OBS Studio 33 swaps in Chromium 150 and drops Ubuntu 24.04 support

What changed in 33.0.0

The release notes list a large backend upgrade: CEF, the Chromium engine behind browser sources and docks, goes from 127 to 150, and the maintainers ask users to report new browser-source problems. First-party plugins now live in a core folder, third-party plugins have a new location and folder structure, and legacy paths keep working until OBS 34.0. NVENC is enabled on Arm64, preview snapping works along an entire axis, and there are new audio-monitoring hotkeys.

The removals matter more for packagers: Ubuntu 24.04, FFmpeg 6.x/7.x and Qt 6.4 to 6.9 are no longer supported, MbedTLS 3 is required, and in Safe Mode the WebSocket server no longer starts and third-party plugins are not loaded.

What the thread reported

The 159-comment thread was mostly bug wishes. One user asked:

"Did they finally fix the bug where if you have less than ~40gb storage the recording will just randomly die for no reason with no notice" — mixtureoftakes

The sharpest argument was about contribution rules. Vittorio Romeo, a WG21 member objected to the project policy that all text and content, including code, issues and comments, "must be human written," and pointed to a Rust fork. Another reader had a different suggestion for the bug reports.

"These days with nearly the same amount of effort to post a complaint you can delegate the task of reproducing the issue, diagnosing the root cause, and proposing a fix." — rgovostes

If you run OBS plugins, test them against the new core layout before OBS 34 removes the legacy path.