@clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle-full

Full Pulsar bundle for Node consumers — pulsar.exe with browser sources, text sources, and VLC-backed media sources included on top of the standard light bundle. Same spawn() API as @clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle.

Use this package when your scenes need any of:

• HTML / CSS / JS overlays (browser_source via CEF)
• Native text overlays (text_gdiplus / text_ft2_source)
• Local video file playback (vlc_source)

If you only need game capture + window/monitor capture + audio + recording + RTMP, the smaller @clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle (~40 MB zip) is enough.

Install

npm install @clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle-full

Windows x64 only — os: ["win32"] in package.json makes npm install skip the binary on every other platform.

A postinstall step downloads the matching version's pulsar-windows-x64-full-vX.Y.Z.zip from the Pulsar GitHub Releases (~250 MB) and extracts it into node_modules/@clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle-full/binaries/. Cached: re-running npm install against an unchanged version is a no-op.

The 200 MB inflation over the light bundle is CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework, the runtime obs-browser links against). It is what makes browser sources possible.

Environment overrides

Same as @clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle:

PULSAR_BUNDLE_SKIP_POSTINSTALL=1   # skip download (CI / offline)
PULSAR_BUNDLE_DOWNLOAD_URL=<url>   # mirror or internal CDN

Usage

import { spawn } from "@clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle-full";

const pulsar = await spawn();

// HTML overlay via browser_source (the headline feature of -full)
await pulsar.client.obs.call("CreateInput", {
  sceneName: "Default",
  inputName: "Overlay",
  inputKind: "browser_source",
  inputSettings: {
    url: "https://example.com/my-overlay",
    width: 1920,
    height: 1080,
  },
});

// Native text source
await pulsar.client.obs.call("CreateInput", {
  sceneName: "Default",
  inputName: "Title",
  inputKind: "text_gdiplus",
  inputSettings: { text: "LIVE", font: { face: "Segoe UI", size: 64 } },
});

// VLC-backed local video file playback
await pulsar.client.obs.call("CreateInput", {
  sceneName: "Default",
  inputName: "Bumper",
  inputKind: "vlc_source",
  inputSettings: { playlist: ["C:/path/to/clip.mp4"] },
});

await pulsar.shutdown();

spawn() returns the same handle shape as the light bundle ({ client, child, port, libobsVersion, shutdown }). All the higher-level namespaces (destinations, video, adaptive, record, stream) are inherited from @clodocapeo/pulsar-client and work identically.

Trade-off vs the light bundle

| | pulsar-bundle (light) | pulsar-bundle-full | |---|---|---| | Zip download | ~40 MB | ~250 MB | | Extracted | ~100 MB | ~600 MB | | Plugins | game capture, window, monitor, WASAPI, dshow webcam, x264/NVENC/QSV/AMF, ffmpeg, filters, transitions, multi-stream + websocket | + obs-browser (CEF) + obs-text + text-freetype2 + vlc-video | | Best for | gaming streams, simple capture flows | composed scenes, HTML overlays, multi-source layouts |

Both bundles ship the same set of always-stripped plugins (obs-vst, obs-webrtc, decklink, frontend-tools, obs-libfdk) — those are deliberate omissions, see the repo's main README for the rationale.

Versioning

Locked to pulsar-client and pulsar.exe in lockstep. 0.2.0 of this package downloads pulsar-windows-x64-full-v0.2.0.zip and depends on @clodocapeo/[email protected].

Development

# from the monorepo root
npm install                 # workspaces resolve, postinstall soft-fails
                            # on offline / unreleased versions
npm run build               # tsc -> dist/
npm run test                # vitest with the same fake-pulsar fixture
                            # as @clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle

The vitest suite uses tests/fake-pulsar.mjs (a Node script that mimics pulsar.exe's boot) and exercises the same 5 lifecycle tests as pulsar-bundle. Browser-source-specific behaviour requires the real pulsar.exe with CEF; that's covered in the repo's integration smoke test, not the package's unit suite.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

This package bundles pulsar.exe, libobs + Pulsar plugins, CEF (browser sources) and libVLC. The aggregate is distributed under GPL-2.0-or-later; individual components retain their own upstream notices (BSD for CEF, LGPL-2.1-or-later for libVLC, GPL-2.0-or-later for libobs and Pulsar). Source for the GPL components is available at https://github.com/ZabLaboratory/Pulsar at the matching version tag.

If you only need the typed client without any binary, use @clodocapeo/pulsar-client (MIT). For the binary without browser sources, use @clodocapeo/pulsar-bundle.