OBS?

Open Broadcast Software more commonly known as (OBS) has a lot of options, tools and buttons to press. Getting started with it can be made way easier with the power of the World Wide Web. After spending what seems like too much time prodding and poking little problems here is a big batch of the small things most starter guides won’t tell you to use so you can be a better broadcaster and keep bad habits away.

Audio Tracks, Sorting and the power of VOD tracks.

Copyright with VODS is the number one way you might lose a lot of data or your viewers may lose vital audio with a stream after uploading. When on the common platform of Twitch VODS will be scrubbed for copyrighted music and if found will nuke ALL audio when found. This means you could lose hours of valuable content that can be highlighted and edited for later. The best way around this is a feature NO ONE seems to tell you. VOD Audio Tracks! This can be found in the advanced “Output” menu in the settings tab. Here you will see a lovely setting known as VOD Audio Tracks. But why are there so many options and what does it all mean, audio tracks? Well, let’s break it down so you get the full picture.

Audio tracks are for each part of your PC setup. It is as deep and as shallow as you let it be. We won’t get into it here but if you either have an audio mixer externally or digitally this can allow you to open up your audio options as shown below. A track for each sound option. From here you can go down to the button and acquire the Advanced Audio Properties.

This can allow you to put certain audio in certain tracks. For example, I have my VOD track to be 2. So the ONLY stuff I want to hear in the VOD is my mic, desktop, and chat (Discord) audio. The rest will be cut without ever affecting the purity of the audio. So now my VODS can stay nice and fresh with no worry of audio nuking. It also means you can play music LIVE and not worry about the VOD.

Side note: When you put all your tracks together you can even export a recording instead if streaming isn’t your thing. So you can have audio separated to make editing your video so much easier. Getting into this habit early can help you stay on top of your stream and video creation process.

Resolution, Bitrate and Encoders.

There are a lot of guides that just tell you to do certain settings and move on. Here is where you will need to be picky with your look online. Mainly Encoders and you. Full disclosure, this part is hardware-dependent. I use a Nvidia GPU meaning if you are using something like AMD it will have a different result. Make sure to research your hardware and know what it is inside your PC.

To start, the main thing to note is the difference between x264 and the GPU encoder. x264 will do some great stuff for you including allowing your GPU some great breathing room for streaming and recording, but taxes your processor and can cause more pixelation in your stream. So you have to have either a good processor or GPU to get things looking as nice as they can. Most GPU now come with their own dedicated encoding RAM that is separate from game or desktop use. Making it much easier to pump out frames without hindering your own viewing experience. It will come down to what you want out of your system, how it should look and what you are playing. Really think if you have the hardware to play and record or stream. After that, you will be entering the world of bitrates, math and the grand world of solving that number.

Pixels are something you may hear from some guides but most will talk about bitrate and say you want this set it to that or use this to get that. But you need to know what you are changing to improve the stream or recording in little ways. Knowing the math can also help you remove those little kinks in the machine.

So let’s break down how OBS likes to do the math. One pixel contains at least 24 bits, 8 for each colour group being Red, Green and Blue. 24 turns into 3 bytes. This means there is some funky math to find that perfect bit rate. Though it gets…complicated. 1080p, the most common streamed and recorded resolution still is about 2073600 pixels in size for just one frame. That is already a huge number, but after we convert that into bytes we multiply by around 3 and 6220800 is the magic number. This number can seem really big, but really it means we convert it to MegaBytes or MB for short. There are stages of bytes, that being byte, kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte. Each tier upwards we go to around a thousand. That means 6220800 bytes turn into 6.2 MB. This is a much more manageable number for the next step.

6.2 MB is a great start but the biggest thing to remember is that FPS or frames per second you just put in. I like many others tend to use 60 FPS now. This means 6220800 bytes is for just one frame, but if we are doing that 60 times this number bloats to an amazing 373248000 with added effects and minimal compression. Or around 373 MBS. This would mean you would need an HDD or SSD that can read and write that fast while playing or if you are streaming at least 400 MBS upload speed. This is pretty much impossible for most people today. So why do most guides say we have to use 4000 or 6000 for the more commonly used stream services? We can use a video encoder like my GPU has with something called CBR to compress each pixel down to only 8 bits or 1 byte. This means we can push back to about 6000000 per the standard encoder used by OBS. But that doesn’t mean you can push above that number. The main reason it’s used is that the service only has a cap on that compression amount. This number can be raised if you want that little extra bit of data on your stream, but it can lead to diminishing returns. Though for myself I do use 6.2 MBs as it uses that perfect mix of compression and bitrate that keeps things clear enough without needing things to be taxing on my PC and my internet. Now that the boring math is over we can move on to the more fun part again. CBR vs. CQP!

The CBR encoder is one many people will tell you to use for streaming, while others may stand by CQP. There are lots of opinions on it but the main thing to note is both are made and used for better aspects of OBS. Mainly the rule to take away is CBR uses overall bit compression crushing pixels down like we did for the bitrate while CQP uses a more streamlined method of compression that can lead to an almost lossless video output but becomes really taxing on your PC. If you want to record use CQP while if you wish to stream use CBR since one can compress at a much higher level and the other can retain at a much higher level. A file for CBR can be about 1 GB while the same file in the same amount of time can be 37 GB in size. Meaning you will have trouble squeezing that out of your internet. So it is best to stick with one unless you have that dream house internet plan.

Where is the opacity option?

This is my last little tip for ya since you have already done so much reading today. Simply put when you are creating a stream layout and putting the images together. Sometimes you might want to blur something out just a touch or fade out a watermark. But OBS doesn’t have an opacity option? Right? WRONG! They do, it’s just hidden in the filters section! Yes if you Right-Click on an image or video you can go to the filters tab and create the Color Correction Filter. When you scroll down you can find this handy tool. You won’t need to worry about it doing much else, it’s a bit odd to find it in here so I pass on this one great wisdom no one told me to you.

This is the end for now. I have given you some tips on audio, video math and that last hint. But I am always lurking around and in the comments. If you have tips or things you may find useful to know that most guides don’t DO let us and many others know down below. I hope to reveal more of what I know with Plug-Ins in the next month too, so keep an eye out for that! 

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