Hey everyone, it’s Derek with Nerd or Die. And In this video I’m going to show you
how to use filters to modify your sources inside of OBS Studio. This will allow you
to do things like cropping, green screen effects, and even delay different sources.
Let’s get right into it.
The first thing I’m going to do is add two sources to my scene. First, I’m going to
add an animated background to the scene, and then I’m going to add a simulated webcam
as well. The webcam simulation will actually just be a media source that’s a video on
loop. But you should get the idea how to apply filters to this source from what I’m going
to do here.
The thing you need to realize about filters, is that they can be added to every source
individually. However, if you apply filters to a source in one scene, they will carry
over to any other scenes that your sources are used in. This means that if you want to
have different filters applied to the same source, you’d have to add that type of source
in again, and then name it something different, such as image 2. We’ll touch more on this
in a future video, about setting up our scenes. Another thing I’d like to quickly mention
is that there are two types of filters: Audio/Video Filters and Effects Filters. We’re going
to start by going through each effect filter first.
To use a filter, let’s first click the source we want to apply it to, right click, and select
‘Filters’. If our source allows “Audio/Video Filters”, there will be a section for them
at the top. But again, let’s look at the “Effects Filters” on the left, and our
current selected source on the right. Now, we can hit the plus, to add a filter. Let’s
work our way from the top down.
We’re going to notice that adding filters is pretty similar to adding new sources into
OBS. For Image Mask/Blend we just select it, name the filter, and hit okay. You’ll see
that filters have the ability to be toggled on and off, just like sources as well. Image
Mask/Blend might seem complicated as a new streamer, but let’s take it slow and hopefully
you’ll understand what uses you can have with it.
You will first be able to select what type of mask or blend you would like to use. Path
will give you the ability to select a specific file to add as a mask or blend. Color you’ll
generally want to leave on its default. Opacity can go from 0 to 100, where if you lower it
from it’s default of 100, it will become more and more see through. Stretch image (discard
aspect ratio) will actually take your image that you selected to use as a mask or blend,
and fit it to the entire source.
Okay, so what does this mean? Let’s say you want to put your webcam in a circle. You
can use a mask to hide certain areas of your webcam. To do this, let’s use a black and
white image as an example. I’ll open the image for you to see. You’ll notice that
around the edges the image is black, and in the middle is a white circle. If I select
this image as my path file, and select Alpha Mask (Color Channel) you’ll see that my
webcam will now have the black areas hidden. The easiest way I remember how masks work,
is that black hides and white reveals. Grays will actually cause transparencies. Also,
if I checkmark “stretch image”, you’ll see that the circle is stretched, so that
the source image I selected fits the entire source.
You can also use filters as blends, meaning you can take advantage of multiple, addition,
and subtraction blends. If you’re familiar with Photoshop layer blends, this acheive
the same effects as that. If not, don’t worry too much - as this is something that
isn’t extremely important.
I’m going to remove this filter by selecting it and hitting the minus button.
Let’s move on to an easier to understand filter, crop. Add it just like we did for
the Image Mask/Blend filter, and we’ll see a familiar set up. Leave Relative check marked.
Let’s pretend that our webcam has a bit too much showing on the left side and top.
We can use the arrows on the right to slowly adjust the amount to crop by simply clicking
and holding. So, if we start with left, we’ll notice that the left side is being removed
from our source. We can also simply manually type in an amount, which is in pixels, to
remove as well. So, after I get the left side cropped out as desired, I can just type in
what I want for the top. Let’s actually close the filters panel and take a look at
what happened in the final result. With my webcam cropped how I’d like it, I can move
it to anywhere in my scene. If I need to make more adjustments to the filter, I can just
right click the source, and hit filters to bring back up the filters panel.
Let’s apply some filters to my background video. After I open up the filters panel,
I’ll add a color correction filter. The first thing we’ll notice is color. This
will basically tint the source to the color we select. So, I can choose a red for example,
and we can see the effect it’d applies. If I don’t like this effect, I can change
it back to the default of white.
The sliders provide you the ability to adjust the contrast, brightness, and gamma of your
source. These can be useful to adjust webcam settings or even potentially some media or
games that you feel might show up dark. Getting into the differences of each can be a bit
confusing, so we won’t be covering that here. However, you can always play around
with these options and get something that works best for you.
The scroll filter can actually be used in some interesting ways. First, it’s very
useful to make text sources move from left to right, if they’re too long. Next, let’s
say you have a repeatable pattern, or maybe a static image that you’d like to see move
a bit, you can use scroll to make it move horizontally or vertically. To do so, just
adjust the sliders with the speed of each direction you’d like to have it move. OBS
will automatically make the source sort of repeat itself.
Scroll also includes the ability to limit the width and height of the source. This works
similarly to cropping - but I’ve actually found myself using both limit width/height
and crop together.
