🔴 How to use OBS for Screen Recording or Streaming - Beginner Tutorial

hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you how you can both get and also use obs first off what is obs it's an extremely powerful and also versatile screen recorder and you could use it to stream to services like twitch youtube and also facebook in fact i use it to record all of my videos on this channel best of all it's entirely free and it's also open source all right let's jump on the computer and first off let's see how we can get obs here i am on my pc and first off i want to show you how you can get obs once again it is entirely free to get obs head to the website obs project dot com i've also included a link in the description you can simply click on that to navigate to this website the great thing about obs is it works across all the major platforms including windows mac and also linux to download obs simply click on the operating system that you're using and then run through the installation process once you finish downloading and installing obs go ahead and launch the app that'll drop you on a screen that looks like this for those of you who are wondering well how am i recording this video today well of course i'm using obs i'm using obs to record obs you can launch multiple instances of the app it's kind of like the movie inception now right now we simply have a black screen how do we get started by far the easiest way to get going with obs is to go up to the top menus click on tools and then let's click on the auto configuration wizard this opens up the auto configuration wizard and here we have a choice to make you need to decide what exactly you want to use obs for you can use it for streaming for screen recording or you could use it as a virtual camera with the streaming option if you select this it's going to go through and have you select the service provider so whether you're using twitch youtube facebook and then it'll also help you identify the best bit rate with screen recording well just like the name implies you'll be able to record your screen and then you'll have a video file on your computer that you can go and edit or you could send it to others lastly there's another option for using a virtual camera what is a virtual camera well in a moment we're going to compose a scene using obs with a virtual camera you can send that scene to different video conferencing software whether it's microsoft teams zoom or google meet or any other services you can use a virtual camera for this tutorial today i'm going to optimize for recording but just keep in mind what you see today you can use it for streaming and you could also use it for a virtual camera once you make your selection let's click on next next we have a few more questions that we need to answer first we need to indicate what our base resolution is and i would select the option that matches the resolution of your display when you click on this drop down list here i see display one i only have one monitor and my resolution is 2560x1440 i'll select this option next there's a question about the frames per second that we would like to use and we have several different options here we could go with 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second or we could do either one but prefer either higher frames or lower frames in general if you're going to be recording say gameplay you probably want to go with a higher frame rate that makes it look a little bit smoother if you're going to be recording things like your desktop or an application you probably want to go with 30 frames per second and you'll have a little bit better resolution so i'm going to select 30 frames per second now but feel free to choose the value that matches what you're planning on recording once we make all of our selections let's now click on next on the next screen we'll see the final results of the auto configuration wizard and this shows us the various settings that it's going to put in place for our recording and all of this looks good so next let's click on apply settings if you want to go back and make any modifications to the settings you can always click on tools again and you could run through the auto configuration wizard once again this is by far the easiest way to get started alternatively if you want to tweak the various settings you can click on the file menu click on settings within settings click on output and then you can customize your streaming and your recording settings if you want full control you could also click on output mode and then click on advanced and you have full control over the settings of your streaming and your recording once again using the auto configuration wizard is by far the easiest way to get going now that we've gone through the auto configuration wizard and all of our settings are in place next we need to tell obs what we want to record or what we want to stream and to do that we're going to use this real estate right here this black rectangle area this is referred to as the scene and we are going to add different sources to the scene down in the bottom left hand corner you can see that this scene is called scene and we'll leave this name for now however you can also add additional scenes you can also remove scenes and later on we'll do that especially once you start getting multiple scenes it's a good idea to rename them first though i want to simply get started using obs so let's now focus on sources and let's start adding a few simple sources you might be wondering what is a source well let's click on the plus icon to see what types of items we can add to our scene here we see a list of all the different types of sources that we can add now two of the ones that you'll probably most likely want to use one of them is called display capture what this means is well this is basically capturing your display or your desktop if you're going to be playing a game you'll likely want to click on game capture instead this is optimized for gaming for now though let's click on display capture to simply capture our desktop this opens up a prompt where we can give it a name i'll simply leave it set to display capture once again if you start adding many different sources it helps to give it a unique name so you can identify it later on let's now click on ok this opens up properties and here i can now see my display down below let's say i had multiple monitors i can choose which display i want to focus on i could also select whether to include my mouse cursor everything looks good so i'm going to click on ok back on the main screen you should see your scene start coming together we now have the display showing up here as a very quick aside if you're using a laptop and you have a black screen after adding a display go down to windows and search for graphic settings then click into graphic settings here select desktop app and then click on browse navigate to where obs is on your computer here's the typical location where you'll find it next click on the obs 64 exe once you add it you should see a new option appear within graphic settings click on options and you can toggle between