If you’re looking to record your screen or stream online, OBS Studio (formerly Open Broadcaster Software) is a great option. This tool makes it simple to capture screencasts, record your gameplay, stream to Twitch, and much more. But if you’ve never used it before, OBS Studio might seem a little daunting at first. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to set up OBS Studio, what you need to start recording and streaming, and tips for getting the best results. Download OBS Studio To get started, you’ll want to for Windows, macOS, or Linux. We’ll use the Windows version for this tutorial, but it’s similar on all platforms.
OBS Studio is truly free, so you don’t have to pay for any features. It’s also open source software, meaning anyone can take a look at the code and improve it. Step through the standard installer. Once it completes, OBS Studio will offer to walk you through an auto-configuration wizard.
You can do this if you like; we’ll review related settings below. The OBS Studio Interface The main OBS Studio interface allows you to set up everything you need to start streaming or recording. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see several control elements.
Scenes A Scene in OBS Studio allows you to collect and arrange certain Source elements in a specific way. You can have multiple scenes and switch between them at will. This will make a bit more sense as we move on. For now, you can click the Plus button to create a new scene. Call it Default or something similar (you can change it later). After you’ve added some elements, you can click on them in the preview to adjust as you wish.
In this video, I explain how you should determine which bitrate you should use for live streaming, recording, etc. Utilizing YouTube's recommended bitrates, as well as SpeedTest for your internet. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for Mac. Set OBS and start streaming on LiveEdu.tv today. [OBS] correctly to stream on LiveEdu.tv Watch this video to set up your stream or follow the guide below. Download OBS and run the installation. The video bit rate should not be.
Click the Eye icon to hide an element, or the Lock to prevent accidental movement. Sources Sources are the video and audio inputs that you feed into OBS Studio. Click the Plus button to add a new one, and you’ll see several categories. Some of the most important ones include:. Audio Input Capture: Record sound from a microphone or similar. (See Microphones matter a lot when making a podcast.
The initial costs are fairly low: recording software, a desktop or laptop, and of course, a microphone. So what's the best podcast microphone? If you need one.). Audio Output Capture: Capture the sound coming out of your computer, so your recording/stream includes game or desktop audio. Display Capture: Allows you to capture an entire monitor, no matter what’s showing on it. Game Capture: Choose a specific game to record. Image: Display a static image.
Video Capture Device: Records footage from a webcam or similar. (We’ve listed If you don't own a webcam, you should get one ASAP.
It's one of those things that seems unnecessary until you have one, and then it suddenly becomes useful for all kinds of things. If you don’t have one already.).
Window Capture: Record a specific program window. Like Game Capture, but works for any program. Once you select an option, you can choose Create new or Add Existing.
Since you just started, you’ll need to add a new item that you can reuse later. After you click OK, OBS Studio displays options depending on the source you chose. As an example, click Audio Input Capture. Let’s say you’re going to use a headset microphone to record audio.
Enter a descriptive name for the source (like Headset Mic) and click OK. On the resulting screen, pick your headset mic from the Device dropdown and click OK. Now you have that input registered with OBS Studio and can easily add it again in the future.
You’ll need to repeat this step to add your webcam, screen capture, and similar. Mixer Once you’ve added all your sources, the Mixer tab lets you adjust the volume balance between them.
The bars move in real-time to reflect levels. Drag the slider to adjust the mix, or click the speaker icon to mute a source. Play around with these ahead of time, as different sources can have vastly different volume levels.
You wouldn’t want to complete a recording only to find out that the game audio overpowers your mic. Scene Transitions This simple section allows you to choose what happens when you swap between scenes. Choose between Fade and Cut in the dropdown, or hit Plus to pick another option. You can choose how long the transition lasts using the Duration box. Controls Here, the Start Streaming and Start Recording buttons will let you start capturing with OBS Studio. You can see the current FPS and CPU usage below. It also lets you enable Studio Mode for making changes to scenes on the fly, plus access to the many Settings of OBS Studio.
