[How To] Streaming with OBS (2 Viewers)

[m4nu]

Main Interface Overview

I've broken this up into 3 sections just to make absolutely sure no one gets lost as I go over things.

Section 1: The Preview

This big grey box is your preview area, you can see what your stream looks like going out. This is not exactly what your viewers see though, that depends on your network connection and quality settings. You can resize the OBS window and the preview will resize as well.


Section 2: Scenes and Sources

Scenes
On the left, you can see we have a box for Scenes. These are how you lay out all your video sources, images, text and whatever else you have. You'll set a name for each one and there is no hard limit on how many you can have. For example, you might have one scene with a game filling the screen, and another one that has the game smaller, with a background behind it and your webcam in the corner. How you set up your scenes is up to you.

Sources
These are the actual things that are showed on the stream. You can add images, specific windows, text, capture cards and more. Each one can be moved around and resized however you like as well as other settings pertaining specifically to each type of source.


Section 3: Settings and Functions

Mixer / Audio Levels:

• The two bars here are for setting how loud or quiet your microphone and desktop audio is. You can also click the icons themselves to mute or unmute each of them.

Start Streaming:

• Once you've configured everything, this will begin your livestream to the service you selected.

Start Recording:

• Once you've configured everything, this will begin your recording with the settings you selected.

Settings:

• Opens up the settings menu, which we'll be taking a good look at later, as there is a lot to go over.

Exit:

• Gives you candy.

 

[m4nu]

Settings Walkthrough​

General

Spoiler: General

Aside from changing the language, you can change the theme of OBS to your own like.


Stream

Spoiler: Stream

Here is where you configure where you'll stream to. Service lets you set which website to stream to. There are preconfigured setups for a number of services and an option for Custom (Stream Type = Custom Streaming Server), for streaming to services like UStream or Livestream.

If streaming to a preconfigured service, you'll be able to select which server to use from the drop down box. Then you'll need to enter your Stream Key. Your Stream Key is like a special password that lets you stream to that service without actually providing your username or password.


Output Streaming

Spoiler: Output Streaming

Probably the most confusing part of setting up OBS, this is where you control what your stream quality is on the watcher's end. You'll need to do a Speedtest if you don't know what kind of upload speeds you have, as it's a necessary piece of information.

The settings here are going to differ for every single person, which is what makes it complicated to write a guide for.

Encoder
x264 is the standard encoder which uses your CPU for streaming/recording. NVIDIA NVENC H.264 Encoder uses the GPU for streaming/recording. This encoder is ideal for streaming and recording because you nearly lose none FPS at all, you barely feel it in-game that you are streaming.

Important: You will need a GeForce 600 or higher to use this encoder

Bitrate
Entirely dependent on your upload speed. If Speedtest shows you an upload speed of 1.50mbps, that's 1500kb/s. You don't want to use all the upload you have, so a good value here for Bitrate would be about 1000 or 1100.

Check out the settings estimator for a recommendation of what to use.


Output Recording

Spoiler: Output Recording

Very self-explaining and also very similar to the Streaming tab. You can select your Recording Path, which Recording Format you like and again which Encoder you prefer. You can vary the Rescale Output and Bitrate because it is now bound to your system specs and not your upload speed anymore.


Audio

Spoiler: Audio

This section lets you choose which device to use as your microphone or secondary audio device. You can choose to set a Push-to-talk key, or set up hotkeys for muting/unmuting the mic and for muting/unmuting your speaker audio. For those who require it, you can also force your microphone to be mono. If you have a particularly quiet mic, you can boost the volume of it.


Video

Spoiler: Video

Your Base Resolution is the size of your stream for the purposes of settings up your scenes and sources. The final size that actually gets encoded and streamed is whatever you set through the Output Resolution option. For quality purposes, it is always best to have a normal base resolution and then downscale it. FPS is what OBS will try to maintain for your stream.