power saving or high performance once you change the selection try restarting obs to see if your display shows up we now have our desktop appearing here if you're recording or streaming and you would like to include audio we also need to add a source for your microphone or for your system audio let's click once again under sources on the plus icon and at the very top of this list there's the option for audio input capture let's click on this for this one i want this to be my microphone so i'm going to rename it to microphone next let's click on ok on the properties screen i can choose the device and i'm going to select my microphone next let's click on ok i can now see my microphone in the audio mixer and it is working here i can see that the audio is coming through if i also want to record my system sound i also need to add another source for that let's go down once again to the plus icon and this time let's go up to the audio output capture for this i'm going to rename it system sound next let's click on ok within properties i can choose the device that i want to capture the sound from and i'm going to select speakers or headphones and then click on ok now that i've added system sound i can see both my microphone and the system sound now that i've added a few different sources you could start to see the importance of making sure you give the source an easy to understand name especially when you start getting many different items showing up in this list you want to know what the different items are next let's focus our attention over on the audio mixer here once again we can see all of the different audio sources you can also drag here to adjust the levels you can also mute or unmute the source and you have some advanced audio properties here to the right of the audio mixer you also have scene transitions and later on once we add another scene we'll come back to what you can do with this but before we do that let's start recording something so we can just see how obs even works over on the right hand side we have a variety of different controls at this point we can start streaming to our favorite streaming service we could also kick off a recording and in a moment we'll do this we could also start our virtual camera and there's something called studio mode we'll come back to this a little later to see what you can do with this also you can jump into settings or exit the application for now though let's simply kick off a basic recording i've now started my recording and you can see i'm now recording my screen so all of this will be captured while i'm recording i can also click on this icon to the right of stop recording and that'll pause my recording once i'm ready to record again i can un-pause and that'll once again resume the recording once i'm all done i can click on stop recording congratulations we have finished our first recording if you want to watch your recording go up to the file menu up on top and then click on the option that says show recordings this will open up file explorer and here i can see a recording let's click on this to see how it turned out i've now started my recording and you can see i'm now recording my now that recording looks great the one thing you'll notice though is this is an mkv file and an mkv file you typically can't open that in editing software and it's not as easy to share with others to be able to work with this file go up to the file menu and then click on remux recordings you can click on the ellipses over here and then select the file that we just recorded you can then click on open and then once you're ready to remux click on this button that says remux the recording has been remuxed let's click on ok and then close this window if we go back to show recordings in the file menu you'll now see that we have an mp4 file you can very easily work with this in whatever editing software that you want now you might be wondering what if i just want to record directly to an mp4 that's kind of a pain to record something and then to have to go to remux to be able to change the default you can go up to the file menu then click on settings and then let's click on output within output under the recording category you can change the default recording format and here look you could change it to mp4 of course there's a reason why obs sets mkv as the default let's say that maybe you're recording a two-hour lecture with mp4 if let's say halfway through the lecture your computer crashes well you're gonna lose every single thing that you recorded up to that point with mkv on the other hand if your computer crashed let's say halfway through this lecture everything up to the point of the crash would still be saved so in a sense you can think of mkv as an insurance policy sure it takes an extra step where you have to go to file and remux but that way you have a little bit extra security now of course if you're recording something short maybe it's just a minute or two feel free to go with mp4 because the risk of having a failure is probably pretty low so whichever one you prefer feel free to set that here i'm gonna leave mine on mkv one of the things that you might have noticed in the screen recording is at the very beginning of the screen recording i click on start recording and then i can minimize obs at the very end of the recording i would have to open obs again and then click on stop recording if i don't want to show obs at all well i could use editing software to cut out the beginning and the end or alternatively i can use obs to set shortcut keys to both start and stop the recording to set a shortcut key within obs go up to the file menu and then let's click on settings within settings over on the left hand side click on hotkeys within hotkeys you can set a shortcut key to start the recording and to stop the recording here for example i'll press alt f2 to start and then i could also press alt f2 to stop so this way i could toggle that key combination to both start and then to stop the recording you could also set shortcut keys for pretty much any action that you could take in obs here too you could pause or unpause the recording and there are many others now that you know the basics of how to use obs to capture your display next i want to show you some of the more advanced uses of obs and now i want to show you how you can build a more complex scene i want to use the scene that we just created as the base let's right click on this scene and then let's click on duplicate i'm going to call this scene desktop capture with webcam once you're done typing in the scene name click on ok i now have a second scene and i have all the same sources i want to add a webcam so let's click on the plus icon and a webcam is a video capture device let's select this option next i could give it a name i'll stick with the default name of video capture device and then click on ok this opens up my webcam properties and all the defaults look good next i'll click on ok my webcam image is now on the screen but it is massive compared to the size of my desktop to adjust this down within sources click on your video capture device and then you'll