obs-srt-toolkit

OBS SRT Toolkit — User Guide

This wiki is written for people using the plugin in OBS Studio, not developers building it — for implementation detail, see the GitLab repo and its README instead.

What this is

OBS SRT Toolkit is a native OBS Studio plugin that adds proper, general-purpose SRT input and output to OBS — not tied to any one downstream product, though SRT Matrix is the first real-world pairing it's been tested against, and its own OBS Setup Guide now recommends installing this plugin as the primary way to connect the two, ahead of the manual/native-OBS methods it also still documents. It replaces the older workaround of repurposing OBS's Custom FFmpeg Output to push SRT (which doesn't auto-reconnect and isn't discoverable as a real output) with two real, first-class OBS resources:

• SRT Output — a real entry under OBS's output settings, with its own dedicated dock (Docks menu → "SRT Toolkit") giving it Start/Stop control completely independent of OBS's own Start Streaming/Start Recording buttons.
• SRT Source — a real entry under Sources → + (alongside Media Source, Capture Card, etc.) for receiving an incoming SRT stream into a scene.

Both support Listener (OBS binds and waits for a connection) and Caller (OBS dials out) modes, with the usual SRT options — latency, passphrase/encryption, stream ID.

Status

Actively developed and tested against a real SRT Matrix instance (both directions — see below), but still pre-1.0: expect rough edges, and check the GitLab repo for the latest before reporting something as broken. Installers are published as GitLab Releases on tagged versions.

Installing

• Windows: download the .msi from the project's GitLab Releases page and run it — it finds your existing OBS Studio install automatically (via the registry) and installs the plugin into the right obs-plugins\64bit folder. No manual file copying needed.
• Linux: download the .tar.gz, extract it, and copy obs-srt-toolkit.so into your distro's OBS plugins directory (typically /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/obs-plugins/ on Debian/Ubuntu) — see the repo README's "Building" section for the exact path if that doesn't apply to you.

Restart OBS after installing. You should see "SRT Toolkit" appear in the Docks menu, and "SRT Source" appear in the Sources → + menu.

Using the SRT Output (send)

The SRT Output sends OBS's encoded video/audio out over SRT — think of it as an alternative to Start Streaming, aimed at production-routing tools like SRT Matrix rather than a public streaming platform.

1. Open the dock: Docks → SRT Toolkit.
2. Important — bring up an encoder first: the dock's output reuses whichever encoder OBS's own Streaming or Recording output already has configured, rather than creating a separate one. In practice this means you need to Start Streaming or Start Recording at least once before the dock's Start button has anything to attach to. It does not need to keep running — once the encoder exists, the dock's Start/Stop is fully independent of Stream/Record.
3. Set Mode:
   • Listener (bind and wait) — OBS opens a port and waits for something to connect to it. Set Port (default 14000).
   • Caller (dial out) — OBS connects out to a remote host. Set Host and Port.
4. Click Start. Status changes to "Running" once a connection is accepted/made.

Using the SRT Source (receive)

The SRT Source decodes an incoming SRT stream into a real OBS video/audio source you can put in a scene like any other source.

1. Sources → + → SRT Source, name it, click OK.
2. Set Mode (Listener/Caller), Port/Host, and any latency/passphrase/stream ID needed to match whatever's sending to it.
3. Click OK. The source starts decoding as soon as it's added to an active scene.

Under the hood this hands the connection off to OBS's own built-in FFmpeg-backed decoder (the same one behind stock OBS's Media Source) rather than a separate decode pipeline — so it inherits whatever hardware decode support your OBS install already has.

Using with SRT Matrix

This is the pairing this plugin has actually been tested against end-to-end, in both directions:

OBS as a destination (SRT Matrix pushes to OBS)

Add OBS as a station/destination in SRT Matrix (see SRT Matrix's own OBS Setup Guide). SRT Matrix always dials out to a destination, so OBS needs to be listening:

• For SRT Matrix's slot pushes (a routed source going into an OBS scene): add an SRT Source in OBS, Mode Listener, and set its port to match the slot port SRT Matrix shows on the destination's card (12000 + destination-index*10 + slot-number — SRT Matrix's own UI shows the real port per slot, use that rather than computing it by hand).
• For SRT Matrix's Program Out pull (SRT Matrix pulling OBS's own program feed back as a return/monitoring source): add an SRT Output in OBS, Mode Listener, Port 14000 — this is SRT Matrix's fixed default program-out port, so the plugin's own default port needs no changes at all for this pairing.

OBS as a source (OBS pushes into SRT Matrix)

In SRT Matrix, add a source and note its ingest port. In OBS, add an SRT Output, Mode Caller, Host = the SRT Matrix machine's address, Port = that ingest port.

Known limitations

• SRT Output needs an existing encoder (see "Using the SRT Output" above) — Stream or Record must have been started at least once first. A version with its own dedicated encoder (not shared) is a planned follow-up.
• SRT Source relies on your OBS build's own FFmpeg having SRT protocol support compiled in. Confirmed present on both official OBS Studio Windows builds and Debian/Ubuntu's packaged OBS — if your OBS was built some other way, this is worth double-checking if the source won't connect at all.

Getting help

Open an issue on the GitLab repo.