What's up guys, its Pete here from the
Gaming Careers YouTube channel and today
we're going to be going over the
ultimate guide to setting up your live
stream with OBS studio.
A couple of advisories before we get started, this is
a video guide on how to setup OBS studio
for PC so if you're looking for a guide
for Mac or for Xbox one or PS4 then
check out the Gaming Careers YouTube channel
for those appropriate videos.
Secondly this video is quite long and I
really wanted to create a video that went
into a bit more detail on the OBS studio
settings because there's a lot of videos
on YouTube right now that sort of recommend
certain settings for your Twitch or
YouTube stream, but really it depends on
your computer specs and whereabouts in
the world you are and what internet
connection you have as well as you know
a hundred other things. So I wanted to go into a
little bit more detail to make sure that
you got the best set of possible for
your scenario. So since this video is
quite long i'm going to make it easy for
you guys to navigate by putting
timestamps down in the description below
so you can skip ahead to certain parts
if you only require to know about
certain settings and I'm also just going
to quickly go through what we'll be
covering in this guide now. Firstly I'll
just go over a brief introduction to OBS
studio and the differences between OBS
classic and OBS studio. Then we'll move
on to downloading and installing OBS Studio.
Thirdly we'll be looking at the general
settings for OBS studio, so things like
which twitch server to stream to, what
bitrate should you be streaming at, as
well as how can you record and stream at
the same time if that's something that
you're looking to do. Fourth we'll be
looking at the OBS audio settings and
then Fifth we'll be looking at the video
settings for OBS including things like
resolution and FPS, what FPS you should be
streaming at. And then finally we'll wrap
up by talking about the adding sources
and adding scenes into OBS so you can start
your live stream. So I've added time
stamps in the description below if you
want to skip ahead and you've already
installed OBS but we'll start by
comparing OBS studio with OBS classic.
So firstly, what is OBS? OBS stands for open
broadcast software and it's a free and
open-source piece of software
to help you live stream and record video.
OBS classic has been around since late
2012 and very quickly became the most
popular streaming application for people
looking to stream to Twitch or to
YouTube. OBS studio, which was previously
called OBS multi-platform has had it's code
completely rewritten from the ground up
to take advantage of some of the newer
hardware and software technologies that
have come around since OBS classic
started development. Really in short this
just means that a OBS studio will perform
much better on newer, current systems.
As the previous name OBS multi-platform
suggests, OBS studio also works with a
number of different operating systems
notably windows 7, 8 and 10 as
well as Mac and Linux platforms. OBS
studio also brought some new features
most notably studio mode which is I
guess why OBS studio is called what it is.
Studio mode allows users to make changes
to scenes and sources without having to
change the output, you can then push
these changes to live. So this helps with
any kind of broadcasting or
professionalism in your stream. They also
added the ability to add filters, some of
the plugins became part of the actual
program most notably the browser source
plug-in and all sources are global but
we'll cover more of those later on in
the video. So downloading and installing OBS
studio, you want to point your web
browser of choice to OBSproject.com
and in the top left you should see some
options to download OBS studio for various
different operating systems.
Click the green button which matches
your platform and download the
installation file. Next just go through
the installation process as you would
with any other program and launch the
application. Once you've launched the
application it should look something
like this and it's worth just changing a
couple of quick simple options before we
get into the bulk of the OBS settings pages.
Firstly click the profile option and
select rename. Rename the profile to
whatever you'd like, but I would suggest
using your Twitch or YouTube channel
name. You can have as many different
profiles as you like and each of them
will hold their own settings and stream
sources and stream scenes. This can be
useful if sometimes you stream to a
different Twitch channel or for the purpose
of a talk show or hosting a competition
etc. For now we'll just be concentrating
on using and setting up one profile.
Next we want to rename our
scene collection to again whatever
you'd like. A scene collection is exactly
as it suggests it's a collection of all
your scenes and their settings. Having
multiple different scene collections is
useful for those that stream different
games and hence need slightly different
setups for each game.
