Friday, March 1, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
How to Setup OBS for Twitch TV
This tutorial will explain how to set up Open Broadcaster Software or OBS for short.
Things you need to know before you start live streaming.
Do you have the bandwidth to livestream? (Speed Test) 3000/4000 kbps recommended for 720p and 5500/8000 for 1080p
Do you have a powerful enough PC for the quality you want? (720p min (Phenom II x3/4/6 i5 any Gen) 1080p min (Phenom II/FX x6/8 i7 any Gen) also depends on the game.
Do you own a capture card? (Avermedia Gamebroadcaster / Livegamer / Huappage HDPVR/ Elgato /etc...)
If not you will be Screen/Game capturing which will require a more powerful CPU.
If you are doing console Streaming you can usually get away with a less powerful PC.
Never use more than 75% of your upload you need to have overhead for your games etc...
How to setup OBS to livestream to Twitch Tv
Register your Twitch account (Twitch TV)
Then you need to install obs (Open Broacaster Software)
Get your stream key from twitch (Twitch Broadcaster Page) Click Streaming Apps
Click show key and copy that key.
Now its time to set your bitrate so go the Encoding page set Quality Balance to 10 As for bitrate set it according to how much upload you have in my case for 720p I am using 4000 max bitrate and 2500 buffer but your settings will vary and with audio I don't Recommend you go below 128 bitrate Codec AAC
Go to Broadcast Settings in OBS set Mode to Live Stream set Streaming Service to Twitch / Justin TV set FMS URL to the lowest ping server with the least amount of jitter JTV Ping Checker set Play Path/ Stream Key to the Copied Key leave the rest of the settings stock.
Lets move to the Video page this is where you will set your resolution In my case I am using 1920 x 1080 native resolution of my monitor then I am downscaling by 1.5 to 1280 x 720 for livestreaming also set your FPS here I have mine set to 30 more fps means more bitrate needed also more CPU usage.
Now lets get our microphones setup to stream with go to the Audio Page in the first drop down menu select the microphone you want to use you can set a push to talk key if you want one and also a delay on how long you have to hold the button before it will send the mic to the stream there are also mute mic and mute game sound hotkeys you can set here I have mute mic set to Num - which is Number 11 on the side of my Naga and I have Mute desktop (aka Game Sound) set to Num + which I don't have set Don't play with the other settings.
On to Advanced don't use these settings unless you have a higher end pc everything under this tab makes it so you use more cpu if you do have a higher end pc I recommend setting the Process Priority Class to High you can play with the x264 CPU preset if you want but it drastically increases CPU usage you can try use CBR but i find that it makes the stream lag randomly so I don't use it Everything else I leave off except higher Quality Resampling for audio I haven't noticed it do anything negative or positive for that matter so I just use it.
Game Capture / Video Device / Screen Region
I personally use an Avermedia GameBroadcaster HD to capture my Screen to save on game performance. So my setup is as follows to capture my screen.
Right click in sources name your source what you want then this screen comes up This is Very important when using a capture card Click Custom Resolution set it to the native Resolution of your monitor in my case 1920 x 1080 and select the FPS you want in my case 29.97 then leave everything else unchecked. You will also use this for your webcam so use the auto resolution for your webcam
You can also use Software Capture which you can capture the whole screen game must be played in windowed mode or window mode maximzed to use this setting also another thing I noticed when I used this setting the FPS was very inconsistent 
Then the Final Screen Capture way is to do Game Capture (aka Game Source) This will capture games in Fullscreen and also windowed mode note if you minimize the program the stream will go black and you also have to set it up for each game every time you launch them
Conclusions About OBS
Obs is a great program that I find uses less CPU then Xsplit does it's also free which is awesome. A few things could be better about this program especially for setting up your screen to stream if you use images on your stream you can't use the arrow keys to setup your streams which can be a hassle. Also I wish there was a way to disable the auto snapping feature for the screen setup. But all in all I will be using this over my Xsplit premium I spent all that money on because if effects gameplay a lot less.
