Open Broadcaster Software

Free, open source software for live streaming and recording

Main Window

Scenes

Sources

Features

Basic Settings

Advanced Settings

Window Capture

Select the desired Window you want to capture. (With Aero on, this will only capture the window itself, and not any windows on top. With aero off, it will capture windows on top, this is a windows design limitation)

Settings

Capture mouse cursor

Deactivate this to hide the mouse cursor.

Capture Layered Windows

Activate the capture of overlapping windows.

Compatibility Mode

Captures to RAM before uploading to the scene. This mode is primarily as a last-resort option for multi-GPU laptops and systems where capturing has issues

Gamma

Change the Gamma of your capture.

Opacity

Change the visibility of your capture.

Use point filtering

Uses point filtering for image resizing.

Sub-Region

Sub-Region

Activate the Sub-Region (crop) selection

Position

Set Position in Pixels.

Set Size in Pixels.

Select Region

Select the Size of your screen region by resizing the white rectangle to your liking.

Color Key

Use Color Key

Activate the Color Keying.

Color

Select the Color to chroma out.

Similarity

How much the selected color is allowed to vary. A higher value, means it can vary more.

Blend

Specified how much to smooth out the edges chroma keyed color. A higher value means smoother edges.

Open Broadcaster Software created by these lovely folk

Website created by Warchamp7 — Help File created by Jack0r

How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue

In OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software), the capture window allows you to capture what is being displayed on your screen. You can capture the footage from any window on your computer and include it in your stream broadcast.

You could use this to capture the footage from a game during a live playthrough, capture the footage from Photoshop when you’re streaming your work in progress art, or capture the footage from some software as you stream a live tutorial for it.

OBS makes it easy to capture your window and this can all be set up with just a few clicks (click “Add Source” and follow the prompts). However, sometimes OBS breaks, preventing your window from being captured properly or making it so that you can’t see (and confirm) what footage is being broadcast.

What is the OBS Capture Window Black Issue?

The OBS capture window black issue isn’t an uncommon problem. Users say that when they’ve tried to capture footage from the Chrome window on their desktop, in OBS, it just shows up as a black screen.

However, it’s not just in Chrome. Some have also said that they have experienced the problem when trying to record or stream footage of their games. The games themselves are running as expected (according to posts about the issue on forums and on social media), but they aren’t showing up properly in OBS.

The issue means that when OBS users go to start streaming on Twitch, there are large black blocks in their broadcasts. A screenshot of the black capture window issue shows how one OBS user ran into the problem when trying to capture footage from a Chrome window, in order to display their Twitch alerts.

If the issue persists then it means that your viewers aren’t able to see what you’re playing, what you’re looking at on Chrome (if that’s part of your stream), and features of your stream that rely upon Chrome Window Capture won’t be available.

You will have to fix the problem and make OBS capture the footage in your windows properly so that you can broadcast professional, good-looking streams.

How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue

There are several reasons why OBS is unable to run a capture window properly and why the footage from the window is being displayed as black. There are several different ways to fix the issue and we’ve outlined the most common reasons for the issue and the most common fixes here.

How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue With Chrome

Most people who have come across the OBS capture window issue say that they’ve experienced the problem with Google Chrome. The content of their tabs just refuses to show up and is replaced by a black screen.

The reason for this is something called “hardware acceleration.”

Chrome is a very intensive piece of software and Google uses a feature called hardware acceleration to make the most of your hardware and help Chrome to run properly. Chrome sends most of the graphical tasks to your computer’s GPU. By doing this, it frees up the CPU of your computer to handle other tasks. The GPU is also best equipped for these graphical tasks and should help to boost Chrome’s performance.

However, hardware acceleration may also be why OBS is unable to properly capture what’s being displayed in the Chrome window. Disabling hardware acceleration takes just a handful of clicks.

Click the three horizontal dots in the right-hand corner of Chrome to open the menu

Select “Settings” (it’s towards the bottom of the list)

Scroll down to the bottom of the Settings page and select “Advanced”

Under Advanced, find the category called “System” (it’s near the bottom)

Uncheck “Use hardware acceleration when available”

Once you’ve done this, restart Chrome and restart OBS so that the changes are reflected. Try using window capture on Chrome to see if the issue has been fixed.

How to Fix the OBS Capture Window Black Issue With Games

OBS users may also experience the capture window black issue when trying to capture gameplay footage. There are lots of potential causes for this problem with games, but we’ve listed fixes for the most likely causes below.

Disable Windows 10 Game Mode

When the Windows 10 Creators Update was released in 2017, it added a feature called Game Mode. Game Mode is designed to improve the process of your computer when playing games. Although it is a useful feature, many streamers have reported that it interferes with their broadcasts.

In our guide to streaming Apex Legends , we recommend disabling Game Mode because it can direct GPU resources away from OBS and cause viewer-side sluggishness. Game Mode may also be the reason for the OBS capture window black issue.

To disable Game Mode in Windows 10, you can go into the Settings menu, type “Game Mode” in the search bar, and toggle the feature off. Then, restart your computer to make sure the changes have been performed and OBS will no longer be affected by it.

Capture Footage With Game Capture, Not Window Capture

Another solution that may work, is if you tell OBS to capture the gameplay footage with the Game Capture option, not the Window Capture option. Game Capture is designed for capturing gameplay footage and is recommended.

You’ll also want to put the game in full-screen mode, not windowed or borderless.

Run OBS as an Administrator

Our final suggestion for fixing the OBS capture window black issue is to run OBS as an administrator. Running a program as an administrator in Windows 10 is a standard process.

Just right-click on the OBS icon (or wherever it’s listed in your computer’s files) and select “Run as Administrator.” Follow the prompts to run OBS as an administrator.

