Want a new alternative to your streaming programs? Look here!

[akaSM]

Are you tired of xplit's horrible framerate and audio quality?

Is livestream's quality not up to your standards?

You'd rather spend monies on food instead of a paid program?

If you answered with yes to one or more of the above, OBS is for you!

Originally Posted by their site

Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for recording and live streaming. Source code is available to everyone to contribute and improve. Both 32 and 64 bit versions are available and it's absolutely free!

This is a really basic guide to use OBS, and should be enough for game/movie or any other thing you've done so far with other streaming apps, you can do more stuff with OBS but, you'll have to read the instructions for those

1. First, you'll need a twitch.tv account, get it.
   
2. The you'll need your stream key, get it here. Anyone who has this can stream on your channel so, don't go around showing it.
   
3. Now, download OBS
   
4. Then, look at your PC's specs and put them here to get settings that will work.
   
5. While you modify the settings (only change the stuff the estimator says, anything else is fine as it it, those settings are in Encoding, Broadcast Settings and Video), go to settings > Broadcast Settings > streaming service; select Twitch /Justin.tv and put your stream key below it.
   
6. Back to the main window, right click in the sources box and click add. What you select here it up to you. Again, the default settings are ok here but, modify them as you see fit.
   
7. And, that's basically all you need, you just have to select your source, if you have more than 1 and press Start Streaming.

Here's what you can do with a video and OBS. Skip to 1:34 because I have no idea of how to edit twitch videos

[synkr0nized]

I've set this up for myself. I wasn't a fan of Xsplit, and interestingly I've seen a couple of broadcasters switch to this and experience better quality anyway.

While I've deleted them, I was able to easily make some test videos of me running around in town and fighting a couple enemies in GW2, and the quality was pretty good.

The only odd thing will be to make sure I don't hit my "stop streaming" key by accident. I've also noticed that there's a delay, though I don't seem to have one set up (e.g. if I am fighting a mob and stop the stream recording right after I kill it, the actual stream seems to stop slightly before I kill the mob).

---------- Post added at 03:51 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:18 AM ----------

also
It appears that having your channel open while you are streaming produces bugs. As in looping audio and weird shenanigans. I will have to test this more (was playing a movie in VLC, recording from VLC to the stream, and had the channel open in Firefox to check up on it) to make sure I was not derping about.

---------- Post added at 04:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:51 AM ----------

Yeah.
I must be doing something wrong / it must not like having the channel playing while I have it recording from a video program. I don't know. Sound starts looping like some kind of bad trip.


edit: It appears I may not have remembered to mute the stream when testing, causing OBS to pick up the stream audio in the background and record it, as well, creating a sound loop. Whoops, don't I look stupid.

[Bells]

Here is a question for those of you who dabble on streaming... i`ve seen streams before, "conference call" types, where a bunch of people show up on screen at the same time live, talking while it streams live...

Do you need anything special for something like this?

[synkr0nized]

To do that, you'll need a webcam, a program like Skype, and a program like OBS.

In OBS, you can define scenes and add sources to them. You'd set your game as a source and also have Skype as a source (and tell it which window in Skype to show, such as the videos from a video conference call). Load up your game, and it will be recorded in the stream. Load up your Skype conference call, and anyone in the call with you will have their video recorded.

To not make this look retarded, you can create an image that will act as an overlay. Basically you make an image with appropriate sized holes in it for the game window and the video windows. You use this image as a source in your scene. Then you can edit the scene and move and re-size the game window and video conference window(s) into these holes so that they all show up with minimal other junk visible. Often the image source for pro streamers has their logos, affiliations, etc.

You can then set up a hotkey to swap between scenes -- one with this overlay/the video chat view visible and one with just the game full-screen, for example.

[akaSM]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

Yeah.
I must be doing something wrong / it must not like having the channel playing while I have it recording from a video program. I don't know. Sound starts looping like some kind of bad trip.

It must be because the channel's audio is playing on whatever audio device you're using; which is the same device OBS is listening too and sending to your stream.

[synkr0nized]

Yeah, see my edit. I was a massive idiot and left the channel un-muted when I was testing earlier. I just recorded a stream now to emphasize how dumb I was to myself with no issues. Like, I want to say I thought of that and just forgot, but I'm feelin' like I totally didn't even have the correct two neurons bounce together and space-cadet'd my way through that.


In any case, I kind of want an excuse to stream now. This program is massively easy to use and streams at good quality.