Tweaking OBS Studio Settings Before your first recording or stream, you should tweak a few options. Click Settings in the Controls section of the interface to access them. OBS Studio offers other options than what we explore here, but you shouldn’t need to worry about those until you’re more experienced with it. Video Settings First, head to the Video tab. Here, check the Base (Canvas) Resolution and Output (Scaled) Resolution) options. The first should match your screen resolution, while the second lets you choose the resolution of the final video.
Leave Output the same as the above for a full-quality recording, or lower it to something like 1280×720 for a lower file size. Leave the Downscale Filter as Lanczos if you’re downscaling. Lastly here, you’ll need to choose the FPS (frames per second) of the recording. For a smooth picture, choose 60. But if you desire a smaller file size or are recording something simple, 30 is suitable. It’s also a good idea to open the Advanced tab and set Process Priority to High in order to give OBS Studio the most resources to create the best recording.
Recording Settings Switch to the Output tab to access options to screen recording. At the top, you can set the Output Mode to Simple or Advanced. If you want a quick and solid preset, pick Simple and set the following under Recording:.
Recording Quality to Indistinguishable Quality. Recording format to FLV, or MKV if you prefer. Encoder to Hardware (AMD) or Hardware (Nvidia) if you have a powerful graphics card, or Software (x264) if not (see below for more details). Of course, Advanced gives you more options. Choose Advanced and swap to the Recording tab below to see them.
Choose where you’d like your completed video to save using the Recording Path field. Under Recoding Format, you can Why do so many video formats exist? It's confusing! But don't worry, we are here to help. Here's everything you need to know about video formats, containers, and codecs. The default is FLV, which is a fine default.
While MP4 is a popular format, using it is risky because you’ll lose the whole file if OBS Studio can’t finalize it. Thus, a Blue Screen or power outage would destroy an MP4 recording but merely cut off an FLV. Below this, you’ll need to choose an Encoder. The default is x264, which uses your CPU.
If you have a powerful Wondering if you should use an integrated vs. Dedicated graphics card? Here's what you need to know to make your decision., you can change this to H264 (for AMD cards) or NVENC (for Nvidia cards). Doing so will likely provide better results when recording, as it won’t put as much strain on your CPU. Feel free to try both and see which is best for you. Bitrate Perhaps the most important part of your recording options is the Bitrate field.
Essentially, a higher bitrate results in better-quality videos with larger file sizes. Setting bitrate too low will result in pixelated video, while setting it too high will generate a massive file. If you’re using x264, choose CBR (constant bitrate) and enter a value for bitrate below. 50,000 is a good starting point for 1080p recordings at 60FPS. The CPU Usage Preset lets you tweak how much of the CPU the software uses to encode video. The default is veryfast, but you can up this to superfast if you get a High CPU Usage Warning while recording or streaming. Those using a graphics card encoder can choose a Preset, or set the bitrate values below similarly to above.
Try different values here with a few test recordings to find the Is your video file taking up way too much space? It's time to encode, compress, and tweak it so that it shrinks in size without losing any noticeable quality. For your purposes. Record around a minute of typical footage and you can use that to estimate how large of a file you’ll end up with. Streaming Settings You’ll find Streaming on the Output tab as well. In Simple mode, you’ll simply need to specify a bitrate, choose between software or hardware encoding, and set the Audio bitrate.
Recommends some streaming bitrates depending on quality. 1080p at 60FPS should use a bitrate of at least 4,500, while 720p at 30fps can use something around 2,500. For the audio bitrate, 160 is a good baseline. You can increase this to 192 for better quality, or 320 if you need top-notch audio. In the Advanced mode, you’ll find very similar options on the Streaming tab as discussed above. You may wish to lower the bitrate (as well as downscaling the resolution and lowering the FPS) slightly for streaming, as a stable stream that everyone can enjoy is better than streaming in maximum quality that few can enjoy.