How OBS.Live Supercharges Your Streaming

Capturing window footage is just one awesome feature that you get from OBS Studio, but why not take it to the next level? StreamElements OBS.Live is an add-on (not an OBS alternative or a fork) that supercharges your streaming by adding lots of helpful features:

Activity Feed and Chat integrated into OBS

Media Request, to let your viewers suggest YouTube videos to play during your stream

Alerts Management (skip, replay, and mute)

Custom Bot Name

Access all of your favorite StreamElements tools like Tipping, Chat Bot, and more

Legendary Support, 24/7

For more help with streaming or using OBS.Live, message us on social media and join our fun and friendly Discord community. Other StreamElements users are happy to answer your questions and our legendary support team is on hand 24/7 too.

YouTube
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for helpful video tutorials going over the basics, features, and news on upcoming, or new features. StreamElements is always working hard to make streaming better for YOU.

Open Broadcaster Software

Free, open source software for live streaming and recording

Main Window

Scenes

Sources

Features

Basic Settings

Advanced Settings

Window Capture

Select the desired Window you want to capture. (With Aero on, this will only capture the window itself, and not any windows on top. With aero off, it will capture windows on top, this is a windows design limitation)

Settings

Capture mouse cursor

Deactivate this to hide the mouse cursor.

Capture Layered Windows

Activate the capture of overlapping windows.

Compatibility Mode

Captures to RAM before uploading to the scene. This mode is primarily as a last-resort option for multi-GPU laptops and systems where capturing has issues

Gamma

Change the Gamma of your capture.

Opacity

Change the visibility of your capture.

Use point filtering

Uses point filtering for image resizing.

Sub-Region

Sub-Region

Activate the Sub-Region (crop) selection

Position

Set Position in Pixels.

Set Size in Pixels.

Select Region

Select the Size of your screen region by resizing the white rectangle to your liking.

Color Key

Use Color Key

Activate the Color Keying.

Color

Select the Color to chroma out.

Similarity

How much the selected color is allowed to vary. A higher value, means it can vary more.

Blend

Specified how much to smooth out the edges chroma keyed color. A higher value means smoother edges.

Open Broadcaster Software created by these lovely folk

Website created by Warchamp7 — Help File created by Jack0r

Game Capture Guide

This guide is specifically for configuring the Game Capture Source properly, and goes over basic troubleshooting if things may not be working. Follow the Game Capture link for an overview of Game Capture and some basic info about it, come back to this page if you are having any issues with it working. There are several issues which you can run into getting a Game Capture working properly.

Sections of this guide:

How To Set Up Game Capture

In your Sources Box, select the + and choose Game Capture, it will bring up the window below

Add a new source named after your game, or select one from the list if you have previously added game captures from other scenes in the current scene collection. Note that it is recommended to only have one game capture source per scene if you are specifying each game individually, otherwise use the methods outlined in the Sources Guide for hotkey mode.

Once you have the properties window open, decide which Mode you would like, remember that Fullscreen will simply capture any fullscreen game, capture specific window (as shown below) lets you specify the exact game you want. If you choose that method, the game must be on, then select it’s name in the Window dropdown

For the options you can check, it’s generally a good idea to leave them on the default as shown. SLI Capture often causes game capture to break if it’s not a specific hardware setup.

If you change games often, try out the hotkey mode, which lets you press a key to select your active game. Otherwise create individual scenes with the single game capture set to specified window to keep scenes clean.

Most of the time, your game capture should work once you apply the changes in the Game Capture Properties window, and it will show up in your OBS preview if you have the source selected and the game active. If it doesn’t, continue on for troubleshooting and common resolutions.

Common Resolutions for Game Capture Issues

Here are some common things to look for or do if you are running into problems getting a game capture source to show up.

• Run OBS as admin. A lot of games requires this for them to be captured, such as Call of Duty, Valorant, and others. This will also help with performance in some cases.
• Check for Known Conflicts, such as overlays, FPS counters, Anti-virus programs, etc.
• Certain games, like Destiny 2 and CS:GO do not allow OBS to hook in with game capture. We recommend running the game in either windowed or borderless fullscreen and using a Window Capture source instead. Emulators and older games may also need window capture.
• If a game is set to run in full-screen mode, when you alt+tab out the game, it will stop rendering. This means that you will not see the game in OBS while it is minimized. Either make a test recording and check it to verify the capture worked properly, or move OBS to a second monitor if you have one.
• Certain DX12 games, like Fortnite when running on DX12 mode, may cause the game to crash if run with OBS, and DX12 capture may sometimes have weird frame issues, due to the graphics API. If the game has DX11 API it is recommended to try that option to see if problems resolve.
• If you are using a laptop, make sure your OBS and the game you are running are using the High-performance GPU, per the instructions here. OBS and most games should do this by default, but certain games, like Minecraft Java and osu! default to the iGPU on multi-gpu systems. Use the method linked to change games to the high-performance GPU, then restart the game and OBS.
• Trying to capture League Of Legends? — To best capture League of Legends, create two scenes.
  In the first scene, add a Window Capture of the LoL launcher/lobby (Windows 7 users should make sure Aero is enabled.).
  In the second scene, add a Game Capture of the game itself (you may need to be in a game to add this for the first time).
  Then configure the Scene Switcher to automatically swap between them.
• Sometimes you may see the red dot in the upper left corner of your preview with a game capture source, select the source in your list and press Ctrl+R then Ctrl+f to reset than fit the source to your preview screen.

If at this point you are still having issues, please use either the OBS Discord or the Forums, explain your issue/troubleshooting steps in detail, and provide a current OBS log.