Clipmaster Build 9 Manual (Updated 2021-01-11)

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Setup

  1. Enable the Replay Buffer in OBS (Output -> Replay Buffer -> Enable Replay Buffer).
  2. Set a hotkey in OBS to save the replay buffer (Hotkeys -> Replay Buffer -> Save Replay).
  3. Open Clipmaster. Add your OBS recording directory as a replay monitoring path.
  4. Press your save replay hotkey to test that Clipmaster detects the created file.
  5. Left click on the clip thumbnail in Clipmaster to produce a file at output\output.mkv.
  6. Add a media source in OBS and point it to output\output.mkv.

It is recommended to enable the following options for your media source in OBS:
Restart playback when source becomes active
Show nothing when playback ends
Close file when inactive

Basic Usage

Clipmaster works by monitoring for video files produced by the OBS replay buffer, copying them into its own library, and then providing static file paths for you to use in your replay scene.

Selection mode can be toggled in the top left. In Single mode, output is processed immediately when you click on a clip in the library. In Multi mode, clips are added to a queue in the output panel, and are combined into one file when processed (montage).

You can create multiple categories (tabs) to organize your clips. If you have multiple monitoring or output paths, they can individually be linked to a specific category.

Output Settings

Clipmaster provides a number of features to modify or enhance the output. You can enable up to six output paths (output1.mkv, output2.mkv, output3.mkv, etc) with different settings on each one. Each output can be assigned a custom name, and this name will be used for the created files (e.g. “Montage.mkv”).

Custom names and output settings can be changed by clicking on the pencil icon to the left of the name.

Audio Track Selection (“Track”)
Choose which audio track from the source clips will be used for the output. OBS includes basic routing of audio sources to specific audio tracks, and this can be used to create a track with “clean” audio (e.g. by setting up a second track in OBS that only has game audio, with no commentary).

Slow Motion (“Slow”)
Slows the playback rate of the output (slow motion).

Mute
Discards any audio from the source clips.

Music
Embeds an external audio file of your choice in the output. If mute is enabled, only the music audio will be used. Otherwise the music will be mixed with the audio of the source clips.

Crossfade Video Transition
Multiclip can optionally use effects to seamlessly transition between clips in a montage, such as white/black screen flash, radial and directional wipes, and pixelize.

Encoder Settings

Clipmaster supports both X264 (CPU) and NVENC (GPU) encoding engines. Most operations in the current build require encoding the output, with the exception of outputting a single clip with no modification.

X264
Constant Rate Factor is the target quality. 17 is the default and considered indistinguishable from source.
Encoding Preset determines how hard the encoder will work to compress the file. Slower options will reduce file size and increase CPU usage (only affects quality if bitrate limit is enabled).
CPU Thread Limit will limit the number of threads available to the encoder. Use if Clipmaster impacts your streaming performance (and NVENC is not an option).

NVENC
Constant Quality is the target quality. 19 is the default and considered indistinguishable from source.

Clip Editor

The integrated clip editor allows you to trim your clips on-the-fly. The in and out timestamps are saved non-destructively, and only applied to the output as it is processed.

The editor can be accessed by right clicking on any clip. Clipmaster may freeze for several seconds the first time the editor is loaded.

Key legend
] Set in point
[ Set out point
]‹ Move cursor to in point
›[ Move cursor to out point
▶️ Play preview
I▶️ Advance cursor by one frame
Clear removes the saved in and out points

Automatic Scene Switching (“Auto”)

Clipmaster supports automatic scene switching via the obs-websocket plugin. When enabled, OBS will automatically switch to your designated replay scene when an output is produced, and then back to the previous scene when the playback duration of that output has elapsed.

Once you have installed obs-websocket in OBS and successfully connected, the Auto button will appear in the output panel.

Troubleshooting

If your OBS replay buffer files are not being detected by Clipmaster, make sure they have unique file names (for example by including timestamps) and are not being overwritten by OBS. The file names must start with “Replay”.

Known Issues