The Frames per second (FPS) are to gaming what horsepower is to racing. We show you tweaks that will save you from low game FPS. Unleash the true power of your rig and watch FPS soar!
Check out for more info. How to Record Your Screen With OBS Studio To begin screen recording, all you have to do is click Start Recording on the main OBS Studio page. The software will immediately start recording based on the current Scene. You can swap Scenes at any time, so make sure you’ve set them up beforehand. When you click Stop Recording, OBS Studio will save your file to the directory you specified in Settings.
As mentioned earlier, we recommend performing a short test recording first to make sure everything looks and sounds acceptable. How to Stream Using OBS Studio To stream with OBS Studio, you’ll first need to authorize OBS Studio with your streaming account. Do this by opening Settings and switching to the Stream tab. Under Service, choose your preferred service. You’ll find Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and more. Next, you’ll need to generate a streaming key for the service. To do this for Twitch, head to the ( Settings Channel) while logged in.
Click Copy and paste this into the Stream key field in OBS Studio. For YouTube Gaming, open the in YouTube’s Creator Studio.
At the bottom of the page in the Encoder Setup section, reveal and copy your Stream name/key. Warning: Never give this stream key to anyone or show it on a stream! Anyone with access to this can stream to your account.
If you accidentally share it, click Reset to generate a new one. You’re All Set With OBS Studio Now you have a basic understanding of how to use OBS Studio. You can customize it a lot more to suit your own personal needs, but this article is designed to prepare you to record gameplay locally or run your first stream. Now you can focus on Are you starting a Twitch channel and wondering how to create an exciting stream? These tips will help you draw loyal, regular viewers and expand your audience. Explore more about:,.
What are the best OBS studio settings for Twitch? Well the answer to the question might not be what works for you. What we really need to find out is what are the best settings for your stream. In this tutorial I’ll guide you through how to make the right choices for your Twitch channel. Watch Video Tutorial (part 1) Watch Video Tutorial (part 2) Finding Your Best OBS Studio Settings With OBS Studio open let’s hit the Settings button. The first thing we’re going to look at is the general tab.
Here, we can choose our default language as well as pick a light or dark theme. I personally prefer the dark theme, but choose what you like. Next, the s how confirmation dialog check boxes will give you a pop up box when you decide to hit start or stop stream. If you’re concerned about accidentally going live or stopping your stream prematurely, then select these boxes. Let’s hit apply and move on. Learn how to get the best OBS Studio Settings for your channel! The Stream Tab The stream tab is where we’ll need to make a few important decisions.
First, we will notice the services selection is defaulted to Twitch. However, you can see a list of other platforms we can stream to with OBS studio.
These include YouTube Gaming, Hitbox, Beam.IO and more. One of the more important options in the settings is selecting the proper Twitch server. If you’d like, you can select the server that is closest to you. But, I recommend downloading a tool that we can use to get the best results.
Is extremely useful. The best option is not always the closest server to you, which is why I use this program. We will use this to determine our best server, as well as what bitrate to use in a little bit. If you’re uncomfortable downloading any tools, I’ll describe another way to determine bitrate later in this post.
Once the tool is downloaded, you’ll need to extract it with a program like WinRar. I actually leave mine on my desktop, but you can put it wherever you’d like. The Twitch Bandwidth Test Tool Once we run the test tool we’ll see a couple of options. First, we need to acquire our stream key.
Click the “Get Key” link and it will open your if you’re already logged in, if not log in. Make sure you’re on the Stream Key tab and click “Show Key”. You’ll get a warning that tells you to not share this key with anyone.
Read through it and click “I Understand”. After that you’ll see your key, as well as a link that allows us to reset our key if we accidentally show ours somehow. Copy your key and go back to the Test Tool and paste it into the Stream Key box. Example Stream Key Next, the test duration option will allow us to choose a time to test for.
