A scene is one canvas. You put everything your overlay shows on it - chat, alerts, a goal bar, a timer, your own text and images - and OBS loads the whole layout as a single browser source. A new full scene is 1920 x 1080, the same shape as your stream, so where you drop something on the canvas is where it lands on screen.
What sits on a scene
Everything on a scene is a layer. Layers stack in a paint order you control, and the Add tab in the canvas editor offers two kinds.
- Elements are the raw pieces you would find in any design tool: text, list, image, shape, icon, embed and sound.
- Widgets are the pieces that read live data. They are grouped as Bars & Tickers, Chat, Alerts & Events, Stats & Goals, Games & Interactive, and Scenes & Extras.
Layer positions are stored in canvas pixels, not screen pixels, and the whole board is scaled as one piece to fit whatever box it is given. The same scene therefore renders correctly in a 1920 x 1080 browser source, in the editor viewport and on a small preview card, with no reflowing and nothing sliding out of place.
Why one browser source beats eight
The older way to build an overlay is one browser source per widget: one for chat, one for alerts, one for the goal bar, and so on. That still works in pulz, but a scene is better for four reasons.
- Position becomes real. "Goal bar top right, chat column under it" only means something when both live on the same canvas. With separate sources you are aligning rectangles in OBS by eye.
- One connection instead of many. A scene opens one live channel for the whole layout, however many widgets are on it. Eight sources meant eight connections.
- One chat socket and one clock. A scene opens exactly one of each data feed its widgets actually ask for, and every ticking widget shares one clock instead of running its own.
- One thing to move. Rearranging your layout happens in the editor, not by dragging eight sources around OBS and redoing it on your second PC.
A pulz scene is not an OBS scene
They are two separate lists that you line up yourself. Every pulz scene has its own stable URL, so the clean mapping is one pulz scene per OBS scene: paste your "Gameplay" scene URL into a browser source in your OBS gameplay scene, your "Starting soon" scene URL into that OBS scene, and let OBS switching do the rest.
The other way round is also available: put one browser source in OBS that always shows whatever pulz has on air, and switch scenes from pulz instead. That is covered in Switching scenes live.
Scene numbers
Every scene gets a number, shown under its name in the Overlays list as Scene 1, Scene 2 and so on. That number is what the browser source URL points at and what the switch action asks for, so renaming a scene never breaks a URL you have already pasted into OBS.
A number is not the same thing as a position in the list, and deleting scenes can put the two out of step. The number printed on the card is the one that counts, so when a browser source shows the wrong layout, compare that number with the one in the URL before changing anything else. Numbers are reused: delete Scene 2 and the next scene you create becomes Scene 2, so an OBS source still pointing at the old one starts showing the new one.
Limits
- 40 layers per scene.
- 30 scenes, and separately 30 panels. Delete one to make room.
- You pick one of six sizes when you create a scene: a full scene (1920 x 1080), a 1440p scene (2560 x 1440), a vertical scene (1080 x 1920) or one of three single-widget sizes. The size cannot be changed afterwards.
FAQ
Do I need a separate scene for every game I play?
No. One scene can run for your whole stream. A second scene is worth making when the look is genuinely different - a starting soon screen, a be right back cover, a Just Chatting layout with a bigger chat column.
Can I still use one browser source per widget?
Yes, and it is fully supported. Open Overlays and expand Single widgets to copy a standalone URL for any widget. A standalone URL shows the widget with its default look; to customise it, put it on a scene. Every overlay URL that worked before scenes existed still works.
Does a scene have its own background?
A new scene has no background, which keeps the browser source transparent over your gameplay. When you want a full cover, such as a starting soon screen, add a widget that paints one (Scene Card or Privacy Screen), or select Background at the bottom of the Layers tab and give it a colour, gradient, image or shader.
What happens to a scene that is on air while I edit it?
It keeps running. The editor saves about a second after you stop making changes, and an open browser source that has your overlay key in its URL picks the change up within a second or two. Without the key it re-reads your scene about once a minute.