How to stream live from your PC using OBS

What Will I Learn?

You will learn how to stream live from your PC using OBS

Requirements

A WINDOWS / MAC/LINUX PC
AN INSTALLED VERSION OF OBS

Difficulty

Intermediate

Tutorial Contents

This tutorial is for those that are using the OBS software for the first time and don't even understand what next to do, most especially when they have not even streamed live unto the internet before. This tutorial assumes that you have already installled the OBS software.

You can download it at this address. (https://obsproject.com).

STEP 1: GET YOUR CONNECTION DETAILS
Go to the platform you want to stream to and obtain the connection details. The connection details can be any of this.

SERVER URL
STREAM KEY
USERNAME
PASSWORD

You might need all this information depending on the kind of service you are streaming on and the kind of streming connectin you are using. The connection could be unauthenticated or unauthenticated`'. When it is `unauthenticated`, you will need only the SERVER URL and the STREAM KEY while when it isunauthenticated`, you will need the xtra USERNAME and PASWORD.

More so, in the case of a known streaming service, you might not need the SERVER URL as it would have been present by default in the software as you can see in the picture below:

Depending on the stream platform you are using, make sure you have those connection details at hand. Using DLIVE as an example, below is the screenshot containing the connection details provided.

I black-shaded my username and password for security reasons because Anyone can stream live to my channel if they have that.

STEP 2: INPUT CONNECTION DETAILS

Open OBS on your PC
CLICK ON settings as shown in the picture below as the red-boxed area
CLICK ON `stream as shown in the red-boxed area below
Choose the streaming platform. Choose streaming type and then choose streaming services as shown below
Click/Mark show all services as shown below.

Click on the service dropdown and find if the streaming service/platform you are using is there.If you find it there, click it . for instance, let's say it is twitch as shown below.

At this point , you can pick from any of the given servers or simply pick the auto-recommended as shown below

-then, you only input the stream key you were given as shown below. (You can click show to see if you inputed the correct stream key.)

Then click APPLY, then click OK. Make sure you click APPLY before OK

As you can see, the above step accurately defines how to connect to a known /pre-configured streaming service. The next steps teaches you how to connect to a custom streaming service that is not pre-configured. This is advisable if your streaming service is not present in the service dropdown.

Connecting to a custom streaming service

Change the streaming type to Custom Streaming Server as shown below.
Input your URL and stream key as shown below

If your service indicates authentication or if you were supplied with a password and username. Then click /tick USE AUTHENTICATION as shown below.
When you click USE AUTHENTICATION, the USERNAME and PASSWORD field shows up, then you fill in the details as provided by the service.
Then click APPLY, then click OK. Make sure you click APPLY before OK

After this is done, got to 'controls' and click 'START STREAMING'.

NOTE: I found out that the Clipboard shortcuts don't work well with OBS, use the right-click functions to copy and paste connection details, that is safer nad more effective.

After all this is done, you are set to stream, only that you don't have anything to stream and you have not started recordinng. So the following steps will give some examples on what to stream from your system, the drop down below contains the kind of media you can stream from your computer but in this tutorial, we will be treating two ( Game Capture and Video Capture), on consequent tutorials, we will treat the others.

SO, you can now successfully stream from your PC unto any platform on the internet.

Curriculum

This is the first on the set of tutorials on how to stream from your pc through. Subsequent tutotorials will treat how to use other sources apart from video capture and game capture which are the most popular

Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors