Record streams with OBS instructions

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Simple or flexible recording solution?


Gone are the days when the weekly television program has worked hard to highlight interesting films and TV series, which you should not want to miss. Also video recorders, have long been served. Nowadays each user is his own program director and decides for himself when he wants to see what, video streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Maxdome

Open Broadcaster Software


Such services cover a broad spectrum of films and TV series, including more and more own productions. These are not very expensive and can be "not only" received on PCs, but also on smartphones and tablets as well as modern Smart TVs, but the basic requirement is a fast Internet connection, so you will not be able to get away during a transatlantic flight Of the first season of Games of Thrones or another top TV series, as on a long drive.


The same also applies to holiday resorts, where no WLAN is available. In such situations it is an advantage if you have your films and TV series with you. We will show you the possibilities to record video streams and explain how well the Open Broadcaster software tool works.


The recording, streamed videos is not particularly complicated. In addition, there are now a number of more or less useful tools that help you. The range of tools ranges from simple solutions like Any Video Recorder, which simply film the complete screen and save it as a file, to programs such as streaming video recorders, which not only allow you to set the area to be recorded, but also Also to determine the video quality.


Open Broadcaster software is a special feature. With this program, you can not only record the entire contents of your screen, a specific program window or an external display and save it locally, in the MP4 or FLV format. You can also transfer the screen space to the Internet in real time.


This is something that plays a role when a user plays a PC game and wants to present the gameplay live on the popular platforms Twitch, YouTube and DailyMotion. However, we will not go into these features, because they have nothing to do with streaming videos.


To be able to record streamed videos with the clever Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) program, you first need to configure the tool. By default, OBS is optimized for the live Internet transmission of your own screen.


Prima: You only have to adjust these settings once. Start the software, click the Settings button, and select Broadcast Settings in the left column. Open the pop-up menu next to Mode: and select File Output Only to save the recordings locally to the hard drive. Set the storage folder in the same dialog. Click the Browse button on the File menu, and then navigate to the directory you want. Make sure that there is enough free space on the selected drive.


Important: In order for the streams to be saved in the correct format, select MP4 File (* .mp4) as the file type in the Save As dialog. As file name, type record_ $ T. $ T acts as a placeholder, which instructs the tool to expand the name Record_ by the current date and the exact time. Save the changed settings by clicking on Apply.


It is advisable to save the changes in a separate profile. In the settings on the left, click General and overwrite the entry Untitled with a profile name of your choice, for example, streaming recording. Click Add and Apply.


It can not hurt to set keyboard shortcuts for starting and stopping a record. You can do this in the settings by clicking on Hotkeys. Click with the mouse in the input field next to; Start recording :, and press the desired key combination, such as [Alt] + [F11]. Then set the hotkey for recording; stop: fixed, for example, play [Alt] + [F12]


Finally, save the changed settings with OK. Then the tool is ready to stream streams. You can find out how to do this in the mini workshop below.


Tip: If the picture quality of the recordings is not satisfactory, you must experiment with the maximum bit rate, which is 1000 kbit / s in the basic setting. In the settings, select Encoding and increase the value to approximately 4000 or 5000. The higher the maximum bit rate is, the better the quality. At the same time increases, but also the file size. In addition, older, less powerful, high-performance PCs may cause slight jerks.