What's up guys welcome back to the
Gaming Careers YouTube channel where we
teach you how to livestream and how to
create content within the gaming niche.
Now, a little over a year ago when this
channel was super small, I created a
video teaching people how to live stream
on Twitch using OBS studio and
what settings you needed, and I didn't
know at the time but when I created the
video it instantly became my most
popular video and it has remained my
most popular video ever since. I think at
the time of recording its taught nearly
700,000 people how to stream to Twitch.
Now with that video being a little over
a year old it is also a little bit
outdated. It has a lot of relevant
information in it still, but it's a bit
outdated really for three main reasons.
Firstly OBS has had 20 new
versions since I made that video so
there's been lots of updates including a
nifty little auto-configuration wizard
to help get your settings right. Secondly
Twitch has heavily invested in their
infrastructure all around the world and
have updated their broadcasting
guidelines and what settings
you should use to stream since I created
the video and thirdly, graphics cards
companies like AMD and NVIDIA have also
heavily invested into developing chips
that they include with their newest
graphics cards that help take the
encoding process away from the CPU so
for those three reasons the guide is a
little outdated and I thought today I
would do a 2018 version. Now as with the
previous video, we will be going over the
key settings so things like which Twitch
server to stream to, what bitrate, what
framerate, what resolution, but we will be
using the OBS configuration wizard which
wasn't included when I made the last
video and that's going to help set up some
of our settings for us straightaway, so if
you're ready let's dive in!
So first things first, let's download and
install OBS studio by heading to the
website which I've included down in the
description below,
you'll just need to expand the
description to see it and I've also
included a link on-screen. Now once you
arrive at the website you need to choose
your operating system that you're going
to be installing for between Windows, Mac
or Linux. I'll be installing for Windows
but since OBS studio is multi-platform,
all the settings we cover in this video
are appropriate for the Mac and Linux
versions as well. Install the application
as you normally would and launch OBS
when installation has finished. When it
launches it should look something like
this. Now for those of you that are
completely new to OBS, this may look a
little bit hectic, but it's really just
made up of a few different sections.
Firstly up top this is the stream
preview, this shows exactly what OBS
studio is sending out over the Internet
to Twitch. Down in the bottom left you
have the scenes and sources sections.
Scenes are effectively just different
screens that you can switch to, to
display something different to your
viewers. Typically people will have
at least a game scene, a be right
back scene and maybe a starting soon
scene. Sources are individual elements
that you want to display in each scene,
so for example in our game scene we
might want to show the game, that's one
source, as well as the webcam, that's
another source and maybe a
recent subscriber and that's a third
source. In the middle at the bottom we
have the audio mixer, this is where we
can see and change the audio levels of
all the different audio sources. So for
example our desktop audio source or our
microphone source. To the right of that
we have the scene transitions which is
just basically a way of choosing how you
want the transition to show between two
scenes. Finally on the right in the
bottom you have some controls for
starting and stopping your stream or
recording, as well as getting into your
settings. Below that you also have some
little info panel showing you how long
you've been live for, how long you've
been recording for, as well as your CPU
usage and your frame rate. Before diving
straight into these settings and the
configuration wizard the first thing
that we want to do is set up our profile
and our scene collection. If you look up
at the top title bar here you will see
that we have profile untitled and scenes
untitled, and that is because we haven't
set up any profiles or scene collections
yet. OBS allows you to have
multiple different profiles each with
their own set of settings, which are
super useful if you are going to be
streaming to different accounts from
time to time. All we'll do here is we'll
rename the default one by going up to
profile and selecting rename. I'd
recommend naming this whatever your
channel name is and the streaming
platform, so it's easy to make sure you
have the right profile selected when
you're using OBS. So for me that's going
to be ‘GamingCareers - Twitch’ because
I'm going to be streaming using this
profile, my gaming careers Twitch
channel. OBS also allows you to have many
different scene collections each with
their own set of scenes and sources
inside. This is super useful if you're
going to be streaming different games
from time to time and you want to have a
different looking stream for each game.
Again we're just going to be selecting
scene collection, rename and rename it to
whatever makes sense for your stream. I'm
going to be naming mine ‘Gaming Scenes’
because I also have collections for
podcasts and other shows that I do. Now
if we look back up at the top title bar
again you should see that we now have
our profile and scene selection set up
properly. In the previous video that I
recorded last year, at this point we had
to dive deep into the settings of OBS
and start testing our connection. Though
at some point in the last year, OBS added
the auto configuration wizard that aims
to test your computer and your internet
connection to Twitch or YouTube or
whatever platform you end up choosing,
with the aim of setting a lot of these
complex settings like bitrate, server
location, resolution and framerate for
you. Now although these settings that get
set may not be bang-on perfect they
certainly give you a very very good
starting point for your stream settings.
