Transparent Lower Thirds in OBS Studio

Updated September 22, 2026

OBS Studio plays video files with a real alpha channel, so an animated lower third can sit over your camera without a green screen or a chroma key. The file that works best is MOV ProRes 4444 with straight alpha — which is exactly what Titlo exports.

What you need

• OBS Studio (Windows, macOS or Linux).
• A lower third exported from Titlo as MOV ProRes 4444, at the same resolution and frame rate as your OBS canvas (Settings → Video). Matching both avoids scaling blur and dropped or doubled frames.
• For a static title, a PNG works too (standard alpha — leave the ATEM option off).

1. Add the lower third as a Media Source

1. In the Sources dock of your scene, click + and choose Media Source. Name it, e.g. "Lower third — Jane Smith".
2. Tick Local File and browse to your .mov.
3. Untick Loop — a lower third should play its intro, hold, and exit once.
4. Tick Restart playback when source becomes active, so it replays from the start every time you show it.
5. Tick Show nothing when playback ends, so nothing lingers after the exit animation.
6. Click OK, then make sure the source sits above your camera in the sources list.

The transparent areas should now show your camera through them. There is no need for a colour key or blend-mode filter.

2. Fire it live with a hotkey

Hide the source with its eye icon so it is off when you go live. Then open Settings → Hotkeys, find the Show and Hide entries for your source under the scene, and assign keys (or map them on a Stream Deck). Showing the source restarts the animation from the first frame.

One source per person is the simplest setup: a separate Media Source for each name in your show, each with its own hotkey.

Troubleshooting

Dark or grey fringes around text and shadows

That is an alpha-interpretation mismatch. Titlo exports straight (un-premultiplied) alpha, the variant OBS users report as keying cleanly. If you still see fringes, open the source properties and toggle Use hardware decoding when available — some GPU drivers handle alpha differently when hardware decoding is on.

Black background instead of transparency

The file has no alpha channel: it was exported as MP4/H.264 or re-encoded by another tool. Re-export from Titlo as MOV ProRes 4444 and use that file directly.

Stutter when the lower third appears

ProRes 4444 is a high-bitrate, lightly compressed format, so files are large. Keep clips short (a lower third rarely needs more than 6–10 s), store them on a local SSD rather than a network drive, and match the export frame rate to your canvas.

Can OBS send the lower third to a hardware switcher?

Not natively: OBS outputs a composited picture, not a separate key signal. If your graphics must go through an ATEM or another hardware switcher, see the ATEM guide — vMix or ProPresenter can output key and fill.

Other setup guides

• Animated Lower Thirds in vMix with Alpha
• Lower Thirds on an ATEM Switcher (Media Pool & Key/Fill)
• Lower Thirds with Alpha in DaVinci Resolve & Premiere Pro