OBS Review: The Most Powerful Streaming and Recording Tool

This is a comprehensive OBS Studio review introducing OBS-related features and instructions.

OBS is free and professional software that guarantees high-quality performance in recording and streaming tasks. Unlike some of its competitors who distinguish themselves by providing a clean interface and simple operations to users, OBS Studio breaks new ground with its advanced operations and complex interfaces. OBS receives polarized reviews from its users, senior users consider it the most professional screen recorder while fresh-hands spend a long time can’t get the hang of it.

However, OBS isn’t equipped with any out-of-the-box solutions, which is an extensively argued point among users. To amend this inconvenience, users have to build up different “scenes” thus to create different “recording modes” to meet with their various recording demands.

OBS Studio Review: Overview of the Product

OBS Studio is powerful software with rich features. It barely exerts performance penalty to other apps. Often, free software like open source screen recorder is thought to be lacking necessary features, but this stereotype won’t work with OSB Studio, since OBS was created to offer users with the most advanced features and most detailed functions to record videos or make streams.

The software effortlessly captures users’ screen. It manages to record games, streaming videos and audios, website, etc.
Its thoughtfully-designed interface undertakes its comprehensive operations.
Besides, the application offers handy approaches for streaming to multiple places including Facebook live, Hitbox, Twitch, YouTube Live, and more.

Another commendable feature of OBS Studio is its high-quality video capture. The software provides one-click solution to problems for frames per second (fps) and the video quality and if necessary, the mbps for uploading.

BTW, the application also allows you to add text and logo to the live videos with ease.

● Features
OBS is a comprehensive screen recorder and streaming product, it offers users with features listed below:

Audio capture, Multi-screen recording, Screen Recording, Picture-in-picture Mode,
Full-Screen Mode, Custom-Area Mode, Webcam, Game Mode, Screenshot,
Capture web browsers, broadcast stream to YouTube, Mixer,
Intuitive audio mixer, Powerful configuration option, Multiple themes,
Multiple video sources filters, Streamlined settings panel.

● Characteristics
OBS’s most different facets compared with the OBS alternative software are listed below:
OBS Price: Free
OBS Works on OS：
The Windows release of OBS Studio supports Windows 8, 8.1 and 10.
The macOS release of OBS Studio supports macOS 10.13 and newer.
The Linux release is available officially for Ubuntu 18.04 and newer. FFmpeg is required

OBS provides users with bountiful parameters to better control their footages:

60 FPS, HD resolution (Canvas and Scaled resolution), Multiple video formats, Hardware and software encoder, Downscale filter, Audio and video bitrate(Mbps/Kbps).

● Users’ reviews towards OBS Studio
Users reviews on OBS are basically positive, but there are cases of complaint on its complicated operations or black screen problems, here I concluded several reviews of OBS as reference for you.

OBS Studio Review: Procedures of Configurations before Recording

To begin to configure OBS, open OBS and click File at the left-top corner of OBS. Then among the options, click Settings. The interface popping out is exactly where we execute our configuration works.

1. General: Here is the area to set up some details. E.g. if you want to hide your cursor or not, if you want OBS runs without system tray while recording or not,
2. Stream: This is the place related to stream functions to Twitch, YouTube, etc. The basic step is to paste the stream key from the platform and start streaming on OBS. There are more concrete procedures about making streaming videos to Twitch or YouTube in the final part of the passage.
3. Output: This is a place to arrange the video/audio Bitrate, formats, quality, and recording path (Bitrate has things to do with FPS and resolution. When the resolution is fixed at a certain pixel, and FPS is set high, the Bitrate should be large as well.

   How to set up the most appropriate video Bitrate? You can refer to the form below.
   

4. Audio: This section decides your audio sources.
5. Video: This part of settings determines your video resolution and FPS. You have to make sure that all the resolution options have to accord with each other, especially when you decide to adopt Display Recording.
6. Hotkeys: Set up the hotkeys for calling out features instantly. This part is highly-degree customized, so there will no further instructions on how to set up hotkeys.
7. Advanced: Users could totally leave this section alone.

Full Tutorial: How to Record with OBS Studio as A Beginner on Windows (10)

OBS Studio Review: Steps to Capture Games

The most important element in OBS is Scene. The scene is the entirety of what users are recording inside of OBS. With the foundation of scenes and added-up sources, users are able to capture according to their various demands. Now I will exemplify to you how to capture a game with OBS.

1. Add scene, Rename the scene.
2. Add source. Considering that this is a guide for game recording, here we should add a “capture game” source. In the setting window, you should choose a “specific window” and let OBS capture your current game. This might not be successful every time you capture your games.
   If your game doesn’t cooperate just fine, make it run in window and change OBS to window capture.
   If window capture still doesn’t work, the last resort is “display capture”, a mode that lets you record your whole screen.
3. Keep on add sources to enrich your recordings. Add an audio input source to capture system sounds and add an audio output source to record your microphone.
   Add webcam to let your followers know better of yourself if you are a game anchor.
4. Hit Start Recording (don’t mess it up with Start Streaming, streaming will not create recording files to your local folder) and Running your game.

OBS is a brilliant tool to make streaming videos and capture on-screen activities. But it lacks some of the most important features of ordinary screen recorders. The features could be annotation tools, editors, file sharing, etc. Dispensed of these mentioned features, users’ experience in recording could be affected. And to mend up these deficiencies of OBS, users have to turn to third-party software like video editors for help.

☛ Alternative of OBS to Capture Games or Other Screen Activities with Ease
As one of the alternatives of OBS, RecMaster is also a professional screen recorder that bears complete features for recording. Click the buttons below to get the free trial, RecMaster will impress you with its premium performance.

OBS Studio Reviews: Instructions of Streaming to Twitch or YouTube

Here is a short instruction for our viewers who want to stream to Twitch or YouTube with OBS.

a). Firstly you need to select which platform you want to stream to.
b). Click Service and find your target platform.
c). Then paste the stream key – If you don’t know where to find the key, click the option “Get Stream Key” right next to the “Stream Key” column, and the corresponding webpage of your chosen platform will appear giving you the stream key.
d). The procedures above are preparations for official recording. Now it’s time to set Scenes and add sources. In the left-bottom corner of OBS, find a small “Plus” image and click to add your scene.
e). Then add sources, OBS provides users with rich features and the features, however, are exactly the sources. You can do full-screen recording, you can capture games, add webcam and pictures with one go.
f). Add audio sources.
g). Start streaming to take whatever you record in OBS and forward that out to the Twitch or YouTube servers so that whoever wants to watch can watch and interact with you as a streamer.

Conclusion

This OBS Studio review introduces comprehensive information about OBS studio including its features, characteristics, users’ comments on it and basic usage of it. Instructions to record game and stream with OBS, as well as a detailed guide for configurations and precautions have been in detail introduced to viewers of this passage. OBS is qualified as the most powerful freeware in the screen recorder industry, once users absorbed in its operations and finally get used to it, OBS will become their most professional right-hand assistant ever.

Other resources:
Screencast-O-Matic Tutorial 2020 [Detailed Features and Operations]
How to Use Screencastify on Your Computer [Detailed Guide]