 One of my favorite pieces of software is OBS the open broadcaster software OBS is used by pretty much every video content creator We use it both to record our pre-recorded videos And of course OBS is the de facto standard for streaming streaming to platforms like YouTube twitch and other Streaming video platforms and OBS its cross-platform It's available for Windows Mac and Linux and its other big features the fact that it has a plug-in system and it has a Lot of plug-ins available now I'm not a big plug-in person when it comes to OBS because a lot of what I do on camera You know it's much more simple much more basic as far as what I need out of OBS But there are some plug-ins available for OBS that occasionally catch my eye and one that caught my eye the other day that kind of Blew me away. I was like man. I need this and not only do I need it I think a lot of you other video content creators are gonna be impressed by this and it's the zoom to mouse plug-in available for OBS So to get the OBS zoom to mouse plug-in do a search and Google for OBS zoom to mouse and the first search result is OBS zoom to mouse actually it's called OBS Lua zoom to mouse because it is a Lua script and It takes you to this page over at OBS project comm That's the official website for OBS and you can see zoom to mouse 1.0.1 Go to download if you go to download it takes you to their github page for the OBS zoom to mouse plug-in It takes you to the releases page and you can just go ahead and click on the Lua file here Or you could actually just clone the entire repository It's only just a few files here in the repo, but really you only need the one file You just need OBS zoom to mouse dot Lua. It's a simple Lua script grab this single file and place it in the Directory on your system where OBS sources scripts and on my system I'm running Arco Linux, which is based off of Arch Linux and the directory is This directory here slash user slash share slash OBS slash OBS dash plug-ins slash front-end dash tools slash scripts So it's a rather lengthy directory path by do it LS. You can see I've already grabbed OBS zoom to mouse Dot Lua, I've already placed it in this directory and then I can source it inside OBS So let me open up a second instance of OBS because I've already got one instance of OBS open Recording this video. So this will be a second instance of OBS. It's gonna ask me Do I really want to open two instances of OBS? Yes in this case? I actually do now to source the script you want to go to Tools and then to scripts and then it's gonna open up a second window which you guys can't see because the window Did not want to come to the front I think that's just a bug because it's a second instance of OBS It's kind of weird having two of them running But a pop-up window is going to appear and then what you want to do is you want to hit the plus symbol and by Default you're gonna get a file picker. It should hopefully default to the directory where OBS defaults for scripts And then you just choose the script you want to source in my case OBS zoom to mouse Lua and hit open now I've already Imported it before and you can see this window here you have various settings the most important setting for OBS zoom to mouse is What are you sourcing for the zoom effect because obviously you don't want the zoom effect to work on? every single source in your OBS right you don't want it on every single window or every single screen or every Single camera instance things like that So for me the zoom source that I want is this particular screen capture a monitor capture essentially what this is This is the source for this monitor. We're looking at which is the second of my three monitors This is the monitor. I always record when I record my desktop So it makes sense for me to do a screen capture here for the zoom source a matter of fact I would suggest pretty much defaulting to using a screen capture for the zoom effect Maybe you would do a window capture if you are constantly using one program for your videos Showcasing one single program and you know you wanted to source that and have the zoom effect on only that program Then maybe a window capture makes sense But for most people you're probably gonna want a screen capture and then you have various Settings speed settings and things like that you can play with and I did adjust this from the defaults the zoom factor by default Is set to 2.0. That is a really intense zoom I backed it off to about 1.5 because again the 2.0 zoom was a little too much for me I thought it was a little jarring the zoom speed by default. I think is 0.06 I backed it off to 0.02 because the zoom speed at the default speed was a little too fast again I just thought it was a little jarring so you can play with the speed and the zoom effect And then once you have all of that set you're gonna want to add some key bindings So if you go to file And go to settings Then you're gonna get the pop up here for your settings go to hotkeys And if you've imported the script you should have toggle zoom to mouse and toggle follow mouse during zoom These will not have a key binding set by default. You need to choose a key binding for them I chose alt plus f1 to toggle the zoom to mouse effect to turn it on and I use alt f3 to Toggle follow mouse during zoom the reason I used alt f1 and f3 Instead of alt f1 and f2 is f1 and f2 are so close together. I didn't want to accidentally hit on so I left a gap there Right alt f1 for one effect alt f3 for the other and then let me get out of obs and let me show you how this works So let's assume that I'm recording This workspace here and I've opened up a spreadsheet. Just an example spreadsheet Maybe I'm doing a video today on LibreOffice calc, which is LibreOffice spreadsheet program Now maybe I want to zoom in on a specific area of the spreadsheet because there's a lot of text maybe I'm really working with a very big spreadsheet with lots of tabled information lots of columns and I want to Specify a particular area. Maybe I want to specify this area of the spreadsheet over here Well, you see where my my mouse cursor is. Let me do alt f1 And you see we zoom right in on that right and now let me move my mouse I'm gonna move my mouse this way. Yeah, it follows my mouse. Will it follow me down? Yep follows me back up So the follow mouse is turned on when I do the alt f1, right? So it both zooms me in and it turns on the follow effect now Sometimes you don't want the follow effect because you did want to zoom in on this area But you may need to move the mouse, you know Somewhere else maybe to a different monitor and you don't want the mouse following you you can turn that off Remember we set alt f3 to turn that off to toggle that now I can move my mouse all around and I'm still zoomed in on the area I was before if I want to toggle the follow back on alt f3 will hopefully toggle that back on and it does This is just such a neat effect, right? I mean, I could see this being very useful again for detailing Something with a lot of information So if you're dealing with something with a ton of text, especially very small text Like a very big spreadsheet or something with a lot of really detailed Toolbars and menu systems such as the various LibreOffice programs Maybe you you know wanted to highlight exactly what was in you know Some of these menus or some of the the toolbars down here and again, I don't have it zoomed in that much This is the the 1.5 zoom by default. It's a 2.0 zoom So you and of course you could turn that up even more depending on you know How much of a zoom effect you want to do let me alt f1 to turn that back off So that is the OBS zoom to follow plug-in. It's such a Neat little plug-in. I wanted to share it with you guys because I know a lot of you guys that do watch my content Many of you have your own YouTube channels You make your own video content and you probably have a use for this particular plug-in now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode and of course I'm talking about Gabe James Matt Paul Steve West Arkotic armor dragon commander angry George Lee Matthew Snate Erion Paul peace archer for door reality's for less we're a profit roll and so last three tools devil or Gentoo and Ubuntu and Willie These guys they're my high steered patrons over on patreon without these guys this quick look at the zoom to mouse plug-in for OBS Would not have been possible the shows also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen all these names You're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors I'm sponsored by you guys the community if you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux free and open-source software like OBS Subscribe to distro tube over on patreon. Peace guys