Don't worry if you don't understand all
the terminology right away,
we'll get to that once we start setting
up our scenes and sources. Right it's time to
knuckle down and get some real work.
The OBS studio settings page may look
intimidating but once you have an
understanding of what each setting does
and what value is best for your setup,
it's no harder than the installation, so
let's get into it.
Start by clicking the Settings button in
the lower right, we're gonna work through
these tabs one at a time. We'll start
with the general tab, choose your
language of choice and also the option
for different themes dark or light. I
prefer the dark theme so i'm going to
select dark here. The next two checkboxes
give you the option of showing a
confirmation box whenever you go live
and or stop your stream. If you're
worried about ever accidentally going
live or accidentally ending your stream
when you didn't mean to,
this is a useful confirmation box to
have. If you're going to want to record to
your hard drive at the same time as your
streaming live to the internet then
check the automatically record when
streaming box. This is pretty useful if
you want to later edit your footage
from your stream and you want to have a
higher quality recording then what you
can stream at. This may have a little bit
of impact on your computer's performance,
but it's unlikely to be too noticeable.
If it does have too much of an impact on
your computer and you still want to have
saved VODs of what you've streamed live,
you can use an online tool such as
Twitchdown which I'll link to in the description.
This allows you to download your Twitch
streams from the Twitch website and then
you can edit them after that. To finish
off the general tab there are some
source alignment snapping options, in
short these allow for easier positioning
of sources when setting up your stream
as they were snap into place with the
edge of the screen or with the other
sources. I recommend leaving these as
default. Moving on to the stream tab,
the first option stream type can be left
as default on streaming services.
The first thing we may need to change
is the server setting. The drop-down gives
you a choice of which platform you're
going to be
streaming to these include Twitch,
YouTube, Hitbox, Facebook and many many
more. I'm going to presume that the vast
majority of people watching this video
are going to be looking to stream to
Twitch or YouTube so I'll mainly just be
covering those two options in this guide.
If you're looking to stream to Facebook,
Hitbox, Beam.io or even multiple sites at
the same time, please check out the
Gaming Careers YouTube channel for videos
on those subjects. Now for Twitch, the
first question you're going to be asking
is which Twitch server should I be
streaming to. And usually most people
recommend the one that is closest to you
geographically, but that's not always
going to be your best option. To
determine which server is best for us to stream
to we're going to be using the Twitch
bandwidth test tool which is an
application we'll be downloading from the
internet. It will not only help us determine
the best server to stream to but it
will also tell us the maximum bitrate that
server connection can handle. Click the
link down in the description below to
download the Twitch bandwidth test tool
and extract it to your desktop using your
extraction program for me that's 7-zip.
Just as a quick side note here, if the
application doesn't run and it gives you
an error with the message VCruntime or
something along those lines then you
probably just need to download the
VS2015 redistributable from Microsoft,
there's a link to that on the website
where you download the Twitch bandwidth
test tool and you just need to download
and install it and then rerun the
installation for the bandwidth test tool.
When we first run the test tool, there
are going to be a couple of options that
we need to fill out before determining
which server will be best for us to
stream to. Firstly we need to get our
stream key from Twitch. Click the get key
link within the tool and it will open up
your Twitch dashboard in your web
browser. If you're not logged into
Twitch yet then the browser will ask you
to, and then you can click the link again.
Make sure you're on the stream key tab
within the dashboard and then click
Show Key. You'll receive a warning just
telling you not to share the key with
anyone and I'd advise reading through
the warning and clicking I understand.
You'll then receive a long string of
characters and numbers starting with
live_ which is our stream key.
Also for our convenience there's a link
here to reset our key if we accidentally
did show it on stream or somebody found out
what our stream key was.
So you can reset the key here as well.
