"Woops, OBS has crashed!" on OBS exit after update to 1.34.0

[mmotti]

Operating System Info

Windows 11

Other OS

No response

OBS Studio Version

32.1.2 (64-bit)

Advanced Scene Switcher Version

1.34.0

Plugin settings

No response

OBS Studio Log URL

https://obsproject.com/logs/otKVfuFBgAZ7O7Az, https://obsproject.com/logs/GUltuAkZDnqfDCk1

OBS Studio Crash Log URL

https://obsproject.com/logs/crashes/YwOLz8ID9PBrAkxv

Expected Behavior

Close OBS
No Crash

Current Behavior

Close OBS
"Woops, OBS has crashed!

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install 1.34.0
2. Open OBS
3. Close OBS

Anything else we should know?

No issues on 1.33.1.

Disabling advanced-scene-switcher in Tools -> Plug-in manager also stops this from occurring (after this initial restart post changes).

Very basic macros to enable / disable replay buffer on game hook.

Crash 2026-05-26 00-55-56.txt

adv-ss-Base-2026.05.26.01.09.19.txt

[WarmUpTill]

Sorry if I am missing something, but both log files you shared show that version 1.33.1 of the plugin is running still:

01:01:14.455: [adv-ss] version: 1.33.1

01:01:38.518: [adv-ss] version: 1.33.1

Can you try uninstalling the plugin completely and then re-installing version 1.34.0 again?
Starting with version 1.34.0 the plugin installation directory has been moved from C:\Program Files\obs-studio to C:\ProgramData\obs-studio, as recommended in https://obsproject.com/kb/plugins-guide.
Maybe something went wrong during the migration to the new directory.

[mmotti]

Sorry if I am missing something, but both log files you shared show that version 1.33.1

That’s odd - I ran the installer for 1.34.0 with 1.33.1 already installed so presumably it should have replaced it.

I’ll give it another try (this time uninstalling first) when I can get back to my PC and see what happens.

[mmotti]

Crash 2026-05-26 11-23-43.txt

Current Log File: https://obsproject.com/logs/OuA63KP2J7LwDKxd
Previous Log FIle: https://obsproject.com/logs/XIav9RHuMDb5MnOR
Previous Crash Report: https://obsproject.com/logs/crashes/BsENJ1MbFJttJ7OL

--

I think the confusion for the last report could be that I generated the error reports etc after installing the old plugin again; perhaps wrongly assuming that it would have still shown the new version of the plugin in the crash reports.

These reports are generated with a fresh install of Advanced Scene Switcher prior to reverting it.

1.33.1 works fine for me whereas 1.34.0 does not.

Edit: "Works" as in doesn't crash or error on OBS exit.
Edit: Also ignore the fact that the audio interface can't be found; it's powered down.

[WarmUpTill]

Thanks for the clarification!

Hmm .. strange.
Unfortunately, I am not able to reproduce the crash on my side, yet.

I gave it a try with ...:

• The game capture source not capturing anything
• The game capture source capturing a game
• Exiting OBS while the replay buffer is still active
• Exiting OBS while the replay buffer is no longer active

Is there a specific scenario I might have missed which triggers the crash on exit on your side?

[mmotti]

So for me when I replicate this:

• OBS is literally sitting at a fresh launch state
• No game is hooked, replay buffer is not running
• Game capture source is enabled (so displaying just a black screen)

I have just made an interesting observation: https://streamable.com/7wwkw1

There seems to be some direct conflict between advanced scene switcher 1.34.0 and the StreamDeck OBS plugin. This doesn't happen with 1.33.1

[WarmUpTill]

I can confirm that I do see the crash when I install the latest version of the StreamDeck OBS plugin.
At least on my side the StreamDeck plugin seems to be leaking resources, which is likely causing the crash:

14:11:54.022: Number of memory leaks: 1

(All plugins were disabled except the StreamDeck plugin when I checked for the leak in the OBS log)
Do you see the same leak on your side?

I didn't see the leak with whatever version of the StreamDeck plugin I was using before.

I assume you see this issue now with version 1.34.0, because the shutdown handling / cleanup of the Advanced Scene Switcher plugin was slightly reworked to resolve other issues.

I doubt that I can do much to resolve the issue properly.
But I guess downgrading the StreamDeck or Advanced Scene switcher plugin should do the trick for you. (for now)

[mmotti]

(All plugins were disabled except the StreamDeck plugin when I checked for the leak in the OBS log) Do you see the same leak on your side?

I’m not 100% sure - I’ll have to check a little later on.

But I guess downgrading the StreamDeck or Advanced Scene switcher plugin should do the trick for you. (for now)

I can of course use 1.33.1 but it is a shame - I expect that there will be numerous others to encounter this too as the Stream Deck goes hand in hand with OBS.

—

Any ideas what part of the more graceful shutdown could have prompted this issue to occur? More so for my own curiosity.

I’ll see whether I can spot a memory leak or not later on if it’s just a case of checking the logs but what’s the course of action here usually? Report directly to Elgato?

[WarmUpTill]

Any ideas what part of the more graceful shutdown could have prompted this issue to occur? More so for my own curiosity.

This commit in particular commit on my side seems to "cause" the incompatibility with the leak on the StreamDeck plugin side:
86061b3

On shutdown - as well as scene collection change - OBS emits OBS_FRONTEND_EVENT_SCENE_COLLECTION_CLEANUP.
Previously I was unconditionally re-loading the advanced scene switcher settings with empty data causing all macros etc. to be cleared implicitly.
Thus, your macros using the "game capture" conditions (which relies on OBS signals for the game capture source) was already cleared before the shutdown really started.

