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Broadcasting on Twitch with OBS

posted 25 September 2016

Setup

  1. Navigate to https://obsproject.com/download, and click the appropriate OBS Studio link for your operating system. This guide will continue with MAC OSX.
  2. Double click on OBS.dmg (or .exe for Windows) file downloaded, and continue through the installer. You’ll need to run root privileges to complete the installation.
  3. Launch OBS. I used Spotlight to find OBS and launch.
  4. Your initial launch will require you to accept the license agreement.

Associate your Twitch.tv account with OBS.

  1. Click the “Settings” button OR Click OBS menu, then Preferences.
  2. Click “Stream”
  3. Open browser and navigate to your Twitch.tv dashboard’s Stream Key section: https://www.twitch.tv/USERNAME/dashboard/streamkey, replacing USERNAME with your Twitch user name.
  4. Click “Show Key”, then click “I Understand” to warning dialog.
  5. Copy key displayed and paste into OBS “Stream Key” input opened in step 2.
  6. You are now configured to stream to Twitch.

Create Scenes and Sources

  • Scenes are groupings of sources. Think layers like photoshop.
  • Sources are things to display. Think the circle you drew on the layer in photoshop.

Lots of broadcasters have at least two scenes. One that shows some kind of message indicating they are about to start. A second one that shows their camera and video game simultaneously.

You’ll start out with Scene named Default that has no Sources. This is a good starting point to add your initial game to stream.

Add Source

  1. Click the + icon in the Sources area
  2. Launch your game of choice
  3. Select Window Capture*. This lets you output an entire window. For browsers with multiple tabs, this means the tab displayed will be what is shown.
  4. Create new, I named mine “Game”, and leave “Make source visible”. The latter options displays the new source immediately. Unchecking this, you will need to click the eye icon next to the source in order to see your game being played.
  5. Select the game you launched in step 2 and click “OK”
  6. Resize the game appropriately to fit your screen or desired height/width

*A better option is to use Game Capture (Syphon), but requires a tad more details to setup. See Source: Game Capture on Scenes & Sources

Stream time

At this point you should have OBS setup sufficiently to get you on air. You should be able to click “Start Streaming” and in your Twitch dashboard https://www.twitch.tv/USERNAME/dashboard and see the same as your actual game.

Happy broadcasting.