This has been formatted in my thinking of a tree, as in the pathing taken to get to it.
- Introduction (Optional)
- Disclaimer
- Prerequisites
- Starting Screen of OBS
- Settings
- Debugging
- Making OBS Open on Startup
- Making a Sound Play on Save Replay
- Credits & Cited Sources
Hi, my name is MFGAVIN and the reason for this guide was that Shadowplay worked horribly for me, the audio as well as the video quality were terrible. So I tried other alternatives, mainly Medal.tv but once again it was a horrible experience. After that, I was stumped since there wasn't any software I considered to be good enough, and didn't really know what I should do. However; after some time, I decided to try and make my own through OBS, and well now you know I was able to.
First, I'd like to state that this guide is WIP unless I state otherwise. I'd like to hear all criticism as this is my first time doing something like this. Also, if you have anything to tell me, use the Issues on GitHub
I'd also like to state that most of the information used here was gathered from others and without their pioneering I probably would've had to learn how to code scripts for OBS so thanks to them.
Also I'd like to state these sections:
uses information entirely found in StuckInLimbo's OBS-ReplayBuffer-Setup so I do not take any credit for the information presented in those sections.
If others want to use this guide in something, ex: Youtube, then I ask you to provide credits to me as well as all the sources I state in Credits & Cited Sources.
Before we continue, do this stuff first so I don't have to help you through it.
- An install of OBS Studio (se.live is cringe)
- Download this script from OBS Forums called OBSPlay.
This part only really matters if you have a bunch of scenes and stuff already set up and don't want to screw it up.
So in the main window of OBS if you look at the top you will see Profile and Scene Collection. The purpose of these is to make it able to have completely different settings and scenes apart from your usual stuff.
So with this, you can start fresh and be able to follow the tutorial, but again it's not really necessary.
I'll give you guys my profile and scene collection which can skip most likely the entirety of this guide but you will still potentially have to change them.
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Profile:
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Scene Collection:
This portion is one of the vital parts of this guide.
You must follow this as it's important with OBSPlay because of how the prefixes will work with files and folders.
- Make One Scene Called "Desktop" and add a Display Capture source
- Add scenes titled after the games you play and use Game Captures for them.
Leave the Mode on Capture any fullscreen application
For LoL: If you're trying to add League of Legends and it's not working it could be because of your overlays as it's really stingy, so make sure you check it out, for me it didn't work because of RTSS Overlay. If that do
This part is also vital since it'll optimize the resources when switching between Desktop and Game capture.
Note: Whenever you set everything up you may notice sometimes clips go into folders they shouldn't be. This can be caused by trying to Save Replay but Alt+Tab'ing out which causes the clip to be prefixed with another scene names
Note 2: Do not make a scene switcher for your Desktop scene, you will find out why later.
Go to Tools > Automatic Scene Switcher
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Look at the top-left longest box, in the picture it's "test123", this dropbox contains all your currently opened programs to select from, so select the game you are looking to add.
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Look towards the box to the right, in the picture it's "Desktop", this dropbox contains all your Scenes so pair up the game program with the game scene and you should understand.
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Look to the bottom with all the information; you shouldn't have to change this each time so you will be one and down for this. For "When no window matches" select "Switch to:" and then select Desktop
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Finally look at the + and - buttons these add and subtract your setup scene switcher, so remember to do that before closing out on it.
And finally, finally, add all the games you want to play and that is all.
What the script does is it makes it able to make folders and or files based on the scene names. Sadly, the person who made the script was last active on July 16, 2021. And so they're two bugs that I found that I want you guys to be aware of.
- The first bug happens if you want to use MKV and want to automatically remux it to MP4, it'll cause the MP4 file to mysteriously disappear into the backrooms for the entities to enjoy.
- The second bug occurs when selecting the settings for the script so I'll go over it more during the setup.
- Open OBS
- Click on Tools
- Click on Scripts
- Click on the + Button
- Add the OBSPlay script from wherever you're keeping it
- So for the Base Save Path you're going to make a folder inside of whatever the hard drive you chose in C:/ then make a folder inside of it I made my clips so it would be C:/Clips/
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Clips will be prefixed with the scene name and then go into a singular folder
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For this check only "Scene Based File Prefix".
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Same as Option 1, but folders will be made according to scene names and the clips will be placed in their according scene folder.
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And for this check both boxes
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Look at Audio Mixer click the Gear Wheel and select Advanced Audio Properties We're going to be focusing on the tracks of each device. Now, depending on what you set in Output > Recording, you would want to select based on that.
Ex 1: Selected 2 Tracks in Output > Recording so in Advanced Audio Properties you'd set one device to Track 1 and the other to Track 2.
Ex 2: Selected 1 Track in Output > Recording so in Advanced Audio Properties you'd set both devices to Track 1.
The only section that you may want to know about is called "System Tray". Check it out and see if it interests you.
Leave Type to Standard
Set the recording path to the hard drive where you want your clips to be stored, for me it's F:/ but for others, it may be C:/ , D:/.
Leave "Generate File Name without Space" uncheck
Recording Format to either MP4 or MKV. But remember you cannot utilize the MKV remux to MP4 automatically feature with this script because at the time of writing it makes the MP4 file not show up.