Now the cleanup happens at a later time, when obs_module_unload() is called.
So, the "game capture" signals are still used further into the shutdown process of OBS and instead of a leak you get a crash when OBS tries to send a signal via signal_handler_signal():

000000A48A0FF810 00007FFDDB6088B2 000001B116ABE980 00007FFDDB644FC8 000000A48A0FF8B0 000001B000000000 obs.dll!signal_handler_signal+0x122

I confirmed this by reverting the mentioned commit for testing.

I’ll see whether I can spot a memory leak or not later on if it’s just a case of checking the logs but what’s the course of action here usually? Report directly to Elgato?

I am not sure, unfortunately.
I personally don't use any Elgato products.
They do seem to supprot GitHub issues, however - so that might be a good place to start:
https://github.com/elgatosf/streamdeck-obs-plugin2/issues

If I find the time to, I can try to spot the leak myself and just raise a PR, but I can't promise anything.

[mmotti]

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain this - It's very much appreciated!

I'm not too sure what to make of the memory leak issue... It seems pretty random for me.

Files with memory leaks:

Files without memory leaks:

The very first log I checked (top of the first table) had v1.33.1 and: 12:04:28.330: Number of memory leaks: 2

[mmotti]

Just in terms of an update - I reached out to Elgato support and after taking all of my details etc sadly they've pretty much refused to do anything.

As it turns out, it is as I had mentioned initially. We can only recommend reaching out to the plugin developer as we do not test/troubleshoot alongside this third party plugin and are unable to guarantee they would function together as intended.

The information still has been relayed to our developers in case they are able to take the time to look into it as well to see if there's anything on our side that can be possibly done to help.

However, I can't guarantee that this is something they will end up doing. As the previous versions of the OBS Studio plugin appears to function, and it stops after specifically an update from the plugin itself, it would be more likely that the developer would know best, as they are aware of the specific changes or updates they made to the plugin.

[WarmUpTill]

That is unfortunate.

I think I was able to track down the root cause of the leak in their code.
Here is the fix:

diff --git a/source/handlers/handler-obs-frontend.cpp b/source/handlers/handler-obs-frontend.cpp
index 8db746d..24cd1ce 100644
--- a/source/handlers/handler-obs-frontend.cpp
+++ b/source/handlers/handler-obs-frontend.cpp
@@ -392,16 +392,24 @@ void streamdeck::handlers::obs_frontend::handle(enum obs_frontend_event event)
                #if OBS_MINIMUM_SUPPORT >= 280000
                case OBS_FRONTEND_EVENT_SCENE_COLLECTION_RENAMED:
                        method = "obs.frontend.event.scenecollection.renamed";
-                       reply["from"]            = active_scene_collection;
-                       active_scene_collection = obs_frontend_get_current_scene_collection();
-                       reply["to"]            = active_scene_collection;
+                       reply["from"] = active_scene_collection;
+                       {
+                               char* name              = obs_frontend_get_current_scene_collection();
+                               active_scene_collection = name;
+                               reply["to"]             = active_scene_collection;
+                               bfree(name);
+                       }
                        break;
                #endif

                case OBS_FRONTEND_EVENT_SCENE_COLLECTION_CHANGED:
-                       method                  = "obs.frontend.event.scenecollection";
-                       active_scene_collection = obs_frontend_get_current_scene_collection();
-                       reply["collection"] = active_scene_collection;
+                       method = "obs.frontend.event.scenecollection";
+                       {
+                               char* name              = obs_frontend_get_current_scene_collection();
+                               active_scene_collection = name;
+                               reply["collection"]     = active_scene_collection;
+                               bfree(name);
+                       }
                        break;

                case OBS_FRONTEND_EVENT_SCENE_COLLECTION_LIST_CHANGED:
@@ -1055,8 +1063,9 @@ void streamdeck::handlers::obs_frontend::scenecollection(std::weak_ptr<void>
                                        }
                                }

-                               const char* col = obs_frontend_get_current_scene_collection();
+                               char* col = obs_frontend_get_current_scene_collection();
                                res->set_result(col ? col : "");
+                               bfree(col);
                        } catch (streamdeck::jsonrpc::error const& ex) {
                                res->set_error(ex.id(), ex.what() ? ex.what() : "Unknown error.");
                        }

I case you feel adventurous and want to download / install random dlls here is a build of their plugin with a fix:
StreamDeckPlugin.zip
It should replace the existing C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins\StreamDeckPlugin\bin\64bit\StreamDeckPlugin.dll

At least on my side that resolves the crashes on OBS close.

[mmotti]

I case you feel adventurous and want to download / install random dlls here is a build of their plugin with a fix:
StreamDeckPlugin.zip
It should replace the existing C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins\StreamDeckPlugin\bin\64bit\StreamDeckPlugin.dll

Thank you!!!! This does indeed seem to resolve the issue.

I really do appreciate you looking into this and I'm sorry that it came down to this being that it's not even your responsibility to fix.

If I go back to my ticket that they closed and add this information, are you by chance able to open a pull request with your changes on their repo?

Thanks again

[WarmUpTill]

No problem at all!
I'm glad to hear that the issue is resolved!

are you by chance able to open a pull request with your changes on their repo?

Done:
elgatosf/streamdeck-obs-plugin2#17