So to run the wizard we come up to tools
and select auto configuration wizard. A
new window will appear which will ask
you if you want to optimize your
settings for streaming with recording
being a secondary, or if you are just
optimizing for recording. Since this is
the ultimate guide to streaming with OBS,
I recommend that you guys choose the
first option and press next. The next
screen allows you to select your base
resolution or your canvas resolution and
your FPS preferences. Let's start with
the base resolution. This should be set
to the resolution that your game is
being run at, so if you're playing on a
1920x1080 monitor and you play your
game at that resolution also, then you
should select 1920x1080 here. It's
worth noting that this isn't necessarily
the same as the resolution that you will
eventually stream at, OBS may advise to
scale down your stream to something like
1280x720 but it's important to set it
here to what your monitor and more
importantly what your game resolution is.
Since my monitor is 1440p I will be
selecting that resolution here. The
second option is your frames per second
or FPS and that allows you to choose a
number of different options as to what
you'd like to stream at. You can select
some hard values like 30 and 60 or
there's also these other two preference
based options. The first one ‘either 30 or
60 but prefers 60 when possible’, this is
for people that want to prioritize
getting 60 frames per second over their
resolution. Whereas the ‘either 60 or 30
but prefer higher resolution’, this is for
people that want to prioritize getting a
higher resolution over the 60 frames per
second framerate. So which of these
options should you actually choose, well
that's completely up to you, do you want
the smoothest possible video or the
highest detailed resolution. For fast
paced games such as first-person
shooters or racing games, I would
recommend prioritizing 60 FPS, but feel
free to choose either option.
Just remember the OBS wizard will only
recommend 60 fps or the higher resolution
if it deems your computer and your
connection are good enough to be able to
handle it. Once you've decided you can
click next to move on to the stream
information step. This is where you're
going to be choosing which platform you
wish to stream to as well as entering
your stream key. Firstly stream type
allows you to choose if you are going to
be using a streaming service or if you
want to be using a custom streaming
server. Since we're streaming to
Twitch here I will be choosing streaming
service. Next we'll get a drop-down of
all the different current services that
OBS support, so Twitch, YouTube, Mixer,
Facebook are all in there and we're going
to be selecting Twitch. Next we need to
enter our stream key. So this is the
private key that we can get from our
Twitch account and it's the only thing
required by OBS to allow you to stream
to that Twitch account, so this is a
private key that should be kept private.
To get the key, you can click the little
link in OBS to open up your web browser
to the right page where the stream key
is shown. If you aren't already logged
into Twitch on your browser then you'll
obviously need to log in before you can
get your stream key. You can also always
access your stream key by going to the
Twitch website, then go into your
dashboard, clicking channel
under settings and then finally clicking
on your stream key. Twitch reiterates
that you shouldn't be sharing this key
with anybody else, obviously I'm going to
be showing my key here in this video but
there's also an option to reset your key
which I'll be clicking as soon as I
finish making this video. So last time I
did this, everyone was commenting you
know you said you couldn't show your key
and you showed your key, but obviously I
just reset it after I've made a video.
Select the whole stream key and copy it,
head back to OBS and then paste it into
the stream key box. The next two boxes
should usually be left checked. The first
one which is ‘prefer Hardware encoding’,
means that OBS will try and use the GPUs
dedicated encoder chip if it has one,
which is usually preferable as it frees
up your CPU which should in theory help
reduce stream issues. However hardware
encoding does also usually result in a
lower quality encoding for streaming. I
personally would recommend using the
hardware encoding if you can and leaving
this box checked, obviously if you're not
sure whether or not your graphics card
has the encoding chip, you can leave this
box checked and OBS will check for you,
but actually the ideal setup would be
for you to test both CPU encoding and
GPU encoding on your stream and seeing
which one you think makes better results
in terms of quality as well as in terms
of the system performance impact. The
second box which is ‘estimate bitrate
with a bandwidth test’, this just means
that OBS will perform a test to some
local Twitch service to try and find an
ideal bitrate that you can stream at.
