OBS Screen Recording

Modified on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 at 08:46 AM

Recording your screen with OBS

Open OBS from your desktop

When you first open OBS, it will ask if you want to run through the Auto-Config wizard – press yes

Select “Optimize just for recording, I will not be streaming”

In the next screen, it will ask to set your desired settings.

Click on the FPS list and select 30. You can leave the base resolution as current

After this screen, it will summarize your selections. Press Apply Settings to complete the initial setup.

Now that the initial setup is complete, you should see a blank screen with a toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Before we go ahead and select what we want to do, there are some minor changes to settings that need to be applied. Go ahead and click on settings at the bottom right of the page, and when the box appears, select the Output tab.

Initially, the settings for the video are at a level which will bloat the overall file size. To combat this, reduce the Video Bitrate to 300kbps. The final setting to change is the recording path. To keep everything organised and central, I have created faculty folders here à M:\OBS Video Recordings. On OBS, click on Browse, paste in the link just mentioned on the top bar followed by enter. After this, select your faculty folder and create your own personal folder for future recordings. Once this is in place, select Apply

Now we are ready to get ready for the recording. First, we need to select the source of recording by click the + symbol under sources on the bottom toolbar.

From the dropdown list that appears select Display Capture. On the next box, you can create a title if you prefer, or you can just press OK.

The next screen, will repeat on itself which can look confusing. Click on OK.

Now we are setup to record your screen, and audio from your computer. When ready, press start recording at the bottom right of the bottom panel, and minimize the screen. From here you can delivery you lesson.
1. During recording, you can an option to pause. This may come in useful, where students will have 5 minutes to complete some tasks etc. To do this, click on the pause button to the right of “stop recording”
2. To continue recording again, press the same pause button.
3. Once you are finished delivering your lesson, press on stop recording. This will instantly save your video to the location selected from step 7.

The above steps will allow you to create a simple recording of your screen with audio overlaid. The below will go into some extra features possible within OBS.

Recording desktop with webcam

To add your webcam to a portion of the screen;

Click on the + button from the sources tool bar, and select video capture device, followed by pressing OK.

This will bring up your webcam – position it where desired by dragging the red box. I have chosen top left corner.

When ready, press start recording like previous, and this will capture a split of yourself presenting with video and audio, along with the screen capture.