Advance through a list of scenes by hotkey
The intention of the article is to set up a hotkey to cycle through a list of predefined scene switches, advancing to the next scene each time the key is pressed, similar to advancing the slides in a PowerPoint presentation.
There are multiple approaches of achieving this effect:
- The approach which will be described first is solely relying on macros and is most useful if you only have a handful of scenes or possibly want to introduce more complex logic into your setup later on. (Macro Sequence)
- The second approach which will be explained is relying on a combination of macros and scene groups, which can be useful if you have a very large set of scenes you want to advance through. (Scene Group)
The following example will just use two scenes, "A" and "B", but you can of course expand upon this to your needs.
First a macro needs to be created for the first scene "A" to be switched to similar to the one below:
Next another macro needs to be created for the scene switch to scene "B":
Finally a last macro needs to be created which is responsible for calling these created macros each time a hotkey is pressed.
The "Hotkey" condition is used to create a new hotkey with the name "Toggle A and B", which when pressed will run the macros actions.
The key binding for this hotkey can be defined in OBS' settings window in the "Hotkeys" section.
The "Sequence" action is used to run one macro of a list of macros, advancing to the next item on the list the next time it is being run - so just what we need. Once adding this action we need to press the "+" symbol and add our previously defined macros "Switch to scene A" and "Switch to scene B".
Finally it is recommended - but not necessary - to check the "Run macro in parallel to other macros" option at the top of the Macro tab for this particular macro to avoid "queueing" up hotkey presses resulting in multiple consecutive scene switches.
The following example will just use three scenes, "test1", "test2", and "test3" and the preview scene will be change, but you can of course expand upon and change this to your needs.
As a first step you will have to create a new scene group which will contain all your desired scenes.
The important settings are "Type: Count" and "Advance to next scene after 1 matches", which will make sure to advance to the next scene in the list of scenes each time "Example Scene Group" is being chosen as the target of a scene switch action.
Next you will have to create a macro which will change the currently active preview scene to the "Example Scene Group".
In the following example a hotkey named "Advance to next scene" is used to trigger the preview scene change:
Finally it is recommended - but not necessary - to check the "Run macro in parallel to other macros" option at the top of the Macro tab for this particular macro to avoid "queueing" up hotkey presses resulting in multiple consecutive scene switches.