Hold to talk?

A

A2008ToyotaCorolla gaming

New Member
I play games such as TF2 and CS2 and they use "V" as hold to talk. I want to do that in OBS so I can record those games without having my microphone on the whole time or using fancy pantsy key bindings to turn on the mic. Any help?
 
A

AaronD

Active Member
Settings -> Hotkeys

It might take some scrolling if you have a lot set up, but it's in there. Both "Push to Talk" and "Push to Mute", so you can it work either way. Or a toggle...or...

There's also something at the bottom of Settings -> Advanced, about what to do about OBS's focus. If another window (like the game for you, or a word processor for someone else) has focus, should OBS respond to the key or not?
 
A

AaronD

Active Member
A2008ToyotaCorolla gaming said:
For some reason, push to talk doesn't work. At all.
Click to expand...
Okay, you made me try it. Yep, I'd call that a bug. Toggle works, but PTT does not.

OBS 30.2.3 on Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS (Linux), so the problem is cross-platform too.

Edit: Wandering the forum some more, I came across another post that mentions an enable checkbox in Settings -> Audio. Never saw that before, but it's there too. Still doesn't work though. The hotkey has no effect for PTT. Assigning it to other things does work.
 
Last edited:
koala

koala

Active Member
Push to talk works for me.
You need to configure this way:
  • identify your mic source. It's either one from the global sources (than it's Mic/Aux) or from a scene specific Audio Input Capture source
  • make sure your mic is working, so you see the meter in the audio mixer widget moving whenever you speak
  • Go to Settings > Audio > Hotkeys and locate your mic source. Activate "Enable Push-to-talk". This will set this source to push-to-talk mode. It's silent from now on, except you hold down the associated push-to-talk hotkey.
  • To set the hotkey, go to Settings > Hotkeys and locate the hotkey section for your mic source. Assign a hotkey for the "Push-to-talk" action. As long as this hotkey is held down, the mic is open. Make sure you don't assign the "Mute" and "Unmute" action - those are toggles.
If you observe the mic source with push-to-talk active in the audio mixer, you will see a tiny green dot below the -60 dB appearing if you talk but don't press the hotkey as indicator the mic is picking up something but it's not transmitted to the stream or recording. Only while you hold down the hotkey, the full bar appears and your voice is transmitted.

This is not a toggle, it's a true "transmit only while the key is held down".
 
A

AaronD

Active Member
koala said:
Push to talk works for me.
You need to configure this way:
  • identify your mic source. It's either one from the global sources (than it's Mic/Aux) or from a scene specific Audio Input Capture source
  • make sure your mic is working, so you see the meter in the audio mixer widget moving whenever you speak
  • Go to Settings > Audio > Hotkeys and locate your mic source. Activate "Enable Push-to-talk". This will set this source to push-to-talk mode. It's silent from now on, except you hold down the associated push-to-talk hotkey.
  • To set the hotkey, go to Settings > Hotkeys and locate the hotkey section for your mic source. Assign a hotkey for the "Push-to-talk" action. As long as this hotkey is held down, the mic is open. Make sure you don't assign the "Mute" and "Unmute" action - those are toggles.
If you observe the mic source with push-to-talk active in the audio mixer, you will see a tiny green dot below the -60 dB appearing if you talk but don't press the hotkey as indicator the mic is picking up something but it's not transmitted to the stream or recording. Only while you hold down the hotkey, the full bar appears and your voice is transmitted.

This is not a toggle, it's a true "transmit only while the key is held down".
Click to expand...
All of that, and the preceding discussion, misses one thing:
IT DOES NOT USE THE MUTE FUNCTION!!!

I expected the PTT to mute/unmute, as shown in the Audio Mixer. It does not, so i (and probably a lot of others) was convinced that it didn't work.

So, you need to:
  • Enable PTT in the bottom section of Settings -> Audio
    AND
  • Assign a hotkey to it in Settings -> Hotkeys
    AND
  • UNMUTE THE SOURCE in the Audio Mixer
NOW, after doing all three, it works for me.

So I still might call it a usability/discoverability bug, that simply assigning a hotkey (middle step alone, in the list here), does not mute/unmute the source, and thus provide the PTT functionality that way.
 
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