Let’s go ahead and move on to our next filter, the Color Key, but let’s actually talk about
Chroma key as well. So, you might have tried each of these out yourself, and you may be
wondering “what’s the difference”? Well, I’m going to make it quite simple for you.
If you want to filter out or hide a green screen, use the Chroma Key. From what I’ve
read and seen before, Chroma key is what more streamers will want to use. A color key can
be useful with graphics with a specific color you’d like removed.
Anyways, I’m going to actually add in an image as an example of a green screen, and
show you what the settings do inside of these filters. Let’s work with the chroma key.
We can work from the preset colors under Key Color Type, or we can pick a color of our
own. Fo greenscreens, this is generally the best idea, to select the closest color to
your screen possible. So, with Custom Color selected, let’s hit select color. Here,
we can select colors in various ways, or we can actually use “Pick Screen Color” to
pull up a sort of eye dropper that will match the color we’re hovering over. Go to your
source and select the most common color shade you see in it, that you’d like to key out.
Simply click it and you’ll have the color you need. You can hit Add to custom colors,
to save this color selection, and then Okay. If you’re using a green screen, you might
already see some good results, if not, don’t worry, we can do some tweaking to the options.
First, if you plan on using a green screen, I can’t recommend anything better than properly
lighting it. Having a more consistent color of green screen will produce the best results.
Ideally the entire screen is the exact same color/shade. But, in reality this isn’t
possible. So, let’s talk about what each option does.
First, we have similarity. These simply means how close to our selected color we’d like
to filter out. Where 1 is that exact color, and increasing it from there increases the
range of colors to key out. Next, is smoothness. If you slide this input around, you should
be able to see what’s happening. It’s basically blending out colors around the color
that you’re keying out. So if you’re having trouble keying out areas where the color you’d
like to remove is meeting colors you’d like to keep, smoothness might help you out. It
basically turns the colors around what you’re keying out transparent, the more you increase
its value, so in essence it smooths out these areas. Finally, we have Key Color Spill Reduction.
This option is for those of you that might experience a “spill” of your key color.
It’s possible that you might see some green tint reflected on certain areas in your source,
or maybe some of the key color is showing between hairs or some sort of fabric. Increasing
this value will help with these types of issues. Color spill is sometimes tricky to remove,
but use your best judgement.
Again, I want to reiterate how important it is to use proper lighting if you plan on using
a green screen. In my opinion you’d be better off buying a cheaper piece of green fabric
and investing in some lighting to make sure the colors are as even as possible.
Finally, for graphical sources, let’s move on to possible the easiest filter, sharpen.
If you have a blurry image, webcam, or similar, just simply increase the sharpness to a desire
effect. Be careful with sharpness, it can make things look a bit unnatural if you use
too much. So again, play around with the values and use your best judgement.
As I mentioned at the start, only certain types of sources allow these filters. Let’s
go through them quickly one by one.
The first is Gain. Put simply, gain will increase or decrease the volume of this source. So,
if your sound is just too low, you can increase the gain to compensate. It’s best is the
source volume is set properly, but gain can be useful.
Next, is Video Delay (Async). This will basically tell a specific source to be delayed a certain
amount of time in milliseconds. So, let’s say you have a capture card such as an El
Gato, that has a built in delay of 1 second. You could add a 1,000 millisecond delay to
your webcam, to ensure that your reactions are matched with what is happening in your
game capture. Personally, I use this option to match my webcam with my mic, as I run my
audio through Adobe audition to clean it up a bit. My audio is technically delayed 250ms
to have enough time to process it, so I add a 250ms delay to my webcam to match my voice
with what’s seen on my webcam.
The last filter is Noise Gate. You may be already familiar with these options, but let’s
take a look. If you have a source that you’d like to automatically filter out some loud
noises, or only play noises that are above a certain level, then you want to set up a
noise gate filter. Close Threshold represents the amount of decibels that need to be coming
from the source in order to play a noise, or “Close this gate if the audio is too
low”. Open Threshold is the decibels that the audio will need to be at so that it can
play through the source, or “Open the gate at this volume”. So, you’ll notice you
can have audio in between open and close. This simply means that you can open the gate
once you hit a certain audio level, but it won’t close unless it falls below another
audio level.
This is where the other options come in. Attack time is how long it will take the the source
to play audio after the gate is breached. So, you’ll generally want this amount to
be quite low. Hold time is how long after that gate has been opened to play audio from
the source, regardless of the decibel level. This time will be reset each time you the
source has audio that is loud enough to “breach” the gate. Release time will lower the volume
over time after it has cut out. This helps remove abrupt cuts from audio, which makes
it seem more natural.
Okay! Well, if you’ve stuck with me this entire video you should be a master of filters.
Filters are something that I think a lot of people look over and dismiss when streaming,
but mastering them can really make a huge difference in your stream set up.