Dear all, welcome to this new tutorial dedicated to OBS Studio! In this
super short guide of 7 minutes you are going to see everything you can
do with OBS Studio and understand why this can be considered the best and
free broadcaster software available!
OBS Studio is the best free solution to make recordings and live streamings.
You can find the download link in the video description below.
When you start with OBS the Auto-Confguration Wizard opens to set some
options automatically depending on how you are going to use OBS. You can
open it again from Tools, Auto-Configuration Wizard.
Let's understand how OBS works. On top you get the main canvas, showing all
content to be recorded or streamed. By default this gets the same
resolution of your laptop screen. At the bottom you can define several
Scenes, each collecting different Sources that, put together, realize the
whole content to be recorded or broadcasted.
Let's start with a new Scene by clicking on the plus button. This comes
with an empty canvas and gets all the audio sources detected by default,
such as your system audio and your microphone. Let's see how to add
other sources.
To add audio sources you can choose Audio Input Capture to catch external
audio with any microphone or Audio Output Capture to add audio from your
same laptop or any other audio driver. All these audio sources get listed
with their volume meters, where you can adjust their volume as you need.
Check our video description if you own a Mac and you are not able to
include your system audio.
Whereas to include visual sources you have a lot of options: with Color
Source you can add a plain colored background; with Image you can include
any of your images and with Image Slide Show you can import a slideshow of
images with transitions between these. You can also use Media Source to add
any video file and Text to include any piece of text, typing content and
setting font family, style, size, color and opacity. Whereas use Browser to
define any address link and show any website page on the canvas. Consider
that you can't interact with it in this way.
Add a Window Capture to show and interact with the browser or any other
software running on your computer without showing the entire Desktop. Just
choose the correct application from the list. If you don't find it, make
sure that it is not minimized and retry.
Whereas if you want to show the entire desktop add a Display Capture source,
selecting the screen to show.
If you own Windows 10 and get this source completely black, check the
link in our video description!
If you want to record or live-stream games, the Game Capture source is the
most recommended since this is well optimized for applications going in
full screen mode without using a lot of resources. This can start when any
application goes full screen or you can select the game running in the
background.
To add any webcam source, use the Video Capture Device instead.
With OBS Studio you can also adjust the way these sources must be shown on
the canvas. You can select any source and click and drag from it to move it
or use its nodes to resize as you need. Pay attention to striped areas:
these are outside the canvas and are completely cut when you record or live
stream. Also hold down the ALT key to crop any source.
From the Sources list you can use the eye button to hide or show any source
or the lock button to block its size and placement. You can also pull up or
down any source to adjust its order of visibility in respect of others.
You can also adjust properties and add effects to any source with the gear
icon and audio with the buttons above for visual media.
Before starting recording or streaming make sure to check if all options
are set correctly inside File, Settings. For example under Stream you can
connect any Twitch, YouTube or Facebook account to use live stream; on
Output you can set the video recording options such as video and audio
bitrate, where to save, recording quality and file format. On Video set the
canvas size and also the Output resolution, which is the size to use to
record and stream. On FPS you can set the output frame rate up to 60 fps.
Under Hotkeys specify the keys to make quick actions without acting with
the OBS interface, in particular the ones to Start and Stop Streaming and
Recording. You can find these buttons on the extreme right as well. You can
start, pause and stop streaming or recording what's inside the OBS canvas,
also in case OBS is running on the background.
When streaming the result is saved on the online account you have connected
with OBS. Whereas if you make recordings you can find these videos on File,
Show Recordings.
In addition you can open Studio Mode to work on your canvas under Preview
before making these changes permanent or visible under Program, before or
during any live stream. Only when you click on Transition the live Program
canvas gets updated with a smooth transition defined under
Quick Transitions.
Consider that all your Sources and Scenes remain saved everytime you close
and reopen OBS Studio.
Thank you so much for watching this super short guide! Make sure to visit
our YouTube channel and website for more free and outstanding content!