Advanced Uses

This page details how to take advantage of various advanced uses and features of Firebot.

Overlay Instances

By default, all effects that use the overlay (videos, images, etc) show up in the same overlay. However there are some cases where you might want to have certain effects go to separate overlays.

The biggest use for this is if you have some videos that require a chroma key (greenscreen) filter in your broadcasting software, but you don't want to also apply that filter to everything else that shows up in the overlay. In this case, it would be useful to have a second instance of the overlay that only the chroma key videos would be sent to. This way you could apply the chroma key filter to just that overlay and leave the other one untouched.

Enabling Overlay Instances

To enable overlay instances, in Firebot go to Settings > Advanced > and set Overlay Instances to On.

Creating An Instance

Once overlay instances are enabled, an Edit Instances button will appear next to the setting dropdown. Clicking on that button will open the Edit Instances screen.

To add a new instance, click the Create Instance button, enter a name for the new instance, and then click Create.

Getting The New URL

Now that you've created an instance, you will see your new instance listed along with a View URL button. This button will show you the updated url for the new instance that you will need to use in your broadcasting software. Remember not to replace your current overlay in your broadcasting software, instead create a new browser source for the new instance.

Note

Due to how the url for these instances is generated, some broadcasting software wont let you select the overlay as a "local file". Instead have the broadcasting software treat the filepath to the overlay as a regular URL. If you are using OBS and do this, you must set Overlay Compatibility to Other in Firebot. Make sure to do this for both the default overlay and any extra instances you create.

Updating Effects

Now that you have created and set up your instance, you can now direct specific effects to that instance. The three effects that support instances are: Show Video, Show Image, and Show HTML.

Simply click Edit on any button that has an effect that you want to update, expand the effect, and look for the new Overlay Instance dropdown (typically towards the bottom). Select the instance that you want to use and click Save.

Now the next time this button is triggered, that effect will only show up on that specific overlay instance.

Things To Note

If you turn off Overlay Instances in the settings, all effects will be sent to the default overlay again automatically. If you re-enable the feature, any effects that were previously sent to a different instance will resume being sent there.

If you delete an instance, all effects that were using that instance will automatically be sent to the default one again.