OBS Studio for Screen Recording – Super Easy Procedure with Screenshots

So, you’ve downloaded and installed OBS Studio on your computer and you want to start recording your screen, but you’re lost?

Well, simply follow this step-by-step tutorial and you will be ready to start recording high-quality videos of your screen in no time with OBS Studio.

Let’s get started.

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A Brief Overview of OBS Studio

Before we go further, let’s get an idea of the GUI layout of OBS Studio. To keep things simple, we will divide OBS Studio into 6 sections.

1. Scenes

If OBS is a canvas, Scenes would be a place that stores various pictures you can switch at any time. Each scene is used for different purposes. For example, a streamer would use different ones to signify when he is playing, waiting in a lobby, or taking a break.

2. Sources

You can think of Sources like a set of colors, you use to paint a scene. These are all of the elements shown on your screen during a recording. A good example of Sources are your logo, webcam, and chat window.

3. Audio Mixer

The mixer is where you will set up everything audio-related. More on that later.

4. Scene Transitions

Transitions provide you with animations you can play while switching up the scenes.

5. Controls

This houses the most important controls you will use to manipulate your recording.

6. Preview Window

Finally, there is a Preview Window. This shows exactly what you will see after you’ve recorded your video.

And don’t forget that OBS Studio is really customizable. You can drag and drop all of these windows and re-organize them to create a unique layout that suits your workflow.

Great, now that you have an idea of what hte OBS Studio layout looks like, let’s get started with setting up OBS Studio for recording.

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Setup OBS Studio for Recording Your Screen

Now let’s follow this step-by-step procedure to setup OBS Studio and start recording!

1. Add Audio Sources

Let’s start by setting up the audio. First, go to the Controls > Settings > Audio. Set both Desktop Audio and Mic Audio to default. Everything else should be disabled.

Let’s quickly add some filters to make your voice sound more professional. Click on the gear icon next to Mic/Aux in Audio Mixer.

Here we have 3 options: Noise Suppression, Noise Gate, and Gain.

• Noise Suppression will remove most of your background noise. Start from -10 dB and drop lower until you can’t hear the noise.
• Noise Gate will turn off your microphone when the volume drops below the Close Threshold. This way you won’t record your breathing. Settings will vary depending on your type of mic, so play with it until it feels natural.
• Gain is used for changing the volume of your mic.

2. Choose Recording Quality

Go to the Output tab on the left and under Recording choose the path where OBS will save all your videos. By default, it’s set to \Users\OBS\Videos.

Next, click on Recording Quality.

If you are just beginning to record your videos, we recommend that you choose High Quality. This will provide you with pretty good quality and reasonable file size.

Others should pick Indistinguishable Quality. This will give you a fully professional video that you can later edit in post-processing.

We can’t really recommend Lossless as it will eat up your storage without providing a perceptible difference.

Under Recording Format choose either MKV or FLV as they are very stable container formats. In case your PC or PBS crashes, you will likely be able to save your recording.

You can easily convert your files later, by going to File > Remux Recording.

3. Add Scenes

Now, you will want to create a game scene by clicking on the plus sign in Scenes. A new window will pop up where you can name it.

4. Capture Your Game

After creating an in-game scene, keep it selected and click on the + sign in Sources, and select Game Capture. This will open up the properties and let you pick which game you want to record.

For Mode make sure it’s set to Capture any fullscreen application. Once you start playing your game, OBS will automatically focus on it.

Nowadays, many games have an anti-cheat system that might affect OBS Studio. For this reason, you should select Use anti-cheat compatibility hook. Don’t worry, you won’t get banned for it.

If you enable 3rd party overlays like Discord or Steam, OBS will try and capture them as well. However, this does not always work, so make sure to check the preview window.

Once you are done with the setup, click OK and exit. Your game should now be displayed in the OBS.

5. Add your Webcam

Go back to the + sign in Sources and select Video Capture Device.

That will take you to the Properties. Make sure that you select the right webcam and OBS will set it up. By default, Resolution Type is set to custom. If you want to change it, we recommend choosing either 1080p or 720p. Hit OK and your webcam will appear under Scenes. Just drag it where you want and resize if needed.

And that’s it! You are now ready to start recording videos in OBS Studio.

Hope you were able to follow this guide and set up your computer to record using OBS Studio. Have fun recording your screen, or games! Let us know if you have any tips for setting up your OBS Studio installation and we’ll publish it. Thanks!

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