stream-concern user guide

stream-concern is a live streaming and recording application. This guide covers the app as it exists today on macOS: capturing your screen, cameras, capture cards, media files and images into scenes, mixing audio, and sending the result to a streaming service or a recording on disk.

macOS is the platform that is validated end to end today. Windows and Linux screen-capture backends exist and compile, but are not yet runtime-verified; cameras, capture cards and system-audio capture are macOS-only for now. Each page marks per-OS support where it differs and says what this build does not do.

Pages

• Getting started — install, first launch, the macOS permissions the app needs, and where your profile, scenes and logs live.

• Settings — draft edits, Apply/Cancel, base canvas, audio devices, output defaults, conflicts, and save errors.

• Profiles — one set of settings, outputs, stream keys and scenes per show: making, switching, exporting and importing profiles.

• Sources — every entry in the Add source pull-down (displays, windows, webcams, capture cards, media files, images, text overlays, RTMP Server, Syphon/NDI interchange, the test pattern), what each OS supports, and each source’s properties.

  • Selecting a region by dragging — draw a display’s region instead of typing it; on Linux, on a still of the display, applied as a crop.

• Capture cards — which cards work on Windows, Linux and macOS, adding a card with its audio, the per-card audio sync, deinterlacing, 10-bit HDR on Windows, and Blackmagic DeckLink builds.

• Web overlays — browser layers (chat, alerts, widgets): when they run at full rate, the background rate, Reload, crash and reconnect recovery, and the memory ceiling.

• Alert simulator — test follows, subscriptions, donations and raids in a web overlay’s alert box without going live.

• News crawl — a news-channel ticker layer: scrolling lanes, a badge, headline or clock over them, and items from a text file you edit while live.

• Make your own crawl template — design a crawl from an empty band in the Crawl designer: lanes, pinned badges and clocks, shapes and gradients, dragging on the preview, and sharing templates as files.

• Scenes and the canvas editor — the scene list, scene transitions, the layer stack, and placing and sizing layers by direct manipulation.

• Undo and redo — which scene and layer edits can be undone, and which cannot.

• Audio and the mixer — mixer strips, the dB fader, meters, filters, desktop and application audio, multi-channel devices, monitoring, and the microphone input.

• Silence on this Mac — keep a game’s or the system’s audio off your speakers while the stream and recordings still carry it (macOS 14.2+).

• Windows and layout — the docked panels, detaching the mixer into its own window, mixer scrolling, which tool windows open outside the main window, and where their size and position are remembered.

• Outputs: streaming and recording — the Outputs panel, adding destinations and recordings, canvas presets, rate control, Twitch test mode, sharing an encoder, and running several outputs at once.

• Casting to a TV — a Cast output on a Chromecast (every platform) or an Apple TV (macOS), and watching it without a TV in Safari or VLC.

• Dynamic bitrate and reconnecting — how a stream follows a slow upload and comes back after a dropped connection.

• Control surfaces: MIDI and keyboard shortcuts — the actions a controller can run, the default keyboard shortcuts, and setting up a MIDI controller with Learn.

• Remote control: Stream Deck, Companion and OBS-compatible websocket controllers — the OBS-compatible websocket server (obs-websocket 5), which Stream Deck plugins to use, the password, and what a controller can do.

• Recording — containers, encoders, ProRes, quality presets, filename templates, split policy, where files land, and A/V sync.

• Versions and licences — the 30-day alpha, what happens when an alpha build stops, your alpha access link, and entering a licence.

• Privacy and diagnostics — the Send diagnostics switch, what is and is never sent, Show what was sent, and Help debug a problem with its support code.

For diagnosing problems (logs, permissions, stream failures, crash recovery), see ../troubleshooting.md.