hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you the 10 best obs studio tips and tricks obs studio is an app that you can use to stream and also record your screen this video that you’re watching right now this recording i used obs studio to record this i also use obs studio to record my screen let’s just say that obs is one of my favorite apps if you’re brand new to obs and you just want an introductory overview of how to use it i’ve included a link to a video in the description that’ll provide that this is meant more as a more advanced view or follow-on to that video all right let’s check these out tip number one you can use shortcut keys to both start and then also stop your screen recording typically if you want to start a screen recording you’d go down to the bottom right hand corner and then you’d click on start recording the only problem with doing this is when you click on start recording the obs chrome will be visible then you have to minimize it and then you have to navigate to what you want to record instead you can use shortcut keys in the top left hand corner click on the file menu then select settings and over on the left hand side click on hotkeys and you can pretty much set a shortcut key for any action within obs here in my case i set a shortcut key for starting and stopping the recording i set it to the insert key so i simply press insert to start my recording and then i press insert again to toggle off the recording and this really just helps you get a cleaner recording and it makes editing a little bit easier tip number two you can record multiple audio tracks i use this all the time i have one audio track for my system sound and i have a separate audio track for my microphone this way i can adjust the levels independently to set this once again let’s go up to the top left hand corner and click on the file menu then click on settings then click on output and then click on recording here you can indicate how many audio tracks you want to include in my case i have three audio tracks turned on back on the main screen in the audio mixer you’ll see all of your different audio sources click on these settings gear and then go down to advanced audio properties here you can define what audio source should be on which track so here i have three different audio sources and each one is assigned to a different track once you bring your video file into your editing program you’ll now see that it has multiple audio tracks attached to it and now you can adjust the levels all independently from one another the big problem that this solves for imagine that you just record everything on one track and maybe your system sound is way too loud compared to your voice if it’s on one track there’s no going back but with multiple tracks you can edit all of that tip number three and this is especially relevant to tutorial videos like this one zoom in a little bit especially if you’re on a mobile device it’s hard to see all of the details on windows right click on the desktop and then select display options here if you scroll down just a little bit you can set the scale in my case i have it set to 150 percent so that way it makes everything just a little bit easier to see tip number four and this is also on the topic of making it easier for people to follow along highlight your mouse cursor one of my favorite tools is made by professor luke boiver he’s a chemistry professor at the university of puget sound and he designed a really neat tool that will highlight around your mouse cursor i’ve included a link to the tool in the description down below and i use this all the time in my videos also new in windows 11 you can adjust the size and the color of your mouse cursor and obs will pick it up open up settings and on the left hand side click on accessibility then select mouse pointer and then you can adjust both the size and also the color within obs when you add your display you’ll just have to make sure you toggle on that it’ll record your mouse cursor tip number five and this is a quick one when you insert an object onto the canvas in obs you can press the alt key and click on the edge of that object to crop it so this way you can get it to fit the exact dimensions that you want tip number six you can use chroma key in obs basically you could stand in front of a green background or a green screen and you can remove that green background local tv stations do this all the time with the weather in obs select the source that has the green background then click on filters and add an effect filter for chroma key then select your color in this case i’ve selected green and that eliminates the green background now i could add any type of background in back of me this is a fun one to play around with tip number seven you can use your output from obs in webex zoom or microsoft teams once you set up your scene in obs in the bottom right hand corner click on start virtual camera then when you’re in an app like microsoft teams when you’re selecting your webcam select the obs camera and then voila your feed from obs now shows up in microsoft teams tip number eight you can automatically convert your mkv files into mp4 when you’re using obs they recommend recording in mkv file format and the reason why is if obs fails for whatever reason part way through a recording you won’t lose any of your recording up to the point that it failed the only challenge is once you’re done recording you have to go up to the file menu then you have to remux basically you have to convert your mkv into mp4 instead you can have obs do that for you in the top left hand corner click on file then select settings and then on the left hand side choose advanced there’s the option to automatically remux from mkv to mp4 so you get the benefit of not losing your recording even if it fails part way through and it’ll automatically switch that to mp4 so it saves you a little bit of time tip number nine you can add multiple cameras into your obs recording and this works really well if say you want to have guests join your recording and you want to have multiple camera streams obs ninja makes this really easy at the website obs dot ninja click on add a camera select the camera you want to use check the audio source and then click on start this will provide you with a url copy that url and then add it as a browser source within obs and now you can have any number of cameras or any number of guests within obs tip number 10 when you’re recording in obs you might want to zoom in on part of your screen or maybe you want to annotate your screen there’s a tool called zoom it and it’s made by microsoft it’s completely free to download and i’ve included a link in the description down below once you install the tool you can press ctrl 1 and that’ll zoom in and you can also start annotating your screen the tool does a whole bunch and it’s worth checking out what the capabilities are but this also makes it easier for your audience to follow along with your recording that wraps up the 10 best tips and tricks for obs but because i like all of you so much i want to leave you with one extra bonus tip and this is a brand new one when you move things around the canvas maybe you move something around inadvertently you can now undo that by pressing ctrl z just like in pretty much any other application now i’m not really scared when i move things around anymore knowing that i can simply undo the change let me know down below in the comments do you have any other tips or tricks that you would recommend to see more videos like this please consider subscribing and i’ll see you next time [Music]