An Advanced Method to Recording with OBS Studio

Disclaimer: If you’re looking for a more advanced program for screen casting than what we previously offered in our QuickTime blog post then you should read this. My next blog post will focus on the live streaming aspect of OBS Studio.

OBS Studio is a completely free program that allows a user to live stream to a service like Twitch.tv or any other platform as well as letting a user simply use it as recording software to record videos of their desktop or a game that they are playing. From their page at https://obsproject.com/ :

OBS Studio (formerly known as OBS Multiplatform) is a complete rewrite of the original OBS from the ground up, with the main goals being multiplatform support, a more thorough feature set, and a much more powerful API. While still in its early stages, releases are currently available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

OBS Studio will eventually support many of the advanced requested features not present in the original OBS, such as multiple stream outputs and scene previewing, the latter of which is now available in the current release.

This blog post will deal with recording that can be later uploaded to a service like YouTube.

Step 1 - Downloading:

Go to their downloads page found here: https://obsproject.com/download. Choose your operating system and make sure OBS Studio is selected. Click ‘Download’ and then proceed to install the software.

Step 2 - Opening the Program:

When you finish installing open it up. You should end up with a screen similar to this.

Step 3 - Output Settings:

First you will want to go into your settings/preferences to change a few things. The settings on Windows is under File>Settings. On OS X it is in the top bar of your screen ‘OBS Studio’ and then click on ‘Preferences’. Once the settings are open head into the ‘Output’ section on the left and then click on the ‘Recording’ tab. You should be looking at this:

The recording path is where your recording files will be saved when you are finished recording, so you can change it to wherever you like. Then you can choose whatever file type you want the recording to be. I just chose mp4, but there are many other options available. The encoder will be different for people. I use the AMD one because I have an AMD graphics card, but you can just use the x264 (or one of the Apple ones if you’re using an Apple device) one if you like. You can use the rescale output if you want to scale down your recording resolution. Bitrate is next and this will vary for everyone, but I use 15000 for 1080p, or if I wanted to I could use 7500 for 720p recording.

Step 4 - Video Settings:

Nothing really has to be changed inside of the audio settings unless you need to change what device is being used. Head on over to the ‘Video’ section on the left side.

The base resolution is what resolution you are currently using. You can check this in Windows (I’m using Windows 10) by going to: Settings>System>Display>Advanced display settings. On OS X you just click the Apple logo in the top left and click ‘About this Mac’. The output resolution is what your recorded video will be outputted to so you can either have it the same or scale it down to a lower resolution. The ‘Downscale Filter’ determines the quality of your recording. Lanczos is the best, but uses the most system power, Bicubic is the middle-ground, and Bilinear is the one in last, but is faster. Finally we have FPS values which is the frame rate of your recording. Your best bet is to either use 30 or 60 FPS as those are the most common, but 60 FPS will definitely look a lot smoother.

That’s all about you need to know for now unless you want to setup some hotkeys to use which are basically shortcuts to actions by using keyboard keys.

Step 5 - Recording:

Now that all the settings are configured we can start recording. There is a box in the lower left-hand corner called ‘Scenes’. These are like profiles you can setup for different recording scenarios. You can see in the screenshot that I have one for live streaming and gameplay recording. Click the plus icon and name it something like “Desktop Recording”. Next is the ‘Sources’ box located next to the ‘Scenes’ box. Sources are what OBS Studio is actually recording from whether it be a game or browser window. In the ‘Sources’ box click the plus icon and then click the ‘Display Capture’. You can leave the name and click ‘Okay’ and then ‘Okay’ again. When you do you should see your screen inside the main box. This is just a preview so it isn’t actually recording.

Now all you need to do is click ‘Start Recording’ and you will begin recording. Just make sure to click ‘Stop Recording’ when you are done and the file should be uploaded to wherever you chose the file path to be. That's about it and I hope you enjoyed!

Edited by: Trystin Killer