How to Use OBS Studio: Setup, Sources, and Your First Stream or Recording

The first step when using any streaming application is configuring it for the specific use case. In this article, we look at how to set up OBS Studio for your particular scenario.

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) has a powerful feature that can be used right away with no configuration: the Auto-Configuration Wizard. This feature will optimize your version of OBS to best fit your intended use, the hardware resources on your PC, and your network conditions. If you’re streaming fast-paced gameplay, or recording high-fidelity video, you’ll get optimal performance based upon what you select from this wizard. The wizard appears automatically on the first launch, but you can re-launch it anytime via the Tools menu → Auto-Configuration Wizard option in the menu bar.

If you haven’t already launched OBS, do so now. You’ll see that all you need to do is click Start. Otherwise, you can always go back to the “Tools” menu to run the auto-configuration wizard later.

Scenes and sources

What’s next? Once you’ve done that, you can begin setting up your streams and recordings. OBS works by defining scenes and sources. A scene is basically a virtual camera feed that captures what you want to show viewers. A source defines what’s being captured within that scene — whether it’s an entire desktop, part of it, a specific window, a webcam, etc.

By default, a new scene is blank. To start adding sources, you’ll have to click the plus icon (+) at the bottom of the screen and then choose which source to add. But before we dive into what kind of sources are available, we need to understand what they actually do.

OBS provides four basic sources:

Display Capture: Captures your entire display, including everything on it.

Window Capture: Allows you to pick and choose which single window to capture.

Game Capture: For capturing 3D games on Windows only, Game Capture offers the highest performance.

Video Capture Source: Captures input from webcams, as well as other devices such as capture cards.

Note: macOS does not support Game Capture, but macOS Screen Capture allows you to select a portion of the screen to capture.

In general, Display Capture should suffice most of the time. However, if there’s something on your display that isn’t relevant, then Window Capture lets you focus in on what you want.

Audio checks and a quick test

Before going live, you should verify that your audio is actually being captured by checking the volume meters in the Audio Mixer. These meters appear at the bottom of the main OBS window. It’s easy to overlook, especially if you’re focused on getting the visual elements just right. The OBS documentation strongly encourages a few-minute test run to make sure there are no issues with your initial stream or recording.

But I know what you’re thinking: Why even bother? Just run it and see what happens! Well, as a practitioner, I’ve seen too many situations where people didn’t verify that their live input was actually reaching OBS. Yes, the volume meter may move, but perhaps not enough to let them know that a problem exists. After all, what good is a test stream without seeing a stream?

I’d rather run the risk of running a quick test stream than potentially missing out on some of my audience because I’m not properly configured. So, yes, please, just take a minute to run that quick test.