OBS Studio is one of the best free streaming and screen recording software available right know. There are many other programs that you can use for this purpose like Movavi, Bandicam, Screenocast. However these ones are freemium versions, so they probably recording only in 720p or put a watermark on your video. In contrast OBS is absolutely free of charge, there’s no watermark and you can record in any resolution.
OBS is runs like in any operation system, Windows 10 & 11, MacOS, and Linux as well. You don’t need any hardware modification too, because it’s a lightweight software and you can also optimize to a low-end PC, with a small amount RAM and low performance CPU. So yes, you don’t need to have a $1000+ computer for your next YouTube video.
In this tutorial we set up OBS Studio for screen recording and also for your audio and mic. For the streaming setup you should check out our another article. You can use this on any OS as we wrote previously and after the setup you can start your recording with one click. Let’s get into it.
1. Download and Install OBS – Screen Recording Tool
The first step is to download OBS Studio from it’s official source, do not use any software hub, or program installation website. After that you downloaded to your computer, click on it and go through the installation process.
2. Run the OBS
After that you successfully installed OBS screen recording tool, then it’s time to launch the software. Then the following image will welcome you.
2.1 Add a new Scene
The first step is to add a new scene. OBS works as a project management tool as well, you can build different scenes, with different sources, like screen capture, video capture, different texts, and images. So click on the plus sign under the scenes tab, and add a new one.
And hit ok, then your first scene is created.
2.2 Add screen recording
The second step is to add a new source, the “Display Capture”, which will record the whole screen of your computer. It can be done, with the same process. Click on the plus sign on the Sources tab, then pick “Display Capture”
After that a popup will appear, where you can specify the source name. It can be Display Capture, or OBS Screen Recording as well.
If you have multiple screen, then you can choose between the two, otherwise you’ll have only one option.
And there you go, you can already start recording by click on the right side “Start Recording” button. OBS by default record any videos in the “Videos” folder, however you can change this setting.
3. Saving options – Settings
To change settings like where do OBS save your videos, and in what format you need to follow this steps. The first one is to go the left upper corner File options, and click on “Settings”.
After that a new popup will appear, rush in to the “Output” tab and change, the “Recording Path” to where to save your recordings, also you can change the recording format as well. The best ones are mp4 and mov, however, if anything happens and you can’t click on Stop Recording, your video will be lost. For that purpose you can use flv.
For other important settings like video bitrate, encoder, and audio bitrate you can check out our OBS Studio advanced guide, which is probably for streamers, however the settings are the same.
4. Prepare and Start Your Recording
After that you’re good to go! You don’t have any other steps, but click on the “Start Recording” button. Before you start in live, you should check out the quality of your video and audio, like your voice is audible. Also you can create a transcript for the video and go on.
Did you successfully start recording or do you have any question? Let us know in the comments!
