OBS Replay Companion

A minimalistic and efficient application for OBS Studio, designed to capture your best gaming moments with a simple hotkey, without compromising performance.

🎯 Our Goal

The primary goal of OBS Replay Companion is to provide a lightweight, fast, and stable solution for saving instant gameplay clips. Unlike some built-in or third-party clipping tools, this application is optimized to minimize performance impact, ensuring a smooth experience for both streaming and recording.

🚀 Key Features

• Instant Clipping: Save your last few minutes of gameplay with a single, customizable hotkey.
• Performance Optimized: The application is built to be lean and efficient, with a minimal footprint on your CPU and GPU.
• Game-Specific Folders: Clips are automatically organized into folders based on the game you're playing, making them easy to find.
• Simple & Intuitive UI: A clean and straightforward user interface that integrates seamlessly with your OBS setup.

🛠️ How to Use and Setup

Follow these simple steps to get started with OBS Replay Companion.

1. Download and Installation (Pre-built)

If you're a user who just wants to get started, this is the easiest way.

1. Download the latest pre-built package from the Releases page.
2. Extract all files from the downloaded .zip and copy them directly into your main OBS Studio installation folder. The default location is C:\Program Files\obs-studio.
3. Navigate to C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit and create a new folder named saved.
4. Move the following two files into this new saved folder:
   • frontend-tools.dll
   • frontend-tools.pdb

2. Building from Source

For developers or those who want to compile their own version of the application, follow these steps.

1. Follow the official OBS Studio build guide for Windows to set up your environment and dependencies. You can find the guide here: Build Instructions for Windows.

2. After you've set up the build environment and cloned the main OBS repository, move your OBS build inside the external folder** of the OBS Studio source tree. Your file structure should look like this:

OBSReplayCompanion/
├── build/
├── external/
│   ├── glfw/
│   ├── obs-studio/ <-- Your OBS build goes here
├── src/
│   ├── AudioDeviceFetcher.cpp
│   ├── MainWindow.h
│   └── ... (your project files)
├── ...

3. Follow the rest of the OBS build guide to compile the OBS Studio project.

4. Once the build is complete, you can find the necessary files in the build/rundir/ directory. Proceed with building the obs replay companion files and you'll be all set by finding your built files at OBSReplayCompanion/build/debug.

⚙️ Behind the Scenes: Optimizations

This application is built with a focus on performance and reliability. Here are some of the key optimizations that make it so efficient:

• Asynchronous Clipping: When you press the hotkey, the clipping process happens in the background. It doesn't block the main OBS thread, preventing any potential stutters or frame drops.
• Direct Buffer Access: Instead of using complex video recording pipelines, the app directly accesses the OBS buffer to save clips, which is incredibly fast and efficient.
• Minimal Overhead: The code is written in C++ and uses OBS's core APIs directly, ensuring that the application only uses the resources it absolutely needs.

🤝 Contributing

This is an open-source project, and contributions are welcome! If you'd like to help improve OBS Replay Companion, please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.