With an exceptional number of online recording programs, it’s hard to choose the one that suits your needs.
This article answers the question ‘What is OBS Studio?’ and how to use it for recording and streaming video content.
What Is OBS Studio?
OBS Studio is free and open-source software for recording and live streaming that allows you to capture video and audio from your computer or webcam and transmit it to various platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and others.
This is one of the most popular tools for creating live content because it offers many options and adaptability for different types of projects.
Program Structure
OBS Studio consists of three main parts: sources, scenes, and output.
Sources are different elements you can add to your video, such as images, text, windows, games, cameras, microphones, and more.
Scenes are sets of sources that you can switch during recording or streaming.
Output is how OBS Studio sends your video to a destination, whether it’s a local file or an online service.
OBS Studio allows you to adjust output settings such as resolution, frame rate, transfer speed, and file format.
With this program, you can also do video streaming.
obs studio download
Upon visiting the website, choose the version depending on your operating system.
The program will start the installation process on its own.
It’s preferable to select a directory with the most space available for installation because video recordings take up a lot of disk space.
Starting the Program
The initial screen will look like the image.
Don’t worry; it’s nothing complicated.
First, we need to define some basic parameters.
Defining Basic Parameters
From the main menu, select Tools > Auto-Configuration Wizard.
The program will optimize certain parameters depending on what you’ll use it for.
We’ll choose the option “Optimize just for recording” because we’ll be recording computer work.
Press Next.
Optimizations for streaming and the camera are also possible.
Many answers to questions can be found on the OBS forum.
Auto-Configuration Parameters
Although here, we can change the resolution and frames per second (FPS), it’s good to leave everything at the pre-set parameters.
The program will automatically take your monitor’s resolution and determine the FPS based on your computer’s capacity.
Press Next, and you’ve defined the parameters.
Sources
On this panel named Sources, we define all inputs (modules) that the program will record.
By pressing the “+” icon, a menu with a list of input modules will open.
Each module serves a different purpose.
We choose Display Capture because we intend to record the screen.
Display capture Options
As soon as we select the module, additional options will open, but it turns out that all the preset parameters work well, and you don’t need to change them.
If you have two monitors connected under the Display option, you need to choose the one you want to record.
Recording Sound
Now, under Sources, we’ll again add a module by pressing the “+” icon and selecting Audio Output Capture.
In its options, we’ll have the Digital Output option, which the program has chosen from our configuration, and it’s already selected.
This means OBS will record the digital output from our sound card.
If, besides computer sound, you want to record input from the microphone, you need to connect the microphone and add the Audio Input Capture module.
In settings, you then have to choose the connected microphone.
At the same time, all active modules will be visible in the Sources panel.
Of course, as we activate modules, we can deactivate them by selecting them and pressing the trash can icon.
Screen Adjustment
Once you’ve activated the modules, everything you do will be visible on the screen, and in the Audio Mixer panel, you’ll see the sound intensity.
What you still need to do on the main screen is to drag the square, as in the picture, to the edges of the screen.
This is necessary because you can adjust that square to record only the part of the screen that suits you.
In this particular case, we’ve set the entire screen for recording.
obs screen recorder
We start recording from the Controls panel by pressing Start Recording.
With the same button, we’ll stop it using Stop Recording.
When we start recording, to the right of the Stop Recording button, there will be a button for pausing the recording.
If the recording program bothers us, we can minimize it so it’s invisible.
When we finish recording, we can bring it back by clicking the icon on the bottom toolbar.
How to Review Recorded Video?
From the main menu, select File > Show recordings, and a directory with recorded movies will open.
The movies will be displayed in .flv format, and you can view them in Windows Media Player, but you won’t be able to publish them on the YouTube platform or easily edit them.
To enable this, using the same program, we’ll convert the movies to MP4, which is supported by most platforms for working with video files.
Converting to MP4
From the main menu, select File > Remux Recording.
In the open window, in the OBS Recording field, you need to add movies for conversion.
Open the folder where the movies in FLV format are saved drag them under Remux Recording and press Remux.
This way, you’ve converted the movies to MP4 format.
Frequently Asked Questions
Conclusion
OBS is an excellent program for recording videos.
You can connect a webcam, record yourself, simultaneously record computer work, and stream.
The program has many more options that we haven’t been able to describe due to space constraints.
We hope we’ve managed to explain how to record your computer work.
If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments below the text.