Question / Help How to decrease volume of same media source between scenes?

[FriendlyRyan]

Hi there! First, thank you all so much for the vast trove of knowledge you're providing here. This is my first post, but I've already found several fixes for my first stream with OBS—thanks!

I'm hosting a live-streamed fundraising event on Facebook Live on Friday, and I have a little feature I'm trying to get to work. I'm playing some background music through a media source (audio file) during the intro slideshow, and when I change scenes to the event host's Zoom call, I'd like for the intro music to continue playing, but at a lower volume.

I've discovered that I can keep the same music playing by copying the source and pasting as a reference, but the volume slider controls all instances of that source. So if I adjust it in one scene, it affects all other scenes with that source. While if I add it as a stand-alone source, it will just start from the beginning of the song when I change scenes, which I don't want.

I saw that another person had this issue, and someone suggested using the Audio Output source instead of media source, but I'm already using my desktop audio for the Zoom call audio, and I don't want that volume to decrease when the music fades lower.

Is there a way to isolate the volume control by scene on a media source? Thank you!

Log file: https://obsproject.com/logs/uY7W285bKFVV79q2

 

[FerretBomb]

Not in OBS, unfortunately.
I was going to suggest adding it to a Group and adding a Gain filter to the group, but it appears that trick for applying one-off filters only applies to images in groups, not audio sources in a Group.

About the only (extremely inconvenient) way I can think of would be to run your music independently via something like WinAMP or foobar2000, install Voicemeeter, pipe the player audio into that, and set up two virtual outputs, one with a lower gain/fader level. Then set up A (full gain) and B (reduced gain) as separate Audio Output Capture sources in OBS, and use each in the appropriate scene. It'll cross-fade on scene transition (as usual) but that would come across as a volume adjustment (but maybe a pretty fast one).

Studio-level, you can use node.cg and the obs-websockets plugin along with a digitally-controllable mixing desk to set the level of your background music channel automatically on scene change; I know that Support Class does that for GDQ events to simplify switching between their segments, but that's a multi five (or six) figure option with a lot of dev work on the back end. I'd recommend the Voicemeeter route.

 

[FriendlyRyan]

Thanks a lot, FerretBomb. Good to know there's a work-around if I have the time to set that up, but I think I'll opt for changing the volume manually during the stream since I'm a little crunched for time as it is. I appreciate your thorough walk-through, though!

 

[Jim Swonger]

I was going to ask the same question. I normally use Qlab for theater Audio and video playback, and that allows for the option easily. I may have to find a work around and take a screen shot of the Qlab video out and see if I can use the Qlab audio out as an input into OBS. I am looking into that further.
Also, if it helps, you can download Qlab with two channel audio capacity For free from their website. It is Mac based only, however.