Before we can jump into the crazy advanced settings and configurations of the software,
you really need to take some time and get familiar with the UI – or user interface
– of Open Broadcaster Software.
Anytime I say this, many roll their eyes, think they can just follow along with the
tutorials without knowing the UI, and then they end up being the ones to post comments
asking where I found this setting or that setting.
The UI doesn’t change super drastically across updates, so even if the software updates
this guide will be pretty relevant in the future.
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I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun, and welcome back to my OBS Studio
tutorial course.
I have many, many more videos on the software in the playlist linked in the description.
Check that before asking questions, and check the introduction video to learn how this course
works, if you get confused.
Let’s take a look at OBS Studio’s UI and where you can find the various settings.
Specifics will be covered in the relevant tutorials, whereas this video will covered
how to find areas of settings.
The main OBS window consists of the stream preview, scenes and sources lists, audio mixer,
transition controls, and your start and stop buttons.
As with every software ever, the top bar of menus contains access to literally everything
you need from the program.
Either at the top of your window on Windows, or in your system title bar on Mac or Linux
if you have the program maximized.
These menus include the obvious “File, Edit, View, Tools, Help” menus, but also Profile
and Scene Collections menus which are super important if you use OBS for multiple different
scenarios – such as recording, streaming, and podcasting – so we will cover these
in depth in a dedicated video in the course.
The bottom bar features your recording and streaming timers, current frame rate, and
a CPU usage indicator.
This is super useful for checking your stream bandwidth health, recording time, and overall
system performance.
If your CPU load is high, you may need to lower your settings.
Typically, the stream preview only has a single video window, which just shows your active
stream view.
However, if you click the “Studio Mode” button over on the right, you then have 2
previews, with transition controls between them.
The preview on the right is the active stream preview that your live viewers or recording
file sees.
The preview on the left is whichever scene you select.
This is handy for editing scenes on the fly, or prepping scenes before you switch.
I’ll cover this more in depth in a future video.
You can use the controls in the menu to set up transition options or transition between
your scenes.
The Scenes and Sources section is for changing what viewers actually see.
Sources are your individual on-stream elements – such as a video source like a capture
card or webcam, a still image overlay, browser sources for stream alerts, and so on.
Scenes are groupings of sources for different points of your stream.
For example, you can set up a scene for a full-screen webcam view for when you’re
just talking to your audience, a scene for gameplay footage and facecam in the corner,
a scene with just gameplay, a still image scene with an image saying “BRB” for when
you need to run to the bathroom, and so on.
You will be using this a TON so it’s worth testing out all of the options here.
The audio mixer is super important, too.
This is where you balance your different audio sources – such as your microphone, game
sound, extra inputs, and so on.
The audio levels are typically green, but if you hit 0db and clip or peak they turn
red.
You NEVER want this to happen, and need to avoid it by having things around minus 10
db or so.
This isn’t really indicated properly on-screen, but aim for your levels to only ever hit here
at the HIGHEST point.
The most commonly-overlooked part of the mixer is the channel assignments.
You see, OBS Studio allows you to record multiple audio tracks to a file, which you can then
balance in editing.
By clicking the gear icon next to the each audio source in the mixer and hitting “Advanced
Audio Properties” - or going to “Edit” - “Advanced Audio Properties”, you can
change which channel each audio source goes to.
Most people miss this, and by default, all audio sources go to all tracks.
If you don’t separate your tracks, all of your different tracks will be the same.
Again, all of this will be covered in its own video.
Check out the settings menu.
Click Settings in the lower-right.
The “General” tab includes system-wide and user interface settings.
This includes the Dark theme, a more colorful dark theme called “Rachni”, an option
to automatically start recording when you hit Start Streaming, setting up “projectors”
to have a full-screen stream view on a secondary monitor, and so on.
The “Stream” tab is for choosing your streaming service and adding your login info.
The “Output” tab is for configuring your streaming and recording settings.
Here you can adjust your codecs, bitrates, and scaled resolutions for your audio, streams,
and recordings.
By default this shows a “Simple” mode, but most of this course will involve the “Advanced”
mode – selected by the top drop-down menu.
The Simple mode isn’t super useful for most people.
The “Audio” tab is for setting up your audio devices, such as microphones, headphones,
and so on – as well as enabling push-to-talk keys.
The “Video” tab is for setting up your resolution, frame rate, and scaling settings.
The dimensions of your video.
The “Hotkeys” tab allows you to set up handy hotkeys for quickly switching scenes,
sources, and starting or stopping recording or streaming.
The ”Advanced” tab contains a lot of fun, high-level settings to configure your stream.
These can be useful for changing “Processor Priority” to reduce impact on your processor,
set up faster streaming, stream delays, and so on.
If you don’t like where things are… change it!
As of version 20.0, OBS Studio let’s you move the UI modules around by going to “View”
- “Docks” - and then un-checking “Lock UI.”
Then you can drag the modules around, as desired.
I cover this more in-depth in my OBS Studio Update 20 walkthrough video, linked in the
video description and in the course playlist.
That was a lot.
There’s a lot of settings in OBS Studio, and the wonderful dev team is always adding
more.
But by learning the sections of settings well, you’ll always be able to make adjustments
or fixes to your stream config and get it working for you.
In future OBS Course videos, we tackle each of these individual settings and recording
scenarios in very detailed guides.
Check out the playlist linked in the video description and card icon to keep learning.
That’s it for this OBS tutorial.
Hit the like button if you enjoyed, and share with a friend if they also want to learn the
program.
I’ll see you next time.
Thanks for watching this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial course.
More videos like this and a full master class are linked in the playlist in the video description.
Click to learn more.
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