OBS live streaming can be complicated and difficult.
Today I wanna show you five hidden features in OBS that can help
simplify your live stream and make it a lot easier.
And the best part is they're all built right in, so you don't need to
download or install anything.
Hello, my YouTube friends.
The first hidden feature I want to show you is gonna help you make
what you see in your UI while streaming a lot easier.
Now let's face it, there's a lot of stuff that isn't relevant while
we're streaming, so we're gonna fix that.
So let's talk a little bit about our UI.
This is really, really pretty confusing.
There's just so much stuff here.
So I like to always put this over here and this way I kind of have the
list.
It makes it really easy to see what we have going on here and switch
through it.
You can even right click on this and go to grid mode so that you can
see your scenes written out.
Now you, you're probably gonna wanna name your scenes better than I
did here, but this is just, you know, for an example, another thing
that you can do, I, I'm not sure people actually realize this, but
these are stackable.
So once you start your stream, you don't really need to have all of
this stuff here.
I can stack this right on top of there.
It makes it a lot easier.
You can switch back and forth if you need to, but now all the main
focus is on my scenes over here.
I've got my sources for the scene right here and we have the audio
mixer.
Now you don't really want to have to scroll through the audio stuff
either.
So you can actually right click on here and you can select vertical
layout.
And now you have all of your audio sources really easy to see right
there.
You can adjust this up and down if you like.
It's pretty simple.
And then most people are gonna have another box over here with their
chat or something like that.
But you can use all of this stuff to your advantage.
We could even make it simpler by putting this over top of that.
So now we could switch back and forth between our sources, but now we
have a really, really simple layout that makes it easy to just see the
things that we actually need to see without all the other confusing
stuff that we don't need to see.
Let's say we wanted to drag this out of here again, all we have to do
is switch to the sources and we could just grab this and move it back
over here and we're all set.
We can resize everything.
But use the UI tools to your advantage to make things much more easy
to control and see while you're live streaming.
A lot of people don't do it, but it really is helpful.
Now, sometimes our streams have a lot of scenes and it can be kind of
hard to search through all those scenes because they're just text.
The next hidden feature makes it easy to identify and switch scenes.
Now maybe you don't like to spend a whole heck of a lot of time naming
your scenes like you could see here, I don't have my scenes named very
well, but there is a pretty easy way to be able to tell what
everything is.
If we go up to view, then we go to the multi view window, it brings
this up right here and I can actually physically see each and every
scene with its names and all that sort of stuff.
You can make this bigger, you can do whatever you want.
And so I can just select each different scene to give me what I want.
And if you have a lot of scenes, which in this case we do have a lot
of scenes, we may have more scenes than what we have right here.
So what we could do is go into settings and if we scroll to our multi
view, we could drop this down and we can change this so that we have
18 scenes in there to our multi view and there we go.
Or we can go up even higher to 24 scenes.
So you can literally see your scenes right here and switch to them
really easily.
And it's really cool.
I think this is such an easy way to be able to scroll through and
select all of your scenes and it's just as simple as going to view and
then multi view window.
Now you might have had some issues in your live stream like stuttering
lag or buffering and it's really nice to see the issue right away so
you know what's causing it.
I mean if you see the issue right away, you can fix it as soon as
possible.
So feature number three is gonna help you to identify when something
is wrong and show you what's causing it.
This is a really big one for me and I've done a bunch of stuff on it,
but most people, I still don't see them putting this in their overlay.
If we go up to view and we go to stats, it brings up this window right
here.
You could take this window and dock it anywhere you want.
Actually if you go to docks and select stats, it makes it easier to
dock this puppy.
And now you have it in here.
So uh, you could put your scenes up over top of it or you could put it
right here so that you have both your scenes and your stats window
right here.
This stats window tells you everything that you could possibly want to
know and we can even go farther and go and put this right here.
So now we have our sources and our scenes in there and we can change
our audio mixer so it's in the vertical layout.
And we go to a scene like this.
I mean all of the information that's important to our live stream is
right here.
This tells us our CPU usage, our frames per second, how many frames we
drop due to the information going out, how many frames were dropped or
missed due to the encoding process.
We know everything.
It's right here.
You really have to try to use all of the tools at your disposal in OBS
to make it easier.
And this is a big tool.
This is going to tell you any time that something is going wrong
because when something does go wrong, these numbers will turn red and
you're gonna be able to see that cuz it's right there on your screen.
Those red numbers are gonna say, Hey, my internet connection isn't
working right, or Hey, guess what?
There's something going on on my machine that's causing me to drop
frame.
So do I have a a chrome window opened or what might be causing it.
It'll help you to be able to figure it out so you can put on the best
live stream possible.
And isn't that what it's really all about?
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So take a second down below and let me know how I'm doing and while
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It really does help me continue to make content that helps you.
So thanks.
Sometimes our computer has a mind of its own and it will do things we
just don't expect, like run updates during your stream and this one's
definitely gonna help folks who are trying to run this on an older
machine or maybe something that is not quite up to snuff for live
streaming.
