Installing

This page walks through the installation from the moment you double-click the setup until the program is ready to start. It covers what the installer asks you, what it puts on disk, and the two questions that come up most often: what happens to an OBS Studio you already have, and what happens if the licence key does not work. Administrators who need the unattended-installation switches will find those here too.

Before you start


Operating system	Windows 10 version 1803 or newer, or Windows 11, 64-bit
Rights	Administrator, for the duration of the setup
Disk	Around 700 MB
Internet	Needed the first time: the setup downloads about 180 MB
Close first	Any other application built on the OBS engine, including OBS Studio itself

That last point is not a formality. Two OBS-based applications running at the same time write over each other’s configuration. The setup checks for this and stops with an explanation.

What the setup does

Asks for a language: English, Dutch, Norwegian, German or Spanish, with the language of Windows already selected. The rest of the setup is in that language, and so is the program when it first starts.
Checks the machine. Is an OBS-based application running? Is Windows new enough? If not, it stops before touching anything.
Downloads and installs the program. If the download is already there in the right version, this step is skipped — a second run over an existing installation takes seconds.
Switches the engine’s automatic updates off. The program does not update behind your back; a new version comes through Check for updates… or a new setup.
Asks for your licence key (see below).
Asks which modules to install, and which of those to switch on straight away.
Creates the launcher and shortcuts, and grants write access to the configuration folder.

The licence key

The setup shows a page where you type the key from your account page. With the key it asks the website which modules belong to your account and offers exactly those.

You may leave it empty. Then you get only what was supplied with the installer itself, and nothing else changes.

If the key fails — mistyped, no internet, withdrawn — you get a message and the installation continues with what was included. This is a warning, not a failure.

Choosing modules

The module page lists everything available to you, with two checkboxes per module:

[x] Example module                     1 MB
    [x] Activate now

The top box installs the module. The one beneath it switches it on immediately. Installing without activating is a valid choice: the module is on disk, and you can switch it on later under Settings → Modules without running the setup again.

The second checkbox depends on the first — a module you do not install cannot be activated by accident.

What ends up on disk

C:Program FilesUltimate Playout
  UltimatePlayout.exe        <- the launcher you start
  Modules                   <- the modules you chose
  engineconfig             <- your settings, scenes and logs

Two things are worth knowing about that layout:

engineconfig holds your configuration, and it is writable by everyone who logs in on that machine. On a control-room PC with changing volunteers that is exactly right — everyone finds the same setup. On a workstation where people expect personal settings, it is not.
Your own documents live elsewhere. Cue lists and exports go to your Documents folder, not into Program Files. See The first start.

Your existing OBS Studio

An OBS Studio you installed yourself is not touched at any point. Not renamed, not reconfigured, not upgraded, not downgraded. It keeps its own settings, its own scenes and its own updates, and the two live side by side.

The one rule is that you do not run them at the same time. Start the other one only after closing this one, and the reverse.

Unattended installation

For deployment across several machines:

UltimatePlayout_Setup.exe /VERYSILENT /KEY=UP-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

In silent mode the module page is not shown and its defaults apply: everything installed, everything activated.

If the download archive is already on the machine, point at it and the download is skipped:

UltimatePlayout_Setup.exe /VERYSILENT /OBSZIP="D:deployobs.zip"

Uninstalling

Uninstalling removes the program folder completely. Your cue lists and exports are in your Documents folder and stay where they are.