screen corner.
• pluginDirectory: Directory location of the plugins to be enabled. Default is a directory named 'plugins' in the current directory.
• queFile: Location of the file where the current queue will be loaded from and saved to.
• quickAccessButtonCount: How many Quick Access Buttons dou you want? Temporarily decreasing this number won't lose the configuration of the Quick Access Buttons that won't be visible anymore.

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Contribution

Feel free to contribute by opening a pull request to develop branch or leaving a comment somewhere.

Please try to add/edit tests for the code you've worked on. Also build the application with mvn clean install and run the compiled jar with java -jar obs-scene-que-X.X.X-SNAPSHOT.jar.

Donation

If you don't want to code, but still want to contribute, consider buying me a coffee so I can afford to spend more time working on these projects :)