Copy the whole key and paste it into the
stream key box within the tool. We can
leave the TCP window settings on
automatic OBS as this replicates the
mode that OBS will be using when we're
streaming live to twitch. The second
option that we need to configure is the
test duration, this simply tells the tool
how long to run the test on each server
for, the default setting is about 10
seconds but i'd recommend leaving it to
run on the long setting which is 60
seconds. It will give you a more accurate
representation of what streaming to that
server would be like although obviously
it's going to take a bit of time to go
through the test now. You can also select
the regions which you'd like to test,
I'll choose Europe since that's where
I'm based but choose whatever region
makes sense for you. Once that's all set
up we're ready to start testing, so click
start and let the tests run.
Don't worry this isn't actually making your
stream go live, it's purely a connection
test. Once the test is completed you
should see some numbers for each of the
servers that you have tested. The
bandwidth test is capped at 10,000
kilobytes per second which is fine since
we won't be streaming at anywhere near that
rate. Twitch recommends a maximum of 3500.
The RTT, which stands for round-trip time,
that simply represents the time that it
took to establish the connection, and the
quality is a number out of a hundred
which aims to rate the connection
quality based on a number of things
mainly TCP retransmissions and delay
between sends. So which server is best?
Well we want to be selecting the server
with the highest bandwidth which also
has a quality of above 80. If you have
2 or more servers with a hundred
quality and 10,000 plus kilobytes per
second bandwidth like I have, then you
can count yourself lucky and choose the
one with the lower latency figure. Take a
note of the best server and leave the
test tool open, because we're going to be using it again
later. Back in OBS, select the server
which was best for you from the
drop-down and then paste in your Twitch
stream key exactly like you did for the test tool.
Next up we have the output tab. You'll
notice that the first drop-down is for
the output mode and the options are
simple or advanced. In this guide we're
just going to be covering the simple
mode, as that is going to be allowing for
the optimal setup for about 95% of users.
We do have a more advanced guide on our
YouTube channel though so if that's what
you're looking for in the advanced
settings then make sure you check out
that video. So the first setting that we're
going to be changing is the video
bitrate, now this is one of the most
important settings in your stream setup
and so it is really important that you
at least understand the basics as to
what it does. The video bitrate tells OBS
studio what rate at which it should
attempt to send your video data to the
Twitch servers. Twitch will send that
video data onwards to your viewers.
Now, if you're a new streamer and you're not
partnered with Twitch, it's important to
note that Twitch will NOT be re-encoding
your stream to various different
qualities for the benefit of the viewers.
So if you've ever watched a big time
streamer and you've been able to go into
the quality options to select: Source,
High, Medium, Low, Mobile that means that
they're partnered with Twitch and
Twitch is re-encoding the video to
various different qualities so that
viewers can watch at a bit-rate which suits
them. You're not going to have these if
you're a brand-new streamer, so they will
have to watch at the Source quality
which is the exact bitrate that you are
sending at. Now whilst gaining a mass
following on Twitch and getting partnered
may well be on your to-do list, and
you're at the right channel if that is the
case, it's important not to be excluding
any potential viewers based on their
internet connections. So you don't want
to be streaming at a quality that is so
high that people can't watch it and it
starts the stutter for them because
they're download rate isn't quick enough
to be able to watch your stream. So after
that brief description, I bet you're
wondering how can I actually choose my
bitrate then? Well hopefully you should
still have the Twitch bandwidth test tool
open. Look at the server that you
selected and read what the bandwidth
figure says. Now we don't want to be
using all of our upload bandwidth just
for OBS because we're also going to need
some for the game that we're playing if
it's online, as well as things like
Spotify or Skype or Teamspeak or any of
those kind of applications. They're all
going to need some
upload bandwidth as well. So what we want
to do is take 80% of our
bandwidth figure and then from now on
consider that are true OBS bandwidth.
