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Hi everyone. In this video I'm going to talk through
the settings I use
in Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to capture
general desktop use. So things like the web browser,
Office and Visual Studio are what I have used this for.
If you are looking for
settings for gaming I would suggest that this might not be very useful.
For a long time I used CamStudio and I found that it was
very, very good apart from
the fact that the
file output was AVI. That could lead to some
very large files that took a long time to upload
from home on what is a relatively slow broadband connection.
It just so happened that David at work,
who you can find at paddytherabbit.com (thank you to David for finding
OBS which, if you want to download it, is here at
obsproject.com) found OBS.
OBS, I think you can see, is geared to the gaming community
and it is intended
for both live streaming and recording to file.
So I think in terms of
demanding users I am right at the bottom end of the scale by
just recording general desktop software. OK, so in terms of the settings I am using
if we go into the Settings option first.
Under General I have not changed anything.
Under Encoding I have made quite a few changes.
By experimenting I found that a maximum bitrate
of 256 kilobits per second has been
absolutely fine. I think the default is somewhere around 1,000,
but for me 256 has been fine.
Again with Audio Encoding I have left it as AAC.
I found that if I changed it to MP3 it looked like it was recording but there was
no sound in the output file.
That might be something that I was doing wrong but AAC has worked fine.
I dropped the bitrate
down to 96 kilobits per second,
just because it is just my voice.
I am not using this for games, I do not need to capture
stereo audio
or anything like that so this has worked well for me. Under Broadcast Settings
the mode is File Output Only. I specified the file path and file name.
All that OBS seems to do with subsequent videos
is to append a number in brackets after the file name.
So, it does not overwrite the firsts file,
it just increments the number by 1 each time. I have just noticed that
even though I am only outputting to file
I have set Start Stream and Stop Stream hot keys.
Maybe I should have set recording hot keys but these work fine
even though I am recording to a file. OK, under Video
I have set frames per second (FPS) to 10.
Again, for general desktop use I have found that this
is absolutely fine. I have disabled Aero as recommended for monitor capture.
I do not normally use Aero but it is turned off anyway.
What I have done,
to give compatibility with 720p on YouTube,
is to set the Base Resolution to 1,280 by 720.
I have found that this gives a really nice, crisp
output on YouTube. Without any messing about
the 720 option is available for the video.
One thing that annoys me on YouTube, especially for tutorial videos where
the text is important,
is to not be able to read what is on the screen.
So, to match the video size to the display
here I have found works really well.
OK, the screen resolution on this laptop is not particularly impressive,
1,366 by 768,
but obviously that does not exactly match the video.
By setting a custom resolution here,
along with another setting which I will show you in a minute, it works really well.
OK, under Audio I have set the desktop audio to the speakers, just in case I do need
to capture any desktop audio.
The microphone is set to my USB microphone.
I have not altered any other settings.
I have not altered any of the Advanced settings because
I have not read the manual and I do not know what I am doing with these.
OK, the only other thing I have done is to add a Source.
Right click, select Add, select Monitor Capture.
I will create a new now source because I already have one configured.
If I go into the properties I have only got one monitor so I will leave that.
I capture the mouse cursor because for me it is a useful feature
to show where I am clicking and where I am entering information.
OK, the other important thing is the Sub-Region here which I have enabled.
Position: 0, 0 (this is the top left corner)
With a size of 1,280 pixels wide
by 720 pixels high to match
the resolution of 720p HD.
OK, now that matches the
Base Resolution which we looked at in the General Settings.
The only other thing I have done is outside of OBS.
Because the 1,280 by 720 resolution does not use the whole monitor
(it uses most of it but not all of it)
I have created a simple wallpaper in Paint
which matches exactly the resolution of the monitor
just as a grey background.
I then added a black rectangle which
is 1,280 pixels wide by 720 pixels high.
I then set that as my desktop background.
This means that I am able to see the area that
OBS is going to capture.
In CamStudio it gave a nice overlay to show
the area that was being recorded. I have not found this feature in OBS.
It might be that I need a plugin for this, or that I have not found the relevant setting,
but I have found that this wallpaper solution is quite elegant.
I do not need to remember to turn it on.
It is just there and it works really well.
So, that is it. These are the settings I use for OBS,
to record 10 frames per second
at 1,280 by 720 pixels resolution which is 720p HD.
This gives a nice low bit rate and if I look
in the video folder
I have been talking for just about 8 minutes
and
it is a 19 MB video which I think is impressive.
I hope you have found this useful and thank you for watching.