So feature number four is gonna help those with lesser computers, but
also keep the machine from being interfered with by things like stuff
running in the background and things like that.
This can help a lot of people.
Now this is a feature that I've never actually seen anyone talk about,
but it's really useful for people who are using older machines or
machines that might struggle, especially if something else is running.
Basically we're gonna go into settings right here and we're gonna go
to advanced and it's right here at the top.
You've got your process priority and you can drop this down and select
high, which means that your machine is going to prioritize OBS.
So if you're using X 2 64 to do the encoding, I think that you should
actually be doing this because it's going to prioritize the encoding
in OBS and give your machine the best chance to produce the highest
quality video.
You can go with above normal or normal or below or idle, whatever you
want.
But this is a great way to change the processing priority of your OBS
so that you have a much better chance of producing a high quality
stream even on a machine that's a little older because all of those
things running in the background that Windows wants to prioritize,
well when your live stream and guess what, that's not your priority.
Your priority is that your video gets encoded properly and sent out to
your audience.
Now you can change the priority so that it's high in OBS, giving you a
better chance to pull off a great live stream even on older equipment.
Now this last thing is amazing for game streamers who want to have
their game audio audible, but they also want their voice to be heard.
And of course this works in pretty much any stream where you're gonna
have other audio besides your voice being played.
It's an amazing built in feature that a lot of people totally miss.
This last tool is absolutely awesome.
It allows you to adjust the volume to any background music or video
game or whatever when your voice is heard through your microphone,
which means that you can talk and it will lower the volume of the
background stuff.
And when you're not talking the background stuff will raise up a
little bit.
And this is an awesome feature that almost no one ever uses.
So let me show you how it works.
We're gonna go into scene six here and you can see I have a video
playing in the background and we have two audio sources, My
microphone, which is video capture device and the media source, which
is the video volume.
And you can see by the little graphics here that our voice and the
audio for the video are almost the exact same levels.
So we want the levels on the video to go down when I'm talking.
So we're gonna select the media source, which is the video, and we're
gonna right click on that and we're gonna go to filters and we're
gonna go up to the audio filters up here and click the plus and we're
going to select the compressor.
And then we're going to go to side chain ducking source right over
here and we're going to select our audio source for our microphone.
In this case it's video capture device.
And now all we have to do is adjust the setting so they work properly
for our situation.
Now if I stop talking, you're gonna see that my video capture device
is actually pretty noisy.
So it bobs around at between 65 and 60 and that would be our threshold
here.
Right now it's 18 decibels, but we're going to go ahead and adjust
this so that it's right around 40 decibels or so, and that is when
it's going to be activated by my voice to adjust the volume.
So now as long as the audio background noise doesn't go over 40, it's
not going to audio duck for us because I live on a busy street with a
busy highway, we get background noise, we don't want that to lower the
volume of our music or whatever.
So you just kinda have to assess your background noise when you set up
your threshold.
Now the ratio is the ratio that you want the volume lowered on the
other source.
In this case 10 to 1 is the default and it works pretty well.
You can see when I'm talking the audio on the media source does go
down.
You can adjust this to your liking if you want that audio to go down
more.
If we go up to 20 to 1, you're going to see that the audio on our
media source drops much steeper, so it goes a lot lower.
And obviously the more the ratio you choose, the more that volume will
drop.
So if we go to 30 to one now you're gonna see that that media source
audio drops significantly while I'm talking and it will go right back
up when I'm not talking.
There we go.
The other pieces on here, attack controls how fast the audio is going
to start to duck once you start speaking in six milliseconds is pretty
doggone fast.
If you want it to wait a few more seconds after you start speaking,
you can set it that way.
If you wanted to go faster, you can set it that way.
And then the release is how long it will wait to bring the audio
volume back up after it's no longer hearing your voice.
So you can set that to be immediate or you can set it for a little
longer.
I think it's more organic if it takes a couple of moments for it to
start to raise again.
Really, it's what's best for your ear or what you like.
And as far as output gain, I've never really messed around with it too
much because it doesn't seem like it does anything important for what
we're trying to teach here.
But that's how audio ducking works.
It's an absolutely awesome tool.
You gotta play around with it a little bit to get it set right for
your room and your voice and your microphone, but once you do, it's
such an awesome tool because the background noise or music or anything
like that is never going to get in the way of you connecting directly
with your audience.
And they really are going to appreciate the fact that, wow, we can
always hear the music or the game whenever it's important to hear it.
But we can always hear you just right as well when we need to.
And all these tools are gonna help us focus more on our audience and
that's really what it's all about.
Are there features I missed on this list?
Well, let me know in the comments.
And if you wanna see how to create a simple stinger transition using
free software, you should check this video out.
Big thanks to the sponsors that support this channel, you can find
their links down below in the description under the heading sponsors,
I couldn't possibly do this without them or you.
So thanks.
And if you're always looking for tools, tips, and tricks to help make
you a better live streamer or YouTuber, subscribe to the channel.
My name is Michael Feyrer Jr.
Thank you so much for watching.
Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.