Free Starting Soon screen for OBS — Twitch setup

The right way to use a starting-soon screen

The screen viewers see in the first minutes after they click your channel sets the tone for the whole stream. A frozen offline image tells them they're early; a proper Starting Soon scene with a countdown tells them when the stream actually starts and gives them a reason to wait.

The Stream Scene overlay in the deutschmark toolset is the same browser source for both Starting Soon and Ending Soon — OBS decides which state it's in by which scene the source is on. Configure once, two scenes use it.

End-to-end setup

1. From the dashboard, open Stream Start & End.
2. Click Create your first source. Copy the URL.
3. In OBS, create two scenes — Starting Soon and Ending Soon. Add the browser source URL to both, 1920×1080, full-canvas. Full browser-source walkthrough if you're new.
4. Back on the tool page, fill in your copy — "the stream is" small label, "starting in" countdown prefix, hero text, end message.
5. Optional: tune the 3D planet (color, spin speed, atmosphere intensity). The planet is the hero of the scene; defaults are fine if you don't feel like dialing it.

Setting the countdown

The countdown is driven by the Timer overlay's deadline state — which means it's authoritative on the server and survives any OBS refresh. Set the deadline before you go live:

• Use !timer 10m in your own chat (or click Start on the Timer tool page) to start a 10-minute countdown 10 minutes before you're live.
• Need to push the start? !timerAdd 5m bumps it 5 more minutes; mods can do this for you.
• When the countdown hits 0:00, the scene shows the "end label" you configured (default "Stream starts now"). Switch to your main scene whenever you're ready.

What to put on the screen

A starting-soon screen is allowed to be quiet — it's a holding pattern. Decent defaults:

• Hero text: what you're playing tonight or your channel name.
• Countdown: stream-start time. Best uncertainty-killer.
• Now-playing music widget in the corner — see Music. Music + countdown reads as "the show is starting, the DJ is warming up."
• Chat box overlay on the side — see Chat Box. Lets early arrivers chat with each other while you finish your coffee.

Ending Soon

Same scene, different copy. Switch to your Ending Soon scene during your outro, set the countdown to a short interval (5 minutes is typical), and let viewers know the stream is wrapping. The same Stream Scene browser source picks up the new context automatically if you wire the OBS scene name into the tool page (optional — easier is to configure two separate sources with different copy).

What you give up vs paid scenes

Paid "starting soon" packs from OWN3D / Visuals by Impulse ship pre-made motion graphics, sound packs, and per-game theme variants. The deutschmark version is one configurable scene with a 3D planet hero. If you want a different scene for every game you stream, paid packs win on variety. If you want one clean scene with a working countdown that's yours, this covers it.

More

Pair with Timer for finer countdown control, Music for the now-playing widget, and Event list so early subs / cheers land on the holding screen.