I have been streaming regularly for a couple of months now, and had yet to automate the boring stuff, so here comes a first pass…
I wrote previously about using Restream.io. I’ve been using Restream Chat’s Windows application (details), and will continue to do so pending clear signals to transition to a single streaming service.
Enough about me: let’s get on with the show.
During installation, Restream Chat adds a Desktop Shortcut. This shortcut is an Application Reference (.appref-ms) located in C:\Users\[YOUR-WINDOWS-USERNAME]\Desktop
Restream Chat also adds a Start Menu Program Group with a similar shortcut to C:\Users\slash\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Restream.io\Restream Chat.appref-ms
Let’s dive in…
I dragged and dropped the Restream Chat shortcut into a Notepad window to see what would happen, and was greeted with the following output:
https://restream.io/restream_chat/RestreamChat.application#RestreamChat.application, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=907cb1181ada7abb, processorArchitecture=msil
I used this as the basis for the first iteration of my batch script
First Iteration
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\obs-studio\bin\32bit\obs32.exe"
start "" https://restream.io/restream_chat/RestreamChat.application
Observations
OBS starts with errors
- Error: Failed to find locale/en-US.ini
- Error: Failed to load locale
Launches default browser, and creates a new entry in recent downloads. This is a minor inconvenience.
I explored for a way to request the RestreamChat application from its URL without launching the default browser. One suggestion was to use Wget for Windows, but I would like to avoid any external dependencies.
Second Iteration
start "" "C:\Users\Public\Desktop\OBS Studio.lnk"
start "" "C:\Users\[YOUR-WINDOWS-USERNAME]\Desktop\Restream Chat.appref-ms"
Observations
This works! … but what if I want to remove both desktop shortcuts?
Why does this work?
Probably because the OBS Studio.lnk desktop shortcut includes Start in: “C:\Program Files (x86)\obs-studio\bin\32bit”
Third Iteration
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\obs-studio\bin\32bit"
start "" obs32.exe
start "" "C:\Users\[YOUR-WINDOWS-USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Restream.io\Restream Chat.appref-ms"
That’s it for now. I may take this a step further in the future, but as they say… “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”