OBS "video output is currently active" after installing Spout2

[Cidriel]

just had this happen to me after a fresh reinstall of VTS and the Spout2 plugin. I wasn't able to change video or output stream settings in OBS Studio. at the bottom of the Video settings window it said:
"Video output is currently active. Please turn off any outputs to change video settings."

except I had no virtual camera, stream, or recording active. the only thing I was capturing was the newly made Spout2 source coming from VTS.

I had to go to the top menu in OBS:
Tools > Spout Output Settings
turned off Auto-start and hit Stop on the pop-up to disable this, and only then could I once again change relevant OBS settings.

not sure why this was enabled by default since VTS is using this for Input *into* OBS, not Output *from* OBS and I realize it's not under the control of this dev, but wanted to post about it since I didn't see anyone else mention it and it could feasibly affect others. I wasted a solid half hour reinstalling thinking I had messed something else up.

[Denchi]

Interesting... Wonder how that happened. The Spout2 plugin definitely never had output auto-start enabled for me.

I'll add it to the FAQ/troubleshooting page, thanks for letting me know.

[Cidriel]

Originally posted by Denchi:

Interesting... Wonder how that happened. The Spout2 plugin definitely never had output auto-start enabled for me.

I'll add it to the FAQ/troubleshooting page, thanks for letting me know.

that would be great! I looked through scattered documentation for Spout2 from the project github page and couldn't find any mention of this happening either. having it prominent and searchable will hopefully help anyone else who gets this weird one-off issue. much appreciated!

[x.miharu]

I was looking up some stuff as i had this issue. But i just realised that despite ticking off autostart, it continues to turn it back on everytime i restart OBS.. really odd.

[Cidriel]

Originally posted by x.miharu:

I was looking up some stuff as i had this issue. But i just realised that despite ticking off autostart, it continues to turn it back on everytime i restart OBS.. really odd.

I haven't used OBS Studio much since I made this post, but I just booted it up when I saw this reply notification. I was running 31.0.0, and it wasn't set to auto-start. then I updated to 31.0.3 and restarted OBS Studio and the auto-start box is still empty, and I'm not getting the error I initially reported on.

just for the sake of troubleshooting, I tried a few different options to see if I could replicate the behavior. documenting my steps below and the results.

[attempt A]
Settings:
AutoStart - Disabled
Spout - Stopped
After Closing/Reopening OBS:
AutoStart - Disabled
Spout - Stopped

[attempt B]
Settings:
AutoStart - Disabled
Spout - Started
After Closing/Reopening OBS:
AutoStart - Enabled
Spout - Started

[attempt C]
Settings:
AutoStart - Enabled
Spout - Stopped
After Closing/Reopening OBS:
AutoStart - Enabled
Spout - Started

make sure you're clicking Stop before you close the settings popup and that AutoStart is also unchecked, because it seems that if you do one and not the other, it will enable AutoStart again.

if you are doing that and it's still enabling AutoStart after you exit and come back, I'd call that a bug for sure, as it's not expected behavior on my end.

--EDIT--

I just opened up OBS since I actually wanted to use it, and noticed that despite me disabling both options again after Attempt C above, the options were enabled again!

confused, I tried both unchecking AutoStart first, *then* hitting Stop, and restarting. but the options were enabled again.

tried hitting Stop first, then AutoStart. same thing.

finally, I unchecked AutoStart and then hit Start/Stop 3 times each before landing on Stop one last time, and this time OBS respected the settings and they were both off on a final restart.

something is definitely wonky, and I wish someone could pinpoint if it's Spout2 doing this, or something about the way OBS is interacting with the plugin. it can't be that hard for it to save a couple of variables in a config file somewhere.

that said, I found an update to the Spout2 plugin on github from a week ago that changed the way the plugin stores settings and the directory it's installed to, but even after uninstalling the old version and updating to the new one it's still behaving weird, so I'm just going to post to their Issues section and hope to get some answers.

[Cidriel]

I went and posted a bug report on the Spout2 plugin github if anyone else wants to chime in to bring attention to this issue.

https://github.com/Off-World-Live/obs-spout2-plugin/issues/80