Similar to Encoding, these options depend a lot on what type of computer you have and how good your connection is. 30 FPS is a good value to keep unless you have a good computer and upload speed. A good rule to follow is to keep your FPS a factor of 60. If your computer is not the best, you can set this down to 20 or even 15, though you will usually get better results from just keeping your FPS at 30 and downscaling more.

 

[m4nu]

Setting Up Scenes and Sources

Setting up scenes is a pretty simple process once you know you're way around. As mentioned earlier, a scene is just a combination of a number of sources, which are things ranging from images, windows and video devices.

To create a scene, just right click in the white box below Scenes: and click Add Scene. Give it an appropriate name and you're ready to set up your sources. You can right-click the scene in this list to change its position for organization purposes as well as setting a hotkey for it.


Adding sources is a similar process, but instead you right-click in the Sources: box and select which type to add. A brief overview of each one:

Window Capture / Monitor Capture

• - Used for capturing a specific monitor or window. This can be any window including fullscreen windowed games, the only thing you can't capture with this is games running in fullscreen. If Windows Aero is enabled, using Window Capture will only show that window, and not things overlayed on top of it. This won't work with Aero disabled. If you're using Monitor Capture at all, make sure that Aero is disabled (Windows Vista/7) for best performance (It can be set to be disabled when you start OBS from the Video section of the settings.) As for Windows 8, Monitor Capture is hardware accelerated, much like Window Capture with Aero on, but it's still the capture method with the highest performance impact. You can also specify a region of a monitor or window capture, set its opacity and chroma key it (Useful for overlaying an IRC window)

Add Image

• - Lets you add an image to the scene. Supported formats are .bmp, .dds, .jpg, .png and animated .gifs. You can tint the image as well as set its opacity.

Add Image Slideshow

• - Similar to the above, allows you to set up a list of images to cycle through at a certain inverval. Supported formats are .bmp, .dds, .jpg, .png and non-animated .gifs

Add Text

• - Display text on the screen. Choose the font, color, size, styling and other aspects. You can either specify the text itself in OBS, or have it pull the text from a file (UTF-8 or compatible)

Add Video Capture Device

• - Add a camera or capture card to the stream. Able to flip the image, set its opacity, choose resolution options and chroma key.

Add Game Capture

• - A very powerful capture method allowing direct capture of the framebuffer of a game. Supports DirectX 9, 10, 11 and many OpenGL games. DirectX 8 and below support is not available, and not currently a priority to implement. Be aware that other applications that hook the framebuffer of a game (such as FRAPS and DXtory) can interfere with Game Capture.

Once you've got a source in your scene, you can move it around and resize it by clicking 'Preview Stream' so you can see it and then clicking 'Edit Scene' to unlock it. You can ignore sources snapping to the window edges by holding Ctrl while dragging, and you can ignore aspect ratio while resizing by holding down Shift.

 

[m4nu]

Useful Download Links
​

Download link to OBS Studio
https://obsproject.com/

Download link to OBS Addons & Plugins
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/

TonyR's Standings, Relative & Inputs Overlay for Project Cars
http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...ndings-amp-Relative-amp-Inputs-Overlay-v0-1-4


Stream Overlay for iRacing
http://ir-apps.kutu.ru/stream-overlay/

 

[m4nu]

Finally online and hopefully it will help some people here If I missed some points or if there are any questions do not be shy and just ask

@Admins @Moderators @Members

 

[Blue Monkey]

Just wanna mention here that you need the Browser Plugin for those overlays of PCARS and iRacing (iirc)

Good guide well done

 

[m4nu]

Just wanna mention here that you need the Browser Plugin for those overlays of PCARS and iRacing (iirc)

Good guide well done

That is all explained in TonyR's thread, so not needed to explain it here once more

 

[MikeyTT]

Great article, could have done with that a year or so back

Only thing to call out for interest, which you do describe anyway, is when capturing the pCars game window. If you run triples, you capture all the triple screen glory, but a) there is an impact to capture performance, but b) when others watch the stream, this is at the triple screen resolution, which is frankly pants if you're on a 1080p screen.

