Sep 17, 2016 OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is a great program for streaming and recording gameplay on a PC. Iâve used it quite a lot, but it has frustrated me for a while that the Mac version has â through no fault of OBS â no ability to capture game audio. Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for recording and live streaming. Both 32 and 64 bit versions are available and it's absolutely free! Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) There are a few different versions of OBS Studio. For simplicity, the following covers the Mac version. There are also many options for OBS. The following settings are for live streaming via a desktop camera. You can also use OBS to share your screen, or stream from a media source (such as a local Mp3 file. Mar 29, 2020 OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is an open source application for broadcasting live streams to Twitch/Youtube/Facebook/etc. Unfortunately some limitation in the OBS software make more sophisticated audio setups a bit more complicated. Setting the audio interface as the audio device Once downloaded and installed, open the OBS application. With your audio interface connected please navigate to the Audio Mixer Mix/Aux Click the Settings button (small gear cog symbol) Properties. Click the dropdown menu.
Welcome back for the third installment of our series on Open Broadcaster Software, an open-source and free Mac, Windows and Linux app that can be used for live or recorded video production. In the first installment, we discussed what OBS is all about and why itâs a good alternative to commercial apps. The second chapter of our story showed how to download and install the app, then make initial settings. Today, weâll discuss two of the key ingredients in any video production: sources and scenes.
Sources are exactly what the name implies â the sources of video or audio content that is used in OBS to create a livestream or recorded broadcast. Scenes, on the other hand, are video canvases that are made up of one or more visual (and audio) elements from those sources. All of these elements can be resized, repositioned, or filtered. Many OBS users start with a single scene, then add multiple scenes to add production value to their streams or recordings.
Sources
Much of the power and flexibility of OBS comes from the variety of sources that are available to the user:
As you can see, there are a lot of ways to add visual and audio content to a scene! The variety of sources adds a tremendous amount of flexibility to your OBS productions. You simply need to learn how to mix and match those sources in your OBS scenes.
Creating an OBS Scene
Now that we know where we can get all of the video and audio inputs â the sources â we can use them on our OBS canvas to create a scene. In this example, weâll create two simple scenes â a âstream startâ scene that is just a repeating promo for the stream weâre going to blast to the world, and a âtalking headâ scene for our announcer/host in which he/she will say various things with a lower-third title at the bottom of the screen.
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1 â Launch OBS. If you havenât installed the app yet, be sure to read the last article to find out more about installation and configuration. Hereâs what the app window looks like:
2 â We need sources before we can have scenes, so letâs add a few easy sources. To do this, click on the + button below the Sources pane at the lower left. Of course weâll need sound so that the host can be heard on the livestream or recording, so letâs start with an audio source from the menu that appears (see below):
Selecting Audio Input Capture, we can select Add Existing (Mic/Aux) to add the built-in microphone of a MacBook Pro to OBS as a source.
Now letâs add an Image Source. Weâll use a âcardâ, basically just an image weâve created that tells viewers that weâre about to go live with the show. These can be created in many apps, both Mac and web apps like Canva. The card is 1280 x 720 pixels in size â basically 720p resolution.
I chose to create a new Image Source and named it âGoing Liveâ. Selecting the file from the Downloads folder, itâs now available to OBS:
Now letâs add a live video source, and to make this as simple as possible, weâll use the built-in FaceTime camera in a MacBook Pro. We add a new source, select Video Capture Device, create a new source weâll name âFaceTime Cameraâ. We select the device (FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in) and use a preset resolution of 1280 x 720, once again 720p and the best resolution possible from this camera.
One more source to add before we start making scenes â a simple PNG âlower-thirdsâ title. PNG graphics provide for transparency, meaning that your title can âfloatâ above the video in the background. There is a built-in text source in OBS, but I found that it was quite limited and also crashed the app if I tried to change the font! Once again, I used Canva to create a nice script font PNG lower-third in bright red, and created a new image source for it.
3 â Now that we have our sources set up, itâs time to create our first scenes. Actually, when we added the sources OBS created a default scene onto which all the sources were added. We actually want two scenes: the âGoing Liveâ scene that weâll show prior to going live (weâll call this âPreshow Rollâ), and the second with sound, the live video from FaceTime, and the lower-third title that weâll call âLiveStreamâ.
We can rename the existing âSceneâ by right-clicking on it, selecting âRenameâ from the pop-up menu, and typing Preshow Roll. Next, weâll create a second Scene by clicking the + button at the bottom of the Scenes pane and naming it Livestream.
Open Broadcaster Software Mac Audio Software
We have four sources and two scenes; we need to make sure that the proper sources are assigned to each scene. Our Preshow Roll scene has all four of the sources, but we really donât need all of them. Weâd like it to be âsilentâ (no sound input) so our viewers donât need to hear us before the livestream goes live, and we just need that âGoing Liveâ image source.
Click on Preshow Roll, then â using the minus sign ( â ) button â remove the sources you donât need (Mic/Aux, Lower Thirds, and FaceTime Camera). Next, click on LiveStream, and make sure that the Mic/Aux, FaceTime Camera, and Lower Thirds sources are added. For all of these items, there will be an existing source thatâs saved in OBS and just needs to be selected.
4 â At this point, make sure that you save everything. Oddly enough, there is no âSaveâ¦â menu item in the Mac version of OBS. What you need to do instead is save both a Profile and a Scene Collection that you can choose from the menu the next time you use OBS.
The Scene Collection holds all of the scenes and sources you have added, as well as any global sources. A Profile, on the other hand, holds all of the OBS settings but not scenes or sources. A profile can be built for each channel youâre streaming to (Facebook versus YouTube Live, for example) or for different recording or streaming settings. Any time a setting is changed in OBS, itâs saved to whatever profile is currently active.
To âsaveâ the default Profile and Scene Collection youâve been working with so far, select Rename from the Scene Collection menu and give it a name â I named my example âRocketYard Liveâ. Do the same with the Profile; here I gave it the name âRocket Yardâ (original, huh?).
Open Broadcaster Software Mac Audio PlayerWhatâs Next?
In the next installment of this series, weâre going to talk about output from OBS in the form of either streams or recordings. Part of the discussion will be about transitions from one scene to the next, then weâll make a short recording, and finally, weâll set up a Facebook stream. In the meantime, have fun creating your own scenes and adding sources.
Related:⢠Video Production with OBS: What It Is and Why You Should Use It ⢠OBS Chapter 2: Installing and Configuring the App ⢠OBS Chapter 3: Sources and Scenes ![]() ⢠OBS Chapter 5: Hotkeys, More Sources, and Resources ⢠OBS Chapter 6: Open Broadcaster Software Limitations and Alternatives Be Sociable, Share This!
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