For Audio Tracks, you can either have both 1 and 2 turned on or just 1 it just depends on your use case since having 2 tracks, one for mic and one for desktop audio allows you to personally customize them later on in editing but it's up to you.
Encoder Options are going to be slightly varied so I won't discuss too much about it. If you have a RTX card go with NVIDIA NVENC H.264 (new) since it'd be the preferred use case for me but for you, it may be different, so search up if it could be.
Rescale Output, leave unchecked, but for some people you may have to use it. Search it up if you may have to because of something like monitor resolutions
Custom Muxer Settings, leave blank, unless you want to use some of them
Rate Control, what I've seen others recommend is CQP.
CQ Level, you should use a range between 14-21. A lower CQ Level results in better image quality but a higher file size.
Keyframe Interval I've seen a couple of numbers thrown around so either set it to 0, 2, or 5. Though as you can see I set it to 2.
Preset can either be either Max-Quality or Quality. You can try the others but I've heard that **Low-Latency options don't do much but once again test it out and see if it's something you want to go.
Profile it's recommended to use High but if you notice problems then to switch to Main
Leave Look-Ahead unchecked
Set GPU to 0
Lastly, set Max B-Frames to 2
Set All the Audio Track's bitrate to 160 and you can name them if you want to.
Maximum Replay Time is recommended to be set between a range of 30s to 240s but can be however long you want it to be.
Maximum Memory should range from 1GB (1024MB) to 4GB (4096MB)
For this section we only be looking at, GeneralandGlobal Audio Devices everything else is for you to learn about.
Depending on whatever you're audio devices are on in your PC you may either have go for 44.1kHz or 48 kHz
Leave ChannelstoStereo
Select whatever your Desktop Audio and Mic/Auxiliary Audio are.
These are mine:
Leave Base (Canvas) Resolution and Output (Scaled) Resolution to whatever they are. You may have to change it depending on your use case.
Downscale Filter can either be Bicubic or Lanczos
- Lanczos uses more resources but has sharper image quality
- Bicubic is a good balance between resource use and image quality
Go to the Hotkeys tab and scroll until you find "Start Replay Buffer" and "Stop Replay Buffer", personally I didn't set these up fully, but you may want to.
Scroll down a little more until you see Replay Buffer with only one hotkey available, "Save Replay", (This part is vital!).
Going to be focusing on only, General, Video, and Recording.
Process Priority can be left on either Normal or Above Normal
- All this does is prioritize resources for OBS
Renderer should already be set to Direct3D 11 but if it isn't then leave it.
Color Format to NV12
Color Space to 709
Color Range to Partial
You can ignore this if you want but it's could be useful to you
Filename Formatting basically allows you to change the information presented in the title of the clips, I'll give you the options and customize to your heart's content.
This part is going to be a major help in fixing problems you may incur on following this guide.
The way they recommend to debug is
- Run the Replay Buffer for 30s or longer
- Optional: Save Replay
- Stop the Replay Buffer
- [Image Needed of Help/Upload]
- Follow the image and click on Upload Current Log File
- Click Analyze
- This will bring you to a website that displays Critical Issues, Warnings, and Info and will help you debug by stating the problems arising in your case as well as stating solutions to them. It has also helped me fix some bugs that I found throughout my journey.
But MFGAVIN, this shit still ain't working!
So if all of this still hasn't worked then I'd like to direct you toward the OBS Discord Server which has support desks. I left this as the last option since depending on how good this guide does I don't want to overflow the discord with the same shit.
Thanks to Koala for letting me use this guide they made for here.
With this guide, you will be able to run OBS as an administrator on login without an elevation prompt by using the task scheduling feature of Windows.
You should find the Task Scheduler by searching for "task scheduler" in Windows Search. It should find your localized name for the task scheduler.
In Task Scheduler, right-click the library and select Create Task.
Set the properties of the task like this:
It's important to "Turn only when user is logged on". If you don't do this, OBS will not appear on the desktop but run only in the background.
Running with admin privileges is activated with "Run with highest privileges".
The action in detail:
You can add arguments as well such as, --startreplaybuffer --minimize-to-tray Click here for the rest of available agruments.
The "Start in" directory is important, you have to set it to the directory where obs64.exe is located. If you don't set it, you get errors that several locale files cannot be found.
Ex: _C:\Program Files\obs-studio\bin\64bit\ Remember to include the dash that's after 64bit to make it work
In the Settings might be of interest to you. Deactivate "Stop the task if it runs longer than..." if you never terminate OBS.
This task scheduler trick works for every app you want to start at login. However, it's kind of a security risk.
You can even put an icon on the desktop that, upon clicking, will start this task manually, so you start OBS Studio as administrator without an elevation prompt. Create a new shortcut with this target:
easteregg2
C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn "OBS Studio autostart"
Notice that "OBS Studio autostart" is the name of the scheduled task you gave on the first property page of the task.
After looking for a bit and procrastinating I found two scripts that do the same thing but play the sound at different points
I'd like to give thanks to the OBS discord server and Epos Vox's discord server for helping with questions I had.
Then thanks to StuckInLimbo's OBS-ReplayBuffer-Setup as I heavily used the information provided to make this guide
And lastly, thanks to OBS User, Koala for letting me use their guide on how to make OBS Startup in Administrator mode using Task Scheduler.