What I tend to do is just capture the physical middle screen/monitor, and then you're just streaming at 1080p (in my case). You lose a little of the game display, but as the UI on pCars is largely focused on the middle screen, it's not that big an issue.

 

[Morvic]

I wanted to ask, I tried recording PCars and I got a slide show instead of a recording (I think 1 frame per 3-4 seconds, nothing worth to show here). Is it possible to record in fullscreen and 1 monitor? I use OBS, the game has stable framerate while recording, only video is crap.

 

[Jonno]

I wanted to ask, I tried recording PCars and I got a slide show instead of a recording (I think 1 frame per 3-4 seconds, nothing worth to show here). Is it possible to record in fullscreen and 1 monitor? I use OBS, the game has stable framerate while recording, only video is crap.

you have ti fiddle about with the video settings i can give you my settings i use if you like the vids are not super but good enough
just check my youtube channel to see vids.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCjXAdYSsPC1kFzyoTb0jg
dont forget to like an subscribe lol

 

[MikeyTT]

Manu, I noticed you use studio. I'm still on the old non-studio version. I've looked at switching, but I can't find a way to limit the output to a region/screen.

In the old app, I capture the game exe (I run full screen on triples), but I then only output the middle screen with a region (I can check exactly, when I'm in front of it). Do you know of a way in OS Studio to do the same? Because I couldn't find it. I didn't look overly hard for a remedy tho, as I have it working already.

 

[m4nu]

Many, I noticed you use studio. I'm still on the old non-studio version. I've looked at switching, but I can't find a way to limit the output to a region/screen.

In the old app, I capture the game exe (I run full screen on triples), but I then only output the middle screen with a region (I can check exactly, when I'm in front of it). Do you know of a way in OS Studio to do the same? Because I couldn't find it. I didn't look overly hard for a remedy tho, as I have it working already.

Did a quick search, this might help you: https://twitchtips.com/multi-display/

Also my name is MANU and not "many"

 

[MikeyTT]

Sorry, my humblest apologies. Didn't reread and should have checked autocorrect. Fixed it

Edit: I think that's close to the way I did it in the old software, but I couldn't replicate that in studio

 

[m4nu]

Sorry, my humblest apologies. Didn't reread and should have checked autocorrect. Fixed it

I was just joking Mikey

 

[MikeyTT]

I was just joking Mikey

I know. But I should have checked.

BTW I edited my post above incase you missed it. Not sure studio supports the same region setting. I'll have a proper look in the morrow when I have it in front of me.

 

[2scoops]

Having issues when recording or streaming.
When viewing the recorded file having edited in Final Cut the quality is fuzzy, this is with Project Cars and iRacing, e.g:
It's supposed to be 1080p, doesn't look like it to me.

Recorded audio from Mic.
I can hear other people no problem, but I can't hear what I say, but don't know what setting I should be using to improve this.

Streaming.
I was trying to stream and record for myself the Sebring 12 Hour and OBS told me that the codec couldn't cope, so I stopped recording which improved the quality of the stream, but it still looked fuzzy.

Streaming on Youtube.
With the Dayton 24 I streamed continuously and Youtube only saved about the last 3 hours. This time I stopped the stream at each pit stop, but Youtube still only saved the last 3 hours. Would Twitch be better?

Can anyone help with these as it's driving me mad?

 

[m4nu]

Good question @2scoops. Might be interesting to see what settings you are using and what specs your computer have. Also your upload bandwith is a factor.

 

[2scoops]

The game recording could be something to do with Final Cut, hopefully @ramiboo may be able to help with this. I will have to catch you for a chat about it.

 

[ramiboo]

Hey @2scoops can you post your output settings as a screenshot. Also the video and audio settings. We'll deal with the recording quality first the. Work out why you mic isn't being picked up. Probably either the wrong device is selected or the mixer is muting it.

 

[stolnikas]

I think this is bitrate problem. For 1080p you should be using ~10000kbps to get decent quality video.