Tutorial: Adding Live Captions to Twitch Streams with OBS

Did you know that Twitch offers built-in captions, similar to YouTube? With a single click, viewers can activate real-time transcriptions for your live streams or VODs, whether they’re on desktop or mobile. Captions are displayed natively on Twitch without the need for extensions.

This feature is valuable for various reasons—viewers may speak a different language, have hearing impairments, or find themselves in environments where audio isn’t practical. This guide will walk you through creating a more inclusive, accessible, and engaging livestream by enabling live captions for your audience.

Setting Up Closed Captions Plugin in OBS

To set up live captions in OBS, start by ensuring OBS is closed. Download the latest Closed Captions Plugin for your operating system from the releases section. Extract the contents and copy the obs-plugins folder to your OBS installation folder (usually located at C:\Program Files\obs-studio).

Open OBS and find “Cloud Closed Captions” in the Tools menu. In the Captions Preview window, click on Settings and choose your audio source for captioning. For accurate results, select the OBS audio source containing only your microphone. Adjust the “Caption When” option to your preference, such as captioning when the microphone is heard on stream.

Customize settings like language, enable the Profanity Filter, and decide where captions should appear (only on streams or also on local recordings). Leave other settings at defaults to avoid issues with Twitch display.

Additional Functionalities and Testing

Explore additional functionalities in other tabs, such as saving transcripts or making text replacements. Save your settings and enable live captions by checking the “Captioning Enabled” box. The plugin uses Google’s Speech-To-Text Cloud API, offering nearly instantaneous transcriptions with a brief delay.

For live testing, ensure captions are working correctly by opening the Captions Dock in OBS. This dock can be positioned within your OBS window for easy monitoring while live.

How Viewers Enable Captions

Viewers can enable captions by clicking the CC button on the Twitch player. They have control over caption appearance, including text and background colors, font, size, alignment, position, and opacity. This customization ensures a tailored experience for each viewer.

Captions aren’t limited to live streams; they are also available for Twitch VODs after the stream ends, enhancing content accessibility. Streamers can educate viewers through chat commands or timers on enabling or disabling captions for the best viewing experience.

Captioning for Dual-PC Setups

For those using a dual PC setup, tweak configurations to optimize captioning:

1. Create a new Audio Input Capture source in OBS, using the microphone-only device.
2. Set the Caption Source to this new microphone-only source, ensuring clean audio for captioning.
3. Set Caption When to “Mute Source is heard on stream,” ensuring captions activate only when the selected mute source is heard.
4. Set Mute Source to the mixed audio OBS source that the stream hears, syncing captions with unmuted audio.

Summary:

Integrating live captions into Twitch streams enhances audience reach, viewer engagement, and content accessibility. With a straightforward OBS plugin, streamers can offer real-time transcriptions without additional extensions. For viewers, enabling captions is as simple as clicking the CC button on the Twitch player. Educating viewers about these features ensures everyone can make the most of the streaming experience—whether you’re a streamer expanding your reach or a viewer catching every word of your favorite streamer’s commentary, live captions are a game-changer.