Now on the table that I'm putting on screen now,
I need you to select basically which corner
of the square you fit into. So if you're
partnered on Twitch and you have a
bandwidth of more than 3500 kbps then
you want to set the video bitrate to
3,500. If you're partnered on Twitch and the
bandwidth is less than 3500 kbps then
you want to be setting the video bitrate
to whatever your bandwidth is. Now if
you're not partnered on Twitch yet and
the bandwidth is more than 2,500 kbps
then you want to be setting the video
bitrate to 2500 kbps. And finally if
you're not partnered on Twitch and your
bandwidth is less than 2,500 kbps then
you want to set your video bitrate to
whatever your bandwidth is. Now just
remember that the reason that the lower
video bitrate for non-partnered channels
it's just purely so that you don't
exclude any potential viewers since
you're stream will not be re-encoded
by Twitch for lower qualities.
The second half of the settings within the
output tab looks at the recording options.
This is useful if you ever want to
record screen captures or if you just
want to say your stream locally. The
first option recording path just let you
determine where you want your recordings
to be saved. The second drop-down is for
recording quality, with the default
option being for recording at the same
quality that you're streaming at. You also
have the options of high-quality,
indistinguishable quality and lossless
quality. If you wish to make videos from
your streams for your YouTube channel,
which I recommend doing, I would
recommend choosing either high quality
or indistinguishable quality. There's
absolutely no reason in my mind for
ever choosing lossless quality as it just
takes up so much file space for really
not much difference in quality. For recording
format I recommend choosing mp4.
I have in the past run into some issues with the
flv format, especially to do with syncing of
audio and video. Pretty much every kind
of video editing software will be happy
with mp4 files and YouTube takes them
pretty happily as well. So next is the
Audio tab and we're not going to be
going into too much detail in the Audio
tab just since the majority of streamers
will be using a fairly basic setup.
If you'd like more advanced tutorial on
how you can include and exclude certain
sounds from your stream, then please
let me know in the comments below and
I'll be sure to do a video on using
something like virtual audio cable. So
although the Audio tab looks a bit scary,
the majority of the options can be left
on their default settings. The first
option we may need is the desktop audio
device. The default option is what the
majority of people will want to use, this
will include all the sounds that your
computer makes including game sounds,
music and voice chat.
The next option that may need changing is
the Mic or Auxillary audio device. You
can usually leave this on default if you've
got it setup in windows so that your
microphone is the default recording
device. But if you followed one of my
guys for setting up your Blue Snowball
or Blue Yeti then you'll want to be
selecting the Voicemeeter
output. The last section within the Audio
tab allows you to enable push to talk
rather than using open mic, so if you
want to use this rather than using open
mic then feel free to. I leave mine on
open mic as the background noise and
things, they can be taken out later using
some filters. The push-to-mute option is
also pretty useful if you know, there's
some loud noises like a car alarm going
off and you want to quickly mute your
microphone or let's say your mum comes
in the room asking what you want for dinner,
you can just quickly meet your stream
with the click of a button.
Next tab is the video tab, so the first
question here really is what resolution
should I stream at? The base canvas
resolution represents your monitors true
resolution or at least the resolution
which you actually want to be playing
your game at on your own monitor. So I
leave mine at 1920 x 1080 as that's the
resolution of my monitor. The output or
scaled resolution represents the
resolution which you actually want to
stream at. Now there are a few
determining factors as to what
resolution you should use here. First is
your bitrate. Twitch recommends the
following resolutions based on bitrate.
Now just because your bitrate can
handle 1920 x 1080 from Twitch's
recommendations doesn't necessarily mean
that you should be streaming at that
resolution. Your computer is technically
encoding twice as much information at
1080p compared to 720p,
so your computer will need to be
really quite high end for it to be able
to stream at 1080p. If you suffer any
severe in-game framerate loss then this
could well be your issue. I'd recommend
lowering this by to 720p if that is the
case. If you did need to downscale your
output resolution then you can leave the
downscale filter on it's default option
which is Bicubic. Now the second big
question is what frame rate or FPS should I stream at?