see a red rectangle appear around that source now i can click on the corner to adjust the size if i want to modify the position i can click on the item and then i can drag it on my screen i'll continue adjusting the size just to make it smaller and here once again by clicking on the item i can reposition it now i just want this to be a small rectangle in the bottom right hand corner of my screen so i'll move it down there that's looking a lot better now along with being able to simply reposition and also resize my webcam image i can do the same for the desktop image that appears here just like before within the sources list i'm going to click on display capture here i see a red rectangle appear around my display and just like with the webcam image i can reposition my desktop or i can adjust the size if i want now once again this entire black area is what i'll be recording so here in this case i want to record my desktop so i'll leave it so it uses up the full space with my webcam image you'll notice that there's a lot of space on both sides of me and that takes away from being able to see the desktop behind me so i want to crop my image a little bit and luckily that's pretty easy to do once again i'll make sure that i select my video capture device and then i see this red rectangle again that appears around the image i can press the alt key and then click on this red rectangle and i can drag it in and that'll essentially crop the image here again i'll do it on the other side and just tighten it up a little bit around my face now you see a little bit of a tighter image and you can see more of the desktop behind me now just like i cropped my video i can crop any one of my sources so even here with my desktop let's say i only want to record a certain area of my screen i can do that using cropping here i'll select the display capture and just like i did with the video i can click on this red border press the alt key and then i could drag this in and that'll only record this specific area of my screen now of course i want to record my whole screen so i'll press the alt key and then drag back out and that'll re-add my entire screen my scene is really starting to come together but i do want to add a few more sources now i can click on the plus icon down below to add additional sources or i could also drag and drop items directly into obs here i have a logo sitting on my desktop this is a png file i can simply click on it and then drag it over onto my scene here now i see my logo file appears and it's for the kevin cookie company now just like with all the other items i have this red rectangle around the item and i can resize my logo now i want to position this right above my video image now i could click on my video and i could reposition this as well so now that's looking pretty good i have my logo and i have my video i also want to include a border around my video right now it seems like it's just kind of hanging there over the background to add a border let's go down to sources and i'll click on the plus icon for this i want to add a color source let's click on that i'll leave the default name and then click on ok this opens up properties for color source i'm going to move this over a little and i want to use the same blue that appears in my logo here i can click on select color and i want to pick a screen color let's click on that over here i can hover over my logo and i'll take this blue color next let's click on ok so i now have this color source let's click on ok there and now i see a rectangle with that color source i'm going to adjust the size of this and i'll put it right over my video now you'll see that the video sits in back of the color source i want the color source to be a border for my video so i want it in back of my video source down here within sources i can see all the different sources within the scene now the item at the top is the topmost layer the item at the bottom is the bottom most layer now i want my color source to appear behind my video capture device so i'll simply click on this item and then drag and drop it behind the video device i could also use these up and down arrows to shift the layers of the different items so here now you see i have this color source behind my video capture device of course the border is pretty thick right now so when i have color source selected i can reposition this and just like i did before i can use the alt key to crop the size of this color source so here i'll do it so it's a nice border around my video and that looks pretty good now now as i'm working on my scene i might want to make some sources visible and some sources not visible so let's say i wanted to work on the desktop and having my video here is somewhat distracting i can go down here and there's an eye icon when i click on that that'll hide that source so i could hide all these topmost items i could simply toggle that again to reshow those different items now let's say i'm all done positioning my video and the logo i might want to lock those items so i don't disrupt their current position so i've now locked those three items and i can move my desktop around and i don't have to worry about mistakingly clicking on my logo or the video because those are now locked in that position now that i've locked the position this is one unit right here so i have the logo the video the color source i really view this as a group now i can click on the sources and i'll press the shift key to select these three items so the logo the video and the border i can now right click on this and i could group the selected items let's try this i'm going to call this group logo and video now i'll click on enter and i can collapse this group so it helps clean up my list of sources and this way i know when i select this item i can show that whole group or it can hide the whole group so it helps organize my sources a little bit better my new scene is all together now and at this point i can now start streaming i could start recording i could start my virtual camera so i could basically go live with this now let's say that maybe i have my webcam up here but then i want to hide it because maybe i want people to focus on the full screen and not my face well over here on the left hand side i can click on the other scene and this will shift the scene back to just my full desktop now let's say i'm done explaining the whole desktop i can now click on my scene and that'll show me again here in the bottom right hand corner now one of the problems is when i click on these different scenes it's a little bit of a hard cut what if i want to have more of a transition well that brings us to this category here called scene transitions right now it's set to simply cut but i have all these other transitions that i can set let's pick the swipe transition instead so i could select this i'll click on ok for that name here i can preview what the transition looks like that looks good let's click on ok i now have a swipe transition so when i'm streaming when i'm recording i can now click on the other scene and now you see it swipes away if i want to go back to my webcam image now