About OBS livestreaming countdown timer
We provide a fantastic and absolutely free tool to create unique countdown timers for your OBS Studio or Streamlabs livestreaming sessions. There are unlimited customization options, including a large color palette and a number of fonts, allowing you to make countdowns that properly match your overlay. A list of all possible customization features may be seen in the configurator.
What is a Countdown Timer?
A countdown timer does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a graphic timer that you add to your live video (typically at the start) that counts down to the start of your broadcast.
The main reason for this is that your live stream reaches its peak number of viewers around the 18 to 20 minute mark on Facebook and around the 10 to 15 minute mark on YouTube and 10 to 20 minutes on Twitch, and you don't want to start your main content if not everyone is watching, so the countdown timer is a great way to get attention and play into the algorithms so your live stream is discovered.
We recommend that you start your live stream with a 10 to 20 minute segment on a starting soon source with chat enabled, allowing you to garner engagement before moving on to your major material, so that you may communicate with your viewers and make the streaming experience more involved.
Why use a countdown timer in your live stream?
A countdown timer allows you to broadcast your live video with your various audiences and entice them to return to watch. It's commonly utilized for going live soon scenes and by streamers who are doing live streaming marathons, but it's most vital for establishing habits and engagement with your audience.
Who's up for a little extra interaction? I'm sure you do. Twitch and Youtube simply enjoy engagement because the algorithms love it. They see that they are beneficial to you since you are gaining engagement, which leads to sales.
We utilized a transparent background by default in the countdown timer so that you could see everything behind the words. It adds interest and may easily be customized to fit your design.
About browser sources in OBS Studio and Streamlabs
One of OBS's most adaptable sources is the browser source. It is basically a web browser that you can directly add and control from OBS. You can use this to carry out a variety of unique layout, image, video, and even audio operations. You can add directly to OBS anything that you can write to run in a standard browser.
OBS studio and Streamlabs browser source options
By default, the browser source doesn't offer many options and is rather simple. The list of options is explained below.
| Local File: | Indicates to the source whether you are loading a web page locally or remotely. |
| Width: | Sets the width of the browser page's viewport. |
| Height: | Defines the browser page's viewport height. |
| FPS: | Sets the frame rate at which the browser page will render. |
| CSS: | By default, the background is made transparent, the body's margins are eliminated, and the scroll bar is hidden, this setting overrides the default CSS style from the selected resource/web page. |
| Shutdown source when not visible: | when the source is no longer visible, unloads the page. |
| Refresh browser source when scene becomes active: | The source is reloaded after the scene is started. This feature allows you to refresh the browser source without having to interact with it because it simply refreshes each time you switch scenes. |
| Refresh cache of current page: | Clicking this will immediately refresh the page and reload any content. |