OBS Won't Play My .WEBM Overlay — Here's the Fix
A transparent .WEBM that shows up black, frozen, or not at all is almost always one of four settings. Work through them in order.
If your animated overlay imports but shows a black box, a frozen first frame, or nothing at all, it's nearly always the source type, the loop setting, hardware decoding, or a codec mismatch. Check them in that order — the fix takes about two minutes.
1. Use a Media Source, not an Image Source
An Image Source will show only the first frame of a .WEBM, which is why people think their pack is broken. Delete it and add Sources → + → Media Source, then browse to the .webm file.
2. Turn on Loop
In the Media Source properties, tick Loop. Without it the animation plays once and freezes on the last frame — which looks identical to a broken file after the first few seconds.
3. Disable hardware decoding
Still in the Media Source properties, untick Use hardware decoding when available. On many GPUs, hardware decoding drops the alpha channel — the animation plays but the transparency turns into a black rectangle.
4. Confirm the file is VP9 with alpha
Transparency in .WEBM requires the VP8/VP9 codec with an alpha channel. Files exported as H.264 in a .webm wrapper won't be transparent no matter what you toggle. Every pack in the shop ships VP9 with alpha, plus .PNG versions for anything that needs a still.
When it's actually OBS
If all four are right and it still fails, update OBS — older builds had genuine VP9 alpha bugs — then restart it fully. A stale OBS process holds on to the old source settings.
Overlays that just work in OBS
Every pack ships transparent, loop-ready .WEBM plus .PNG fallbacks — drop them in and go live.
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