You can leave it on its default setting, which does about 10 seconds of testing per server. If you have the time it’s better to let it run longer to give you more accurate results. Finally, select the region you’d like to test – I’m going to only check the United States. Now, just hit start and go grab a snack or maybe even take a nap. But, once the test is done you’ll see some numbers for each server. We want to choose the server with the highest bandwidth with a quality above 80.
The RTT time represents the latency to the server, but isn’t the most important factor. The test caps the speed at 10,000 Kbps – which is fine since we don’t have to worry about speeds any higher. Make sure to leave this tool open after the tests are complete. Based on my results, I’m going to tab back to OBS and choose the Dallas, TX server. If you’re not using the test tool, then it’s typically best to choose the server closest to you. However, the tool will give you the best results. I’m also going to paste my stream key into OBS since I still have it copied to my clipboard.
But if you don’t have yours copied anymore, go back to your to get your key and enter it here. Hit apply and let’s check out the next tab. The Output Tab The output settings are also very important. We’re only going to cover the basics here, but OBS does include a good amount of advanced settings for those that are interested. The first setting we want to change is the Video Bitrate. This is an extremely important option to set, and can be sometimes be confusing to some. Let me take a moment and explain what this setting does.
Vide Bitrate will tell OBS Studio the rate at which it will send your video data to the Twitch servers. The Twitch servers will then send this data to your viewers. This number will also help us determine what resolution to stream at as well.
This is one of the reasons that the best OBS Studio settings are different for some people. With that said, as a new streamer you will never want to put this number higher than 3,500 Kbps. Also, as a new streamer, you should know that unless you have a high number of viewers, or you’re partnered with Twitch, your viewers will receive data at the rate you send. For this reason, I personally recommend staying at 2,500 Kbps or below. This is so that viewers on mobile devices or with poor connections will be able to watch your stream without buffering issues. If you’re a Twitch partner then your best OBS Studio settings will involve a 3,500+ Kbps bitrate, if your system and internet can handle it.
How Do I Choose My OBS Studio Bitrate for Twitch? If you’re wondering, how do I choose my bit rate? Well, it’s easy! Go back to the Twitch Bandwidth Test tool and look at the bandwidth for the server you selected. We want to take 80% of that number, since we don’t want OBS Studio to hog all of our upload bandwidth.
Remember – no matter what, don’t go over 3,500 Kbps. Let’s pretend our best server showed 3,000 Kbps as for our bandwidth. If we take 80% of 3,000 Kbps we will get 2,400 Kbps – and we’ll enter that into the bit rate box. For audio bitrate, leave it at its default setting. Let’s hit apply to save the changes we’ve made so far. If you didn’t use the Twitch Bandwidth test tool to estimate your upload speed, I recommend using to run an upload test.
This site will give you a good idea of what your upload speed is. You might need to use a to convert your result to kilobits per second. After you get that number you then can use 80% of that number as your bitrate. Remember, do not exceed 3,500kbps. Hit apply to save.
Setting Up Recording in OBS Studio With selecting our server and bit rate out of the way, we can finish up with your best OBS Studio settings. Let’s continue in the Output tab and take a look at the recording options. The recording path will determine where our recordings will be saved.
I sometimes use OBS to record screen captures and more – sometimes even while I’m streaming! The next option we want to select is the recording quality. This by default is set to Same as stream. This option might not be best for you.
Let’s say you’re streaming at a lower bitrate and resolution, but you want to capture high quality videos for use on YouTube or in other videos. You can change that here. If you have a lot of extra hard drive space – you can use lossless quality. I’ve found indistinguishable quality to work quite well. Next, I like to use.mp4 as my recording format.
Hit apply to save any changes. The Audio Tab In the audio tab we’ll leave most of the settings at their defaults. The first option I want to talk about here is the Desktop Audio Device. This will basically tell OBS Studio what sounds from your computer to pick up.
Generally, leaving this on the “Default” option is what most people will want. For most cases this means that OBS Studio will broadcast the sounds that play through your default audio device. This will typically play all the sounds your computer makes – including music, voice chat, and your games.