Once you're happy you can click next and
OBS will begin to start performing its
configuration tests. What it is doing is
streaming some random data at various
different resolutions, bit rates and
frame rates to Twitch servers without
actually going live to try and work out
what your system and your connection is
capable of. This test is pretty quick,
takes less than a minute and when it is
complete you should get a window showing
the test results. Take a look at all the
different settings that OBS has
recommended, what resolution the output
stream will be at as well as what
bitrate and what FPS. Clicking ‘Apply
Settings’ will mean that OBS will then
apply these settings to the current
profile. I just want to reiterate
something and make it really clear that
this is OBS’s estimate as to what the
ideal settings for your setup would be.
Most people at some point in their
streaming career are going to have to jump
into the settings window and change one
or more of these values
to keep things stable. All of these
settings that have been applied can be
found if you click the Settings button
here on the right and look in the
relevant tab. The stream tab is where
your streaming service and stream key are.
The output tab is where the video
bitrate, the encoder and the recording
options are, and finally the video tab is
where the output resolution and FPS
options are. There's also some tabs for
general, audio hotkeys and advanced for
you to have a look at if your heart so
desires.
The final thing we need to do before we
start streaming is to add a scene and a
source. Let's start by renaming this
default scene called ‘scene’, by
right-clicking it and choosing rename.
I'm going to call this scene game since
it's going to be the scene that has my
gameplay in. Next move across to the
sources panel and click the plus icon.
This shows all the different types of
sources that you can add to each scene.
Things like text, image overlays, webcams,
browser windows and all sorts of other
things. To keep things super simple for
this video we're just going to be
selecting game capture since we want to
start by capturing our game. Make sure
that you have your game running at the
same time as setting this up so that we
can make sure that it's captured
properly. Name it whatever you want, it
doesn't actually matter what you name it
but it helps to identify each source.
Once you're further on in setting
up your stream you have many
different sources in each scene, it's
going to really help if you have them
named properly. I'm actually going to be
leaving mine as game capture since this
is always going to be the source that
captures my game, no matter if I change
game. Once the game capture window has
opened, it gives you a number of
different options for its mode. If you
always play your games in full-screen
rather than something like windowed or
borderless, you should be able to leave
the mode on ‘capture any fullscreen
application’, this just means that OBS is
always going to find the full screen
application and choose to use that as
its source. However for some games that
doesn't always work or maybe you're
running your games in a window or a
borderless mode, in which case change the
mode to capture a specific window and
then select the correct window you want
to capture from the next drop-down.
Hopefully you should then see the screen
preview update with your captured game
and that is basically the very
beginnings of building your stream
layout and design. At this point I'd love
to recommend you watch my video on
adding more sources to OBS,
it covers adding games, webcams, overlays
and text as well as covering various
issues that
some game capture methods super from such
as the black screen bug. I've linked the
video down in the description once again,
but also you should be able to click a
little link in the top right corner. I
also have a whole playlist on how to do
various things on OBS, if you're new to
this channel it’s definitely worth
subscribing and having a look around all
the cool things that we've learned how
to do for your OBS studio stream. Thanks
so much for watching and hopefully you
have enjoyed this 2018 version of how to
stream to Twitch. Another video that I'm
just going to recommend if you're having
any issues with your stream, I do have a
video on Twitch Inspector, which is a way
of being able to analyze what's going
wrong with your stream and helping
decide what settings to change, so
definitely check out that video. Again
down in the description if you're having
any issues. It's really interesting for
me how much easier this has become.
It’s become so much easier to setup your
stream with things like the auto
configuration wizard and there's so much
more detailed information that Twitch is
actually giving out so it's nowhere near
as long of a setup process and hopefully
you've been able to follow along and
have something that you're happy with.
Finally I want to finish just by
thanking again my Patrons. They’re
supporting the creation of these videos
for the whole of the Gaming Careers
community so I'd like to say a massive
thanks to these people here for
supporting the channel. If you
haven't yet joined our Discord, we have
over 100 members now all in our
discord channel, talking about how to
improve streams and networking and all
these kind of things as well as just the
general jokes and memes, so if
you haven't joined the discord yet
please do. If you would like to also
become a Patron I would really love it
if you would go and check out my Patreon
page, again linked in the description
below,
there's loads of perks that you can sign
up for such as getting
shoutouts in this video but also things
like stream promotion in discord or
hosted on my website as well as various
other things that I'm offering, so please
do go and have a look at my Patreon and
consider supporting if you have found
these guides helpful. Thank you so much
for watching guys and I will see
subscribers in the next video. Peace!