Most discussions about OBS, streaming, game
recording, and so on tend to focus on a specific
use case - one monitor, one screen of computer
desktop or gameplay.
One console input, one 16 by 9 image.
But what if you use multiple monitors for
work you wish to stream or record?
What if you display your game across two monitors
at once and want to stream that?
What about switching between monitors?
Let’s discuss this in today’s course video.
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of scenes to show and quick, precise switching
between them.
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description.
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and
more fun, and welcome back to my OBS Studio
tutorial course.
I have many, many more videos on the software
in the playlist linked in the description.
Check that before asking questions, and check
the introduction video to learn how this course
works, if you get confused.
There’s 3 different scenarios that I can
imagine applying to multi-monitor streaming:
Just streaming with multiple monitors and
sometimes needing to show what’s on your
side monitors like I do, running games through
surround gaming across multiple monitors at
once, or wanting to automatically switch between
different monitors as you record or stream
a multi-monitor workflow.
Let’s tackle these.
Timecodes will be in the video description
for the 3 main topics here.
Multi-Monitor Gaming
First, let’s start with multi-monitor gaming.
This will depend a little, depending on how
you have this set up.
Right-click your desktop and go to “Display
Settings” or “Screen Resolution.”
Or, open up your Nvidia or AMD control panel
if you have surround set up that way.
You’re looking here to find out whether
your system is treating your multiple monitors
as one big monitor for gaming, or just multiple
monitors with the game stretched across them.
Take note of this.
If your monitors are treated as one big monitor,
then you also need to take note of the resolution
it reads.
For example, 3 1080p monitors combined into
one horizontal virtual monitor would be 5760
by 1080 resolution.
If you just have multiple monitors side by
side, just do the math for how they’re set
up.
If they’re 3 wide, just add up the horizontal
resolutions (i.e. 1920 times 3) and then take
note of the vertical resolution (i.e. 1080).
You’ll need this for OBS.
In OBS Studio, you need to set your resolution
to this weird resolution.
For our example here, 5760 by 1080.
Leave the base and scaled resolution the same
in the “Video” settings tab.
For your streaming settings, you’ll wanna
scale it down a bit.
For example, for our current test resolution,
I’d recommend streaming at half resolution
of 2880 by 540.
Now you’ll need to set up the rest of your
scenes to properly utilize this wider canvas
than the traditional 16:9 format.
You can probably have fun with placement of
your overlay elements, facecam, and so on.
Here’s the kicker, though.
Your stream WILL have what’s often referred
to as “black bars” on the top and bottom
because of this.
This kind of setup, obviously, produces a
much wider image than what a normal 16:9 or
even a 21:9 ultrawide can display fully, so
this is unavoidable.
While you can technically stretch your image
to fill a 16:9 box, it will completely trash
your video and no one will watch it, so don’t
do that.
If you’re going to commit to streaming this
kind of super-wide format, you need to fully
commit and just deal with the issues.
Unfortunately, YouTube currently doesn’t
like streaming with oddball resolutions so
it won’t take advantage of the new player’s
capabilities.
But if you’re just recording and uploading
this way, the new YouTube player will actually
adapt to your video’s aspect ratio and display
it nicely on your viewer’s screens.
Just MAKE SURE if you’re editing the video
before uploading, you edit AND render in the
specific resolution of your recording, or
you will ruin the viewing experience for EVERYONE.
I have a dedicated, admittedly ranty, video
about this subject linked in the video description.
We’ll also touch a bit more on this in the
next video talking about Ultrawide recording
and streaming and using oddball resolutions.
Multi Monitor Workflow
If you just happen to utilize multiple monitors
and just want to be able to switch between
them sometimes, depending on what you’re
doing - things are much easier.
Simply make new scenes for each of your monitors
and add them via Display Capture.
Add your facecam, if needed, and any overlays.
If you don’t want to have to reposition
and configure your overlays again and again
for this, you have two primary options.
Either you can start by duplicating your main
Display Capture scene and then replacing the
actual Display Capture source with respective
monitors, keeping all other sources in the
scene in tact.
OR, my preferred option, is to actually create
a dedicated scene specifically for your overlays
and to “nest” that scene as a source in
your other scenes.
So duplicate your main scene and remove any
non-overlay elements.
So remove your facecam, display capture, whatever.
You’re left with just your overlays.
Rename the scene to “Overlays.”
Now, remove your overlays from your main scene,
add a new Source - Scene Source, and choose
your new “Overlays” scene.
Now you have them all in one source that you
can add to any scene, without having to mess
around with repositioning or anything like
that.
Super handy!
If your monitors are different resolutions,
simply use the transform tools to scale them
all to match your canvas resolution, and whammo.
Then you can set up hotkeys or use something
like the Elgato Stream Deck to switch between
your different display scenes as desired when
recording or streaming.
