I’ve talked in previous source-focused episodes about the ability to use a Video Source or
VLC Video Source in your streams.
But how does that perform?
What kinds of video files should you be using?
Can you optimize this to make your stream setup more lightweight?
Let’s briefly discuss this here.
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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.
While, depending on your system specs and such, most video files will work just fine
as media sources within OBS Studio, you can make your life easier by converting your sources
to lighter formats to make OBS do less work.
You only really need to do this for regularly-used source files for animation overlays, stinger
transitions, and so on - just a one-off gameplay clip probably doesn’t need to be converted
before being added to OBS.
For ease of use within OBS Studio, I actually recommend using the WEBM video format.
This is an open source media file format designed for the web, and will let you convert your
graphics, intros, or video clips to small compressed video files that are easy to keep
together within a “Stream Resources” folder and play back smoothly in OBS Studio without
worrying about performance.
Unfortunately most proprietary production tools don’t get along with web formats like
this.
There is a WebM plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro for Mac and Windows that you can install
and use, though last time I tried it rendering performance wasn’t great.
It is an option if you wish to stick with Premiere, however.
Just run the MSI installer with your Adobe Apps close, potentially reboot, then choose
WebM from your output settings and set up a preset.
Alpha channel is even supported so you can make overlay graphics, which is important
if you’re making graphics from scratch.
This works from version CS6 and up.
If you’re using another video program, you will have to render to an intermediate video
format and convert from there.
Alternatively, you could break out the command line for FFMPEG and convert manually that
way….
But for the lazy of us, myself included, there is WebMBRO - an open source GUI front-end
for FFMPEG available free on GitHub specifically for the purpose of converting clips to WebM.
Go to the GitHub project page, click on the “Releases” section and download the “WebMConverter.zip”
file.
Extract the files with your favorite archive manager such as 7-zip, and close the file.
Find the files you just extracted and run the “WebMConverter.exe”.
Here you can choose a source file to convert and where you want the converted file to go.
You can leave everything alone, or you can customize things such as the title, resolution,
bitrate, manually set a size limit, and so on.
When you’re ready, hit “Convert” and let it do its thing.
Once done, you have a .WebM file ready to go to use in OBS Studio as a media source.
I recommend doing this for most things you use - green screened overlay clips, alpha
channel lower-thirds and other video-based graphics, stinger transitions, and so on.
This will make your stream more efficient and keep your resources lightweight.
And that’s it!
WebM is a great format and I hope to see it get more support as time goes by.
I hope this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial course has been helpful for you.
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Until next time, I’m EposVox, Happy Streaming!
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.
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