Tag Archives: OBS

How To Stream With OBS

I mentioned online that I finally figured out how to stream and that it isn’t difficult, there’s just a lot of moving parts. I had one person ask me to share what I know. You can see the companion YouTube video here.

First, let me be clear that I am not an expert and have only live streamed on Twitch a half dozen times at most, and never for more than a few minutes until today, when I streamed for an hour. I recorded three new episodes for my YouTube series, Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner.

It was not the best looking stream, nor the best sounding. Proper lighting and audio are two entirely different topics for which I am not the best example. I figured out how to make it work, I didn’t say I do it well. As with anything, practice and familiarity, plus an effort to improve will yield results.

In my experience, you want to use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software. It is open source freeware that is quite sophisticated and can handle both recording your screen, or your webcam, or both, plus the webcams of others.

I have long wanted to record games I run online. Mostly for playback to analyze my GMing or to record how I explained something because I really liked how I said it, but can’t recall the specific words from memory. But getting the audio from other players to record at a volume one can easily hear always seemed always to be missing a step.

Between a combination of a few different videos and my own trial and error, I finally hit on the right formula to record the audio of another person from an online meeting software. This also allowed me to make sense of how to get the right hardware settings on my PC and get the right results for recording a small overlay with my webcam displayed over my web browser displaying Roll20 or other browser window.

I recorded about a half dozen short videos and played them back until I got the sound right. For me, I found that using the headset speakers and microphone prevented the microphone from picking up the sound from external speakers and causing an echo. There is probably a way to do sound so that it doesn’t cause an issue between all the pieces, but this was a solo operating for me to do streaming.

The same settings that allow me to stream a browser tab will also let me stream a video game. Again, none of this is hard, it is just a matter of figuring out the right combination of hardware settings and settings in OBS to get the results you want. Once you get it working, improving the lighting and sound is the next natural progression. There is a lot of information online about those topics which are beyond the current scope.

The hardware settings are going to vary by Operating System. Windows 7 is now outdated and no longer updated by Microsoft. Windows 10 is different in how you get at the hardware than Win7. Linux may vary on the GUI controls that are available with different window managers, or the command line. MAC OS, since it is a UNIX variant, should have both a GUI and command line option for configuring sound and microphones.

Once you have the hardware defaults set correctly, you can use the settings in OBS. OBS can rely on the default speakers and microphone, or you can specify the exact one of each you wish to use.

One can live stream a game or other activity to Twitch, YouTube, or other streaming service.

One can also use it to simultaneously record for editing and uploading to YouTube or other VOD (Video On Demand) service.

Obviously, this means that one can also either stream and not record it, or record it and not live stream it.

If you want to live stream an RPG, I recommend the three videos that Jacob Noorman of the Mini Terrain Domain YouTube channel put together.

Zoom is an online conferencing service that has a free option that is unlimited for 2 people and limited to 40 minutes for 3 to 100 people. There are two tiers of paid service that allow hours of use. Only one person, the host, needs a paid account. One could just as easily use Skype or other similar service.

How to Stream D&D and Other RPGs using OBS & Zoom
https://youtu.be/AvmdQaToSZw

How to Make Overlays and Stream Assets (Part 1)
https://youtu.be/3EAKW1lfucE

How to Make Overlays and Stream Assets (Part 2)
https://youtu.be/xN6YDCsfDTU

First PDF on OBS & Patreon Launched

I did it! I’m now a publisher with my first PDF, Locks Vaults and Hiding Places, live on both DriveThruRPG and RPGNow as PWYW I also launched my Patreon. The PDF is a sample of the types of RPG supplements I have in mind. Not just regurgitating blog articles, but bringing them together in a coherent form and expanding them.

I have over 700 blog articles, not all are worthy of inclusion in a PDF, but many are. My brain won’t stop, and I have far more ideas than I will ever be able to put to use in my own games, so I don’t want them to go to waste.

There is no better feeling than to put your game ideas out there and have other people like them and use them. I found that this past spring at Gary Con 10, when I play tested my card game. I’m still working on it in the background, revising the rules and play testing. I want things as done as can be when things are ready for the next step and I can launch the Kickstarter, sometime in 2019.

Putting together PDFs will help me get more feedback than I get on most blog articles. I love the ease of feedback on Anchor, and have listeners and calls in’s from other countries. All of this will help me be better at presenting my Kickstarter. Part of a successful Kickstarter is building a community. I know I have offers from some large YouTube channels to mention it when the time is right. 

Please join me on my journey into the realm of making games! If you just grab the PWYW PDF, please give me some constructive criticism. I have my own ideas about what need to be done to improve it, but I’d never get it done if I did that. I can update the PDF as I get feedback and am excited by the possibilities of the interchange of ideas.

Thanks!

I want to thank the RPG artists who make their art available on OBS at a price point beginners can afford. I hope by directing others to your offerings on OBS you get at least a spike in sales. In my case Denis McCarthy for the cover and some interior art, and Daniel F. Walthall for the rest of the interior art.