Automatic Multi-Monitor Switching
There’s another neat trick for multi-monitor
streaming and recording that I like to use
from time to time - automatic scene switching.
This will let you automatically switch between
your different Display Capture-based scenes
depending on where your cursor goes on your
computer.
This is super handy for when I do editing
streams and need to quickly switch between
my multi-monitor workflow.
Unfortunately, the built-in “Automatic Scene
Switcher” tool in OBS Studio kinda… sucks.
Or rather, it doesn’t work in the way I
see most optimal.
So instead, I use an “Advanced Scene Switcher”
plugin which I will have linked in the video
description.
Open the zip file, open up to the Windows
folder, then the “obs-studio” folder and
copy the “data” and “plugins” folders
to your OBS install directory.
In Windows, the default is C:\Program Files
(x86)\obs-studio\.
Approve any prompts asking if you’re sure
you wanna copy to a program data folder, and
re-launch OBS Studio.
Now the Advanced Scene Switcher should be
available under the “Tools” menu in OBS.
Open it up.
Now for setting up automatic monitor switching
based on your cursor position, we will be
using the “Screen Region” tab.
Here, we need to set up our different “screen
regions” to be detected by OBS for your
cursor positioning.
To get this to work properly, the numbers
are going to be a little complicated.
This is only made worse if your monitors are
different resolutions, like mine are.
Firstly, right-click your desktop and open
up “Display Settings” or “Screen Resolution.”
You need to know which monitor is number 1
for you, as this affects cursor positioning
numbers.
You’ll want to have your scenes set up again
for your multiple displays, see the earlier
part of the tutorial for this.
Take a look at your Scene Switcher dialog
box again.
You can see for each scene switching command,
you need two sets of X and Y coordinates.
We will use the “Cursor is currently at:”
feature to get these numbers, just keep in
mind it’s a little delayed in showing your
cursor location.
Now, this can be finicky.
Before, you would often need to min coordinates
from the bottom-left corner of your screen
and max at the top right.
But now I need the top-left coordinates for
min, and bottom-right for max.
So if it doesn’t work consider re-doing
this with these coordinates.
The numbers you want to pay attention to first
come from the top left corner of your screen
and the bottom right.
Write these down from the display on the Scene
Switcher dialog.
So for my main monitor, we want to say “If
cursor is in” Min X: 0, Min Y 0 for my display,
then Max X: 3839 and Max Y: 2159 our numbers
may be different.
Then, select the scene you wish to assign
to this screen.
For me, that’s “Desktop Facecam Overlays”
or “Screen 1.”
Then you can choose the transition.
For this, cut works best.
Once that’s set, hit the plus sign at the
bottom and it will add that command.
Now, you want to do the same thing for the
next monitor.
Find the coordinates for the top left and
input them into the dialog, and then the top
right.
For me here, the min is 3840 and 0, with the
max being 6399 and 1439.
Choose the scene to assign to this region
- don’t skip this step, I do that sometimes
and it screws things up.
Make sure you’re assigning the right scene!
Then hit the plus at the bottom to add it.
Repeat this for however many screens you’re
switching between.
When you’re done, click back to the “General”
tab.
Towards the bottom it says “Scene Switcher
is:” and should say “Inactive” if it’s
turned off.
If so, hit “Start” to turn it on, and
close the plugin dialog.
Once it’s running, your scenes should automatically
switch between your Display Capture scenes.
If it doesn’t work the first try, don’t
panic!
Be patient.
Double check that you have the right coordinates,
and that you chose the correct scenes for
it to switch to, and that you hit “Start”
on the General tab, of course.
And again, if this set of coordinates isn’t
working, try inverting to the bottom left
and top right instead.
Something will work, you just have to be patient
with it.
Now, this isn’t going to work out well if
you wanna keep using other scenes.
Switching to a webcam scene will put you right
back at the scene where your cursor is.
There’s some minor tweaks you can do for
this.
In the “Pause Scenes” tab, you can pause
the Scene Switcher if you manually switch
to specific scenes.
You can also go to your Hotkeys Settings and
set up dedicated hotkeys for starting and
stopping the Scene Switcher, too.
You have some flexibility here.
The plugin also gives you lots of options
for switching based on windows, switching
back after a certain amount of time, customizing
transitions, and so on - but this is the basic,
main functionality here.
--
So you actually have quite a few solid options
available to you when it comes to recording
and streaming multiple monitors with OBS Studio.
Pick what works best for you.
I hope this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial
course has been helpful for you.
If it was, drop-kick that like button and
subscribe for awesome tech videos.
If you like game streaming, come follow me
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Until next time, I’m EposVox, Happy Streaming!
Thanks for watching this episode of my OBS
Studio tutorial course.
More videos like this and a full master class
are linked in the playlist in the video description.
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