OBS 3.2 Deep Dive — AV1 Pipeline, Vertical Sources, On-Chain Tipping

The biggest OBS release since 28. AV1 hardware encoding is finally usable, vertical sources are first-class, and crypto tipping ships natively.

OBS Studio 3.2 is the biggest release since the WebRTC overhaul in 28. AV1 hardware encoding on Intel Arc, NVIDIA Blackwell and Radeon RDNA4 is now stable; the bitrate savings at the same quality level are real, around 28% on a tight gameplay scene.

Vertical sources are first-class objects in the scene tree. You can have a single project with both 16:9 and 9:16 outputs running simultaneously off shared sources, with a one-click swap between primary outputs.

On-chain tipping is the surprise inclusion. The new Tipping plugin folder ships native receivers for USDC on Base and Solana Pay, with a built-in alerts overlay that does not require a third-party widget service.