Hello, lovely people!
The Oculus Quest launch is right around the corner.
If you are like us and want to share that experience then you might want to know what
your options are for recording and live streaming with the Quest.
So in today’s video, we share a guide on how we do it most of our live streams and
recordings.
More specifically, we are using OBS and ADB wirelessly and in this guide I’ll explain
how to do this step by step.
At the end of this video, there will be some extra tips and tricks that you can use.
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Let me start by saying that you do not need to use OBS to record footage.
You can also use the Oculus Quest native recording feature that you can find in the menu under
“Sharing”.
If you press record here, it will start recording internally and it will show a red dot at the
top right of the screen.
After you are done, you can grab the video file by connecting your Quest to the PC and
going in the VideoShots folder.
Which is in This PC\Quest\Internal Shared Storage\Oculus\VideoShots
This is the easiest method to record gameplay.
However, there are some disadvantages by using this method.
One is that the audio is out of sync most of the time and you would need to resync the
audio, which isn’t very hard to do, but still.
This method also does not record some features like Passthrough.
When you enter Passthrough, it’s just not recoded as you can see here.
And no voice audio is recorded either.
This means you need to find another method to do your voiceovers and sync it later on.
Plus, I have found that sometimes the video file is bugged and it does not work.
I am not sure when this happens, but it’s not always a risk we are willing to take as
a content creator.
So I hope this gets solved later on.
So another solution would be to record gameplay while using OBS or any recording tool you
are using.
An advantage of this is that you can use OBS to record your microphone and your webcam
at the same time so you don’t have to sync those later.
The disadvantage is that you can’t record game audio unless you use a 3.5 mm audio cable,
but I’ll show you how we do this.
Lastly, it takes a bit of time to get this setup, but once it is setup, it isn’t very
hard to get it running anymore.
Again, the easiest method to capture gameplay would be just to use the Oculus native record
feature, but if you need to live stream or want to record voice overs and a webcam without
having to sync it afterwards, then this guide is for you.
So let’s get started with this guide!
Step 1.
Activate an Oculus Developer account The first thing you have to do is activating
Developer mode on your Oculus Quest.
For this to work, you need to register the account that you use for the Quest as a developer
account.
You might have already done this if you tried sideloading before on the Oculus Go.
If so, you can skip this step.
If you haven’t done this yet.
This can be done by going to dashboard.oculus.com while logged in
Create a New Organization Agree to the terms
After this, you can move to the next step
Step 2.
Put your Oculus Quest in Developer mode.
Now you have to activate Developer mode on your Oculus Quest.
This is done in the mobile phone Oculus app: Start the Oculus app
Go to your Oculus Quest More Settings
Developer Mode > Toggle it on.
I already had it on here.
If it did not toggle on, make sure you are using the same account that you registered
as a developer account.
Step 3.
Download scrcpy
Next, you are going to need a tool that allows you to mirror your Oculus Quest screen on
your PC.
I use scrcpy, which is an acronym for Screen Copy, so I’m going to call it that from
now on.
Because that is just much easier ;)
Go to this link
I also linked it in our description
Now, I can only show you what you need to do on Windows, since I don’t have a Mac
or Linux.
Download the correct version for your Windows.
I have a 64 bit Windows, so I’m downloading the 2nd one.
Step 4.
Unzip the file and place the folder anywhere you want
So click on your downloads folder and unzip it.
I use 7-zip for this.
And there you have it.
I’m going to put in here.
I find it easier to rename this to just screen copy.
As you can see, in this folder adb is also included.
This is short for Android Debug Bridge and it is a command-line tool that lets you communicate
with Android devices, like the Oculus Quest.
Using scrcpy and adb we can execute commands in the command prompt to get the screen mirroring
done.
Step 5.
Add adb and scrcpy in this folder to your environment variables
Before we execute the commands, we want to add adb and scrcpy to our environment variables.
This is to make it possible for you to execute the commands in a command prompt without the
need of filling out the whole path.
You can skip this step, but I recommend doing it.
Click Start > type in Environment Variables or whatever it is called in your language
> then click on “Environment Variables”.
Scroll down to your Path, open it by double clicking it
And add the screen copy folder in a new line.
Last thing you have to do here is add the following.
In here.
Make a new one.
Add the variable name SCRCPY_SERVER_PATH
Oops
And in this value field you need to fill in the path to a file in the screen copy folder.
Which is this file.
You can copy this name and paste it at the end here.
Copy this.
Go back to your environment variables and copy it in here.
Press okay and it is added to your system variables.
Step 6.
Now check if you set the environment variables right.
Open Command Prompt by going to Start, type CMD.
If you already have a command prompt open, please exit it and restart the program.
You should be able to execute these commands now.
Type “adb” here.
And if you see this, then it means it works.
Type “scrcpy” here.
This means it works as well.
Ignore that for now.
If you can’t execute these commands and it says “Command not recognized” like
this for example.
Then you didn’t set it right and you should check if the path in your environment variables
is correct.
So time for some good news.
If you done all this correctly, you don’t have to do this again anymore.
From now on, you can start recording from Step 7.
Step 7.
Connect the Quest to your PC with ADB
We are almost done here.
So now you can connect your Oculus Quest to the PC using the provided cable.