i can click on that scene and once again that also swipes it away so here i could choose from many different transitions and i could customize the transitions to make my recording or my stream look better now just like before i don't want to have to open up obs to shift between my scenes instead here too i can also set shortcut keys if i go to the top left hand corner once again let's click on file click into settings and then go to hotkeys within this list i see my different scene names here's the desktop capture with webcam and i see my scene i can set a shortcut key to switch to this scene for example i'll set f2 to switch to the desktop with webcam and then for my full desktop i'll set that to all three next i'll click on apply and then ok back within the main screen here now if i want to jump between scenes i'll press alt f3 that jumps back to my desktop and alt f2 and that jumps back to my scene with the webcam so here too i can set shortcut keys to kick off my recording and i can set shortcut keys to switch my scenes now that we've looked at how you can seamlessly switch between scenes i want to show you some additional functionality related to sources down here within sources when you select one of your sources you'll see some buttons that appear right up here here you could return to your properties and you could also jump into filters i'm going to select my webcam image and then let's see what filters we have within filters up in the top left hand corner i have audio and video filters and then down below i have some effect filters let's first take a look at some of the audio filters here you have all sorts of different audio filters that you can apply for instance the gain the limiter one of the interesting ones is you have noise suppression so let's say that you're streaming or you're recording in a louder environment maybe you have a dog barking or maybe the landscapers are outside you can use noise suppression to cut all that out down below i also have effect filters let's click on that to see what we could do i could apply different luts i could use a chroma key let's say i have a green screen in back of me and i want to remove it i could use a chroma key for that i could correct the color here i could crop my video here too and you could even set something up to scroll so let's say you inserted text into your scene you can have that scroll across your screen so there are all sorts of different filters that you can play with it's definitely worth some time looking in here and seeing what you can do along with being able to apply filters to individual sources i could also transform a source so what does that mean well here down below i'll click on the group that i created with the logo in the video when i right click on this there's the option for transform with transform i could rotate items i could flip items or i could also center them on the screen here i'll click on center to screen and here you see that my logo and webcam jumps to the center i'll move it back to the corner but here with transform i could very quickly make changes to my different sources we've been looking at many of the different ways you can take advantage of the power of obs but i also want to show you how you can make the experience your own now so far we've been using the user interface as it comes out of the box you can adjust things to meet your needs for instance i could click on controls and i could drag it out of the experience or maybe i want to put scene transitions over on the left hand side i can move these different items wherever i want now let's say you move a bunch of things and you want to reset it well you could simply right click on an item and then click on reset ui and that'll return it back to the original state along with being able to customize the user interface you can also set up multiple profiles up here there's a menu for profile so what is a profile well let's say you go into file settings and you go through and you make a whole bunch of modifications to these settings you can set up a profile to store all of those settings so maybe you have one profile for streaming and then you have a different profile with a different set of settings for recording you can then very quickly jump back and forth between those profiles another way that you can customize the experience is using something called scene collections and what is a scene collection well the easiest way to describe it is it's a group of scenes so just like a scene has multiple sources under it a scene collection can have multiple scenes under it so it's basically one level up from scenes probably the easiest way is to simply show i'll click on scene collections and i'll jump to my scene collection that i use for my youtube channel so here you see i have an entirely new set of scenes and then sources under those scenes if i want to jump back to my other scene collection i can simply click here and now you see the scenes that we created together we've covered quite a bit of functionality today but the last thing i want to touch on is how you can use studio mode over on the right hand side there is an option called studio mode under the controls and you could use this when you're streaming or when you're recording let's click into this to see what we can do within studio mode you see a preview over on the left hand side and then i see the program over on the right hand side the easiest way to think of what program means is when you're streaming or when you're recording this is what's being recorded or this is what's being streamed over on the left hand side we see a preview now with the preview i can move different items around so i could click on my desktop i could adjust the size so maybe i want to modify things now anything i'm doing over on the left that's not being recorded and it's not being streamed so i can make adjustments over on the left and let's say that you know while i'm streaming i want to change my view to look like this i can then click on transition and this now goes live out to my audience where i'm streaming or when i'm recording all right well that was a quick look at how you can get started using obs if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up to see more videos like this in the future hit that subscribe button if you want to see me cover any other topics leave a comment down below and i'll add it to my list of videos to create alright well that's all i have for you today i hope you enjoyed and i hope to see you next time bye [Music] bye

Channel: Kevin Stratvert

Views: 797,194

Keywords: kevin stratvert, obs, obs screen recorder, obs studio, how to use obs, obs tutorial, obs screen recorder tutorial, tutorial, how to record screen, how to stream, obs recording tutorial, obs streaming tutorial, obs stream tutorial, obs recording, obs streaming, virtual camera, open broadcaster software, how to, guide, kevin stratvert obs, obs studio tutorial, obs software, screen recorder, screen recorder for pc, how to use obs studio, using obs, stratvert, free, open source

Id: ySENWFIkL7c

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020