Why is the OBS window capture black?

Usually the window is minimised, or the capture method cannot see an occluded window. Keep the browser visible and switch the source's capture method in its properties. On macOS, check that OBS has Screen Recording permission.

Can I stream directly from the studio without OBS?

No. The studio has no RTMP or built-in streaming output. It produces the live video in the browser, and OBS is what puts that video on a platform.

Do credits keep running when OBS is paused?

The session bills per live second until you press Stop or it reaches the 900-second cap. OBS pausing its own output does not end the session, so press Stop in the studio when you are finished.

LiveFaceSwap in OBS: window capture setup

What this setup does

OBS Studio can put the browser studio into a scene, a recording or a livestream. The connection is a window capture: OBS films the browser window that contains the swapped video. LiveFaceSwap.co does not provide a virtual camera today, so the capture path is how the output reaches OBS, Twitch, YouTube or anything else OBS can send to.

Before you start

A current OBS Studio install and a current Chrome or Edge window with the studio open.
The camera switched on, a reference image chosen, and the consent box ticked, so the only thing left to press is the start button.
A 16:9 canvas: 1920 x 1080 at 30 frames per second is enough for a talking-head stream and leaves the machine headroom.
A microphone connected to OBS, not to the studio. The studio's job is video only.

1. Add a window capture source

In the Sources panel, press the plus button and choose Window Capture. Give it a clear name such as LiveFaceSwap, then pick the browser window that holds the studio. On Windows the window is listed under Chrome or Edge; on macOS choose Screen Capture and grant Screen Recording permission the first time; on Linux use PipeWire capture and select the window.

Keep the browser window on screen and not minimised. If the source shows a blank or black frame, open the source properties and change the capture method; Windows Graphics Capture handles occluded windows better than the older bit-blit method.

2. Crop the browser chrome

The capture includes the browser tab strip and the page around the studio. Crop to the video area instead of zooming the whole window, or text and toolbar edges end up in the stream. Select the source and hold Alt on Windows (Option on macOS) while dragging the edge handles, which crops instead of scaling. A Crop/Pad filter under Filters does the same job with exact numbers.

The studio output is 4:3 (the camera captures 1280×960 and the cloud output keeps that frame), so crop to its frame rather than stretching it into a 16:9 canvas. Either keep the canvas at the output's shape, or scale the source and fill the side bars with a background. Then add the rest of the scene around it: a background, alerts, a camera source if you want your own face in a corner.

3. Keep audio separate

The captured browser window carries no voice audio. Add an Audio Input Capture source for your microphone, or use your usual capture card or audio interface, and set the gain so peaks sit well below zero. Headphones avoid the speaker echo that otherwise gets into the stream.

If you want game sound or music, use Application Audio Capture or Desktop Audio as usual. The face-swap output stays a video-only source, which is why the audio setup is the same as any other stream.

4. Start in the right order

Set up the scene first, confirm the studio window is visible and correctly cropped, then start streaming or recording in OBS. When OBS is live, press the start button in the studio and check the LIVE timer in the output stage. That timer is the billing clock: each live second costs 0.6 credits.

When the segment is finished, press Stop in the studio, then stop the stream in OBS. If you stop OBS while the session is still live, the studio keeps the session running and billing until you stop it or it hits the 900-second cap. A session stops automatically at 900 seconds; for longer broadcasts, start a new session and keep the scene unchanged.

5. Keep the frame rate stable

Use the hardware encoder OBS recommends by default (NVENC, QuickSync or AMD) rather than software encoding.
Leave the canvas at 30 fps for a talking-head stream; 60 fps doubles the work for no useful gain on a webcam feed.
Do not stack heavy video filters on the capture. A light sharpen is fine; denoise, colour correction and upscaling on the same source can push the machine into dropped frames.
Keep the capture source visible and close unused tabs and other camera apps before going live.
Use a wired connection or 5 GHz Wi-Fi; the video already travels to the cloud and back before OBS sees it.

There is no studio virtual camera yet

OBS Studio has its own virtual camera output, and that is a separate OBS feature: it publishes whatever is in the OBS scene to apps that accept a camera. The LiveFaceSwap studio does not register a system camera. A dedicated virtual camera is planned to ship with the desktop app, which is not available yet; until then, window capture in OBS is the reliable route from the browser to a stream.