This again depends on a few
different factors.
Firstly, I'd recommend if you're not
partnered with Twitch then you'd leave
this at 30fps. First-person shooter games
such as CS:GO or Overwatch, they have a lot
of high motion in the scene and can
generally look quite a lot better with a
higher framerate, but it does come at a cost.
You'll need a higher bitrate to be able
to maintain the same image quality since
you're going to be sending more frames
of data per second. And your video
quality is determined by kbps (kilobits
per second) so if you want to try an FPS
value of 45 or an FPS value of 60 then be prepared
for a little bit of a drop in quality.
Also as stated in the video bitrate
section, if you're a new streamer it's likely
that you aren't partnered with Twitch and
so your viewers are going to be forced to
watch at the same quality, resolution and
framerate which you stream at. So bear this
in mind, you don't want to be preventing
any potential viewers from watching
your stream just because of the high
bitrate for their poorer connection. In general
if you're going to be streaming a MOBA
game, maybe something from bird's-eye
view, there isn't too much higher motion
so actually there isn't that much
difference in the viewing experience of
30 FPS when compared to 45 or 60. It's
really the FPS games, like I said first
person shooter games: Overwatch, CS:GO
those kind of things, that can really
benefit from a higher framerate.
Only a couple more sections to go now.
Firstly the hotkeys tab is pretty
self-explanatory to be honest, if you'd
like to take advantage of using a
certain key or combination of keys to
perform a specific function in OBS then
this is where you'd set that up.
If in the Audio tab for example you selected that
you wanted to use push-to-talk or push-to-mute
then you can set which key you'd
like to use here. Now in the Advanced tab it
does look a little bit chaotic but we'll
be leaving the majority of the options
at their defaults here. Leave the process
priority at normal,
unless you really know what you're
doing, as this is more likely to cause you
issues then fix them. The options within
video can all be left at their default.
If you would like to set a specific file
name format for your recordings then you
can set that here. Also if you'd like to
implement a stream delay to prevent your
viewers from seeing in real time then
you can add a delay here. Realistically
though Twitch already adds a 5-10
second delay between you sending the
data and that that being sent to the
viewer, so i'd recommend leaving this
option disabled but it's completely up
to you.
The automatically reconnect section
allows you to set up what you want OBS
to do if you drop your connection to
Twitch, but I'd advise just leaving this at
its default. And that's it, all the
settings are done so you can now hit
apply and ok to save your changes to
your current profile. It's worth bearing
in mind that these settings are only
saved against the profile which we setup
initially, meaning if you want to
create a second profile with different
settings you can quite easily do so. Each
profile has their own settings saved
against it. Now we're really nearly done
we just need to finish by adding some
scenes and sources. So to start we'll go
down to the plus icon here and add a new
scene, name it whatever you want, I'm
going to call this "Game" because it's
going to be the scene with my game in it.
Now in sources is where you're going to be
adding the actual windows or text or
images or webcams and all that kind of
thing. I'm not going to go into loads of
detail here so we're just going to add
the game which for me will be Overwatch,
so I'm just going to click the + icon and
select game capture and then find the
Overwatch window which has to be running
at the same time so that it can
actually detect it.
Select that and we should see a preview
in the main window. And that is pretty
much it in terms of the stream settings,
obviously you can do a lot more in terms
of adding overlays and webcams and
images and all these kinds of things but I'll be
covering those in more specific videos,
really i just wanted this video to be
about getting the settings right in the
backend of OBS studio.
So hopefully you've found that video helpful if you have please do
consider giving it a thumbs-up and as I
said earlier if you're new to Gaming
Careers YouTube channel then have a look
around at the other videos now we've got
loads really just helping you build up
your YouTube and Twitch audiences so you
can make a profession out of your gaming passion,
and until next time, peace!