And your Oculus Quest will ask you for permission to allow for USB debugging.
Make sure you put on the headset and press allow using the controller.
You can even save your PC so you don’t have to do this again.
Then open the command prompt again and type in adb devices.
It should open a server as you can see here.
And if you gave your PC permission on your Quest, you will see its device and its serial
number here.
If you don’t see this, then please try a different USB-C cable.
This worked perfectly fine on my PC USB-C port, but for some reason it does not work
on my laptop and I had to use a USB-C to USB-A convertor to get it to work.
If for some reason it doesn’t work, you can restart the server by typing “adb kill-server”
and then “adb devices” again to restart it.
This solves most problems.
Step 8.
Mirror the screen!
Now with the cable connected to the Quest, you can now mirror the screen by executing
“scrcpy”.
Just make sure you activate the Quest by putting something in front of the sensor of the Quest.
Sometimes I find it easier to just put a little bit of tape in front of it so it doesn’t
turn off.
While you are watching this video, please leave a like if you found this video helpful
so far.
Step 9.
Now you can record this screen using OBS
Using something like Window Capture for example.
And then I usually like to enlarge and crop the screen until I get it about half of my
recording screen size.
However there is also an option to do the cropping immediately with screen copy, which
I’ll show at the end of this video.
We are not finished yet, because ADB also gives you the possibility to mirror the screen
wirelessly.
So next, I have a bonus step that you can use to mirror the screen wirelessly.
And if you stick around to the end, I’ll also let you know what we use to record our
voice overs and game audio.
I’ll also show you some last tips and tricks.
Step 10.
How to record the Quest through OBS wirelessly
ADB allows you to connect to the Quest wirelessly through WiFi which is great.
Just make sure that your Quest is connected to the same network as your PC and that it
has a strong WiFi connection.
I would recommend a 5ghz connection.
Now there are a couple of commands to execute to get this done.
However, that is just complicated so you can download a bat file that I linked in the description.
And I have it right here.
And if I click on edit with Notepad you can see the commands it will fire.
Instead of typing these commands manually, this file will automatically execute these
commands for you.
A quick shout out goes to RaMarcus for providing us with this bat file!
Thanks!
Let’s continue.
Once you’ve downloaded this bat file.
All you need to do is this:
Connect your Oculus Quest with a cable.
Go to Command Prompt and then type in adb devices again.
If you see your device listed here.
Then you can continue.
Double click the bat file and it will execute a couple of commands and let you know what
to do.
It says please connect the Quest, we’ve done that already so I’m continuing.
You can ignore this for now.
And now it says please disconnect the USB cable.
I’m going to do that now.
And then you can press continue.
And now it should be connected wirelessly.
Now all you have to do is again, run scrcpy and it is mirrored!
And you can now continue recording with OBS but then without a cable!
If the command prompt says that adb is not recognized, make sure you set your environment
variables right or else you need to edit the bat file and add the path to your adb.exe
file to the script.
I did sometimes find that the scrcpy mirror would turn itself off when the Oculus Quest
screen goes to sleep.
I prevent this by putting a sticker on the sensor.
Game audio
Next I wanted to let you know what we do for game audio and voice overs.
So for game audio.
We record it by putting a 3.5 mm audio cable in the Quest and the other end goes into an
USB audio adapter.
We use this DLock one.
Once you’ve done that you should be able to select the USB Audio Adapter in OBS and
record the game sound this way.
Of course, you will have a cable now while playing, so it isn’t the best option, but
it is great to be able to record gameplay, voice overs and webcam with OBS at the same
time this way so you don’t have to resync this later on.
This is also one of the few ways right now to live stream to other platforms other than
Facebook.
I do wish we could do this wirelessly since that is the power of the Quest, but I have
not found a solution to this yet.
You can record the speaker sound by using a lav mic close to the sound for example,
but I’m not sure if that’s the best quality.
If you know how to record audio using adb wirelessly, please let us know below.
Another tip is to get a very long 3.5mm audio cable, like this one and strap it at the back
of the headset with some velcro.
This way it doesn’t come in front of your face and it doesn’t bother much while recording.
To record our voices, we use the Wireless ModMic.
It comes with a USB that connects to the microphone wirelessly, which you can just select in OBS.
The only thing you have to add is find a nice place to put this little magnet sticker on.
I put it here, it might not be the best solution, but it works for us.
Just be careful that you don’t put it too much to the left side of the strap, because
then you won’t be able to extend the strap anymore.
You can also use a different wireless mic like a lavalier or the Rode Wireless Go.
Another solution to record voice audio would be to use an Audio Recorder like the Zoom
H1.
You can put a microphone in here, and then you can put the Zoom H1 in your pocket.
This is kind of like a wireless solution, you can record like this perfectly, but you
won’t be able to live stream this way.
You can then just put headphones on the second audio input to hear sound yourself while recording!
Now as for some last tips and tricks.
Screen copy also has some nice options for you to use that you can check in the Github
link we provided below.
The options we use mostly are: (bitrate, 1 screen to gain performance)
All right!
I hope this video helps you out.
Please let us know down below if we did, and if you have any other questions, you can ask
‘em below too.
A special thanks goes to artArmin and a special shout out goes to his Patreon page –
Everyone, thank you all so much for your support by watching.
And as always VR on!