OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)

OBS is a free to use opensource software that you’ll use to record audio and video.

Functions

OBS can be used for lot’s of things and therefore there’s a broad selection of inputs and outputs but we are only goin to go over the one’s we’ll use.

Environment Setup Setup your OBS environment for recording

Scenes Learn what is an OBS scene and its usage

Sources Guide on what a source is and how to add them

Broadcasting and Recording Learn how to record and share video and audio in zoom

Environment setup

The first time you open OBS you’ll maybe see a profile already loaded with scenes and sources. If you want with a fresh profile and scene collection follow this steps.

Setup a Recording profile

A Profile are preset settings that will change the way OBS works.

For our case, we want it to be setup for recording by doing the following

1. Click on the Profile tab

2. Select New

3. Give your profile a name and click the OK button

4. Select the option Optimize for recording, I will not be streaming

5. Click the Next button

6. Choose your desired resolution and FPS

7. Click the Next button

8. Double check you settings, if everything looks good select Apply Settings

Caution

It may not seem like anything happen, but now your OBS is setup for recording.

New Scene Collection

A Scene Collection is all the scenes, video inputs, audio inputs, etc.

If you already have one that works for you use it.

If you want to start with a clean slate do the following

1. Click the Scene Collection tab

2. Select the New option

3. Give your Scene Collection a name

4. Click the OK button

Now you’ll see a clean OBS Scene Collection without any inputs and a default Scene in the Scenes section in the bottom left side of the window.

Important

Changing Scene Collection does not automatically change your Profile, these are treated separately and are not interchangeable.

Scenes

Think of scenes as like a canvas where you can drop all of you inputs like video, audio, overlays, etc.

A scene contains a collection of sources.

This includes their position in the screen, size, audio inputs, muted inputs, etc.

Tip

Treat Scenes as different camera angles, switching between scenes is easier than hiding and showing different cameras

Sources

A source is an input like a screen capture, camera, HTML overlay, microphone, etc.

We are goin to cover only two sources

Camera Source How to add a Video Capture Device source

Audio Source How to add an Audio Input Capture source

Camera Source

When you want to add a camera you need to select the Video Capture Device in the source section.

Here’s how to add a camera source in OBS

1. Locate the Source section in the bottom left side of OBS window

2. Click on the + button in the bottom left

3. Select Video Capture Device

4. Give your source a name and click the OK button

5. You’ll see a new window pop-up with lots of options

6. In the Device section, choose the camera you want to add

   Note

   If you don’t see the camera, make sure it’s powered on and plugged into your computer. Then restart OBS and try again.

7. In the Resolution/FPS Type section, choose Custom

8. In the Resolution section, choose the resolution of the camera you are adding

9. Click the OK button

10. You will now see your new camera source in the source section and the preview window

Audio Source

When you want to add a microphone input you need to select the Audio Input Capture in the source section.

Here’s how to add a microphone input in OBS

1. Locate the Source section in the bottom left side of OBS window

2. Click on the + button in the bottom left

3. Select Audio Input Capture

4. Give your source a name and click the OK button

5. In the Device section choose the audio interface or microphone you want to add

6. Click the OK button

7. you will now see your new audio source in the Audio Mixer and Source sections

There are additional steps you need to make since your audio interface might be in stereo mode.

You can in the screenshot that the left audio input has only one green bar (left) and the right one both.

Here’s how to get both

1. In the Audio Mixer section, right click the audio input you want to fix

2. Click Advanced Audio Properties

3. Locate your audio input and check the box in the Mono column

4. Click on the Close button

5. Now both channel will be filled

Caution

Sometimes audio inputs disappear, if this happens, add them again or restart OBS

Broadcasting and Recording

We will focus in the Control section that you can fin in the bottom right of the OBS window.

We only need to focus in two buttons

• Strat Recording
• Start Virtual Camera

Start Recording Button

This button will start a recording of all the sources in the selected scene.

Caution

You can switch scenes while recording, just make sure the audio sources match between scenes. If you have a scene with microphone input and then switch to another scene without that microphone, you will loose sound in the recording.

After clicking this button, the button’s text will changer to Stop Recording and a pause button will appear in the right.

These are self describing, but here’s the actions of these buttons just in case.

Stop and Pause

Stop Recording Button

This will pause the recording and will finish the video encoding.

Pause Button

This will pause the recording until you press the pause button again.

By default your recording are going into the Videos folder in your computer.

Caution

If this is not the case click File > Settings > Output and you’ll see under Recording > Recording Path the path were OBS is recording

Video Format

There’s different outputs the video encoder will let you choose from. By default the format of the video will be mkv.

Here’s some benefits of using mkv vs mp4

	MKV	MP4
File size	Larger files due to lossless compression	Smaller files due to efficient compression
Compatibility	Supports many codecs, but some devices may not support MKV natively	More widely compatible with most devices
Video quality	Higher quality due to lossless compression	Lower quality than MKV due to compression
Features	Supports multiple audio and subtitle tracks, chapters, and tags	Supports fewer tracks and basic metadata
Error resilience	Can recover from file corruption and play partial content	Often makes the entire video unplayable if corrupted

The most important feature is the Error resilience. If for some reason OBS or the computer crashes, the video format will be playable and readable up to the point where the app crashed.

Danger

Although slim, there’s still chance for the video to corrupt if any service stops. MKV it’s just better for catastrophic events compared to mp4

Tip

MKV format videos are large. In order to reduce the size you can convert them into an mp4 file. You can use OBS for this by going to:

File > Remux Recordings > Button in the OBS Recording Section > Choose Recording > Remux.

Start Virtual Camera Button

This button will allow you to share your current OBS scene by creating a Virtual Camera that you can choose in Zoom, Teams, etc.

After clicking this button, the button’s text will change to Stop Virtual Camera. Press this button to stop sharing your OBS feed.

Caution

This will only share video and not audio. To share audio in Zoom or any other meeting app please select the audio interface as the microphone input.

OBS Plugins

Plugins are a great way to enhance the functionality of OBS. You can find a bunch of them made by the community here:

OBS Plugins Site

Multiple Source and Scene Recording

By default OBS cannot record or stream separate sources and scenes at the same time. We can add this functionality by using a plugin called Branch Output

Branch Output PLugin

OBS site Streaming/Recording filter for source/scene 1.0.2

GitHub Repo Branch Output Repository

This plugin allows you to can record each source individually. As a result, depending on the number of sources you wnat to record, this plugin will produced a video file per source.

Note

As an example, if you have 2 camera sources you want to record, you will see 3 files:

• Scene Recording
• Source 1 Recording
• Source 2 Recording