More advanced tutorials will explain how you can include only certain sounds in your stream. For Mic/Auxillary device, you’ll see that “Default” or “Disabled” is selected. If you’re like me you might have multiple microphones attached to your computer. If you’re unsure what your default mic is set to then you can directly select the microphone you’d like to use here. For myself I’m going to choose my AT-2020 microphone. If you want the best OBS Studio settings for your audio, then you need to decide what sort of devices or sounds you want playing through your stream. You can also see that we can add multiple microphones and desktop devices if we need to.
We can also choose to enable push-to-mute, which is useful if you want to avoid loud noises like coughs on stream, or push-to-talk which is great if you have a lot of background noise and want there to be silence from your microphone unless you’re talking. If you select these, I’ll show you how to set up their hotkeys in just a bit. The Video Tab Let’s hit apply and move on to the video settings. The base canvas resolution represents our strating resolution. I prefer to leave mine on 1920 x 1080, or 1080p, as this is the best OBS Studio settings for me, for a few reasons.
First, all of my graphics are meant for this resolution. Second, when I record videos they will be recorded at 1080p instead of a lower resolution. For most people this should work fine. Next, our Output (scaled) Resolution will represent what resolution the Twitch servers will receive from our video feed. This size will be determined by our bitrate. I’m going to check out based upon our bitrate. The bitrate I have set is 2,400 Kbps – so I’m going to downscale my resolution to 720p, or 1280×720, which I can just type in or use the drop down to select.
Leave the downscale filter and FPS option at their default values. Hit apply to save your settings so far. If you’re still having any issues with these steps, then you should check out the for additional help. Before we move on, I want to talk mention that it’s important to keep at the 16:9 aspect ratio. Most of you will be doing that with 1920×1080, 1280×720, 852×480 and so on. But if for some reason you have a different aspect ratio – I recommend setting your canvas to one of these aspect ratios, as they are recommend for Twitch.
You can always play your games in windowed mode and match these aspect ratios in order to make things look great. So, to get the best OBS Studio settings, you may need to tweak your default resolution to fit a 16:9 aspect ratio. The Hotkeys Tab Let’s check out the hotkeys tab. This section is pretty straightforward, if there is an option you’d like to take advantage of by hitting a key, or combination of keys – you can click inside it’s box and press the button or button combination that you’d like to assign to that function. You can hit revert to go back to an old setting or clear to remove the command completely. This is also where you can set up the push-to-talk or mute buttons we saw earlier.
![Video bit rate for streaming Video bit rate for streaming](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125445888/205643711.jpg)
Set up any hotkeys you find useful to you at the moment, the most notable is the start and stop recording options. The Studio Mode and other keys we’ll discuss at another time. The scene options we will also set up once we get to adding scenes into OBS Studio. To get the best OBS Studio settings for yourself here, you will need to decide if having hotkeys will help your production, and if that’s something important to you.
Hit apply to save any changes. The Advanced Tab Finally, let’s take a quick glance at the advanced tab. The options under video will all be left at default. The stream delay options are useful if you’d like to make your stream be delayed by a certain amount. Let’s say you’re broadcasting some information that you don’t want your viewers to see in real time.
You can enable this option and set the amount of seconds for your stream to be delayed. You’ll also see an estimate on how much memory OBS Studio will need to make this work properly.
The automatically reconnect option will tell OBS Studio what to do in the case that we disconnect from the Twitch server. I leave mine at the default values. With that, let’s hit apply and “Ok” to finalize all of our changes. We’re finally done with your best OBS Studio settings. Remember, these settings will be saved in our profile. So, if for any reason you’d like to make a completely different profile, you can do so by going to Profile New, and then assign your new profile a name. Perhaps you want different hotkeys or different resolutions set for various games.
With everything now completely set up, we could actually hit start streaming and go live. But first, you’ll need to set up some sources and scenes – which we’ll cover in another post.
The Core OBS Studio Tutorials. Best OBS Studio Settings (current post).