Have you ever switched to a “Be Right Back” scene in OBS to grab a drink or talk to someone off camera only to come back and realize that everything you’ve been doing was being broadcasted to the world?… I know I have. I’ve setup hotkeys to mute but it’s cumbersome and it has to be changed with every single audio source you add. It’s not the greatest. Luckily, I stumbled across THIS beautiful gem a bit ago and have been finding so many ways to improve my stream. If you followed my Zoom Effect article, you’ll already be familiar with the Advanced Scene Switcher already. It’s super easy and wildly powerful. Especially if you couple it with the Timer Lua Script; when the timer is up and the scene you desire is swapped to, you will auto mute the mic.
So let’s get into this.
Step 1 – Planning
I’m going to assume you already have Advance Scene Switch installed but if you do not and need help, refer to THIS article.
When you start to set this up, you’ll want to plan a bit about how and when this is going to trigger. Traditionally when you stream, you’ll have a:
- Starting/Intro Scene
- Main Scene where you’ll be displaying whatever you’re going to stream
- Be Right Back/BRB scene for breaks
- Outro Scene
This is pretty standard. There are a few variations; some streamers have intermissions for long streams but I’d say for the most of us, we’d use this format.
(Referencing the above format, I’m going to be using Scene 1 for the Intro, Scene 2 for the Main scene and so on.) So we want the mic to be muted on Scene 1 but not muted on Scene 2, then again muted for Scene 3 and 4. Our scheme should look like this:
1,3,4 = Muted when switched to
2 = Not muted when switched to
So let’s make it happen
Step 2 – Advance Scene Switcher
Open up OBS and go to Tools -> Advanced Scene Switcher.
You’ll see all the tabs at the top and you’ll want to go all the way to right and click on Scene Triggers
Step 3 – Triggers
From here, you can click the “+” sign at the bottom left corner and you’ll end up with something like this
- When – Designates what Scene we operating in
- Select Trigger – Refers to the “When”. Either it be active or not
- Select Action – Is what you’d like to do when the above conditions are met
- After(Timer) – Means how long after the trigger would you like to do the Action
Now that we understand the mechanism, let’s refer to our plan and make it mute some Scenes.
Step 4 – Auto Mute Mic Time
We’re going to make 3 tiggers. Starting with the Scene 1 should look something like this
We first select my “Starting Soon” Scene which is my Scene 1. Then we select the trigger as “is active” to specify upon selecting Scene 1, we’d like something to happen. Our Action is going to be “Mute Source” and the last box will appear after you select the referenced action. The last thing to do is select your Mic source which for me is “Mic/Aux” and I like to add a small delay of half a second (0.50s) because I’m a weirdo.
Now, as long as the Advanced Scene Switcher is running, you should be able to switch to your Scene 1 and see the Mic auto-mute.
Next is to create a trigger for the mic to unmute when you switch to your main Scene.
Step 5 – Main Scene
You can pretty much duplicate the exact same settings from above with the exception of changing the source and mute options. Check out below for what I mean.
My Scene 2 is “Gaming Main” that I have set to “Is Active” and “Unmute Source” with “Mic/Aux” selected as source. Then my own flair of that half second delay… That I, for some reason, didn’t add on the last one. Don’t fret, I have now changed it to keep with consistency. Though, none of this would make sense if I updated the above screenshot… Moving on!
Last thing is to make a last or second to last trigger for the Scene 3 or the BRB scene as you see above and copy the settings. You can also make a final trigger for your Outro Scene but I’m sure at this point you gather how to do that.
Congratulations!
You’ve now successfully setup an Auto-Mute scene trigger for your stream. If you have any trouble, leave me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to help you out.
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