Recording/Streaming How-To | Quick Setup Guides

[S9 Civil Affairs]

Getting Started

First you need whatever Broadcasting software you use to stream/record your footage, whether it be OBS, XSplit or another streaming app.

Now you need to decide if you want to record everything on your Broadcast (including scene switches, overlays and other general additions) or if you just want to record the game you are playing to make highlights of.

 

Local Recording for OBS

To setup local recording on OBS, first you need to open your OBS settings.

 

 

After doing so you will get another window pop-up. Click the Output tab on the left.

 

On the above screenshot you can see the set a file path for where you want your recordings to go.

After you have done that, hit Apply > Ok and you are good to go!

 

Local Recording for SLOBS (SteamLabs OBS)

To get setup for local recording on SLOBS, first direct yourself to: Settings > Output Tab. From here you will see a section called Recordings, in this box you can set a folder for the recordings to be stored. You can select an existing folder or setup a new one specifically for this purpose.

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Hit "Done". Then you are ready to begin recording your content!

 

Local Recording for XSplit

 

To get started locally recording on XSplit, first direct yourself to: File > My Recordings.

From here you will see a box called Recordings, in this box at the bottom, you will find a "..." button. Hit this button and setup the folder that you wish for future recordings to be stored by XSplit.

Other Apps

The above sections cover the two main streaming apps, but there are others out there that do just as a good job. You will generally find the setting to locally recording your Broadcasts either in general settings or other. If you have an idea for a streaming app that supports local recording, feel free to contact S9.

 

Recording Gameplay Only

Some streaming apps might just not support local recording at all or if you prefer to just capture your game alone you can use local recording software such as Fraps and Dxtory alongside your streaming software set-up.
 

Have you figured out the prime settings? Do you have special knowledge? Do you know how to get the best out of the most recording/streaming applications? 

Drop a reply with any and all tips that you've learned! Share the knowledge.

[Capt (Ret) Zahj]

OBS Studio setup and settings guide
Download link: https://obsproject.com/download

My PC runs on an i5-4670K @ 3.4GHz. 16GB RAM. Windows 8.1. NVIDIA GTX 970. I have SEVERAL hard drives, including two SSDs. Arma is installed on a seperate SSD than my Operating System and I record to a third, standard hard drive.
These settings and setup are based off of my PCs components. You may need to adapt these settings to better fit your setup.

Getting started by making a new Scene and managing Sources.

     

To get started, in the bottom left corner of your window, you'll have two boxes, one labeled "Scenes" and one labeled "Sources". The "Sources" box is dependent on your "Scenes" box, so we'll start with that.

Scenes: These are what you'll want to set up first. Each scene will act as a different kind of profile for what you're doing. For example, if you want to have an overlay while streaming but don't want one while recording, then you'll want one Scene for streaming and one for Recording. For the sake of simplicity, I'll focus on recording in this guide.

Sources: Once you have made a Scene, select it and click on the "+" in the "Sources" box. There will be several options, all of which serve their own unique purpose. In order to record your gameplay, you'll want to select one of three different options, depending on your PC and Arma 3 settings. I have "Display Capture" set up on my system, which will capture and record everything I see on my monitor. This includes my game play, as well as my desktop and Windows functions and and sounds. You can try using Game or Window capture if you wish.

When you create a new Source, a window will pop up asking you to create or select a Source. Go ahead and select "Create New" and name this source something relevant. If you've selected Display Capture, the default settings should be sufficient and you can click "OK" to accept and close the window. Other options such as "Game Capture" and "Window Capture" are a bit more advanced and can take fiddling with to figure out. If you don't want to put in the effort or can not get them to work for you, you can always remove them as a source and fall back to using "Display Capture".

From here, we can move onto the "Settings" button on the bottom right side of the window.

 

Settings:

General Tab: Nothing in here should have an affect on your streaming or recording quality.

Stream Tab: I have "Twitch" selected as my service and "Auto" selected as my Server

Output Tab:

In the Streaming section, the "Encoder" should almost always be selected to reflect your video card/GPU encoder. Thus I have "Hardware (NVENC)" Selected for my NVIDIA graphics card. This will help offload the encoding away from your CPU. 
The Audio Bitrate should be at 160 unless you want to mess with the advanced settings. This is due to Twitch's limits.

As for the "Recording" Section, the Path is up to you. All of my recordings save to different hard drive than what my Operating System and Arma are on. Same with Recording Quality. I have a hard drive just for large files, like video recordings. 
I prefer MP4, though there are downsides, which will be explained to you via warning message in OBS when you select it as an option.
The "Encoder" settings here are the same as they are for Streaming, for the same reasons.


Audio: 

 

The only important thing here is to ensure that your Desktop Audio and Mic are properly selected. My ingame audio is captured via "Desktop Audio". This means any and all sounds that come from my computer will be picked up in my recording or streaming. 

 

ENSURE that you have the "Enable Push-to-talk" option selected down in "Hotkeys". 


Video: 

 

I have my native monitor resolution selected for Base and Output. What ever you have selected via your Graphics Settings and ingame settings should be reflected here.

FPS is at 30 for me for a few reasons. Mostly, if you are streaming, Twitch will NOT broadcast your stream at above 30. Maybe Twitch Partners or something can stream at a higher quality, I don't know, but for us normies, don't worry about streaming over 30 FPS. Secondarily, I usually average around 30 FPS in game any ways. 


Hotkeys: 

I'm only showing the last options on my list as everything else is custom to you and your preferences. Mouse button 4 is my TS PTT button and is what I use to talk to folks in game. Caps Lock is what my in game radio PTT is set to. Selecting these is important if you want your voice to be picked up and recorded/broadcasted by OBS.


Advanced: 

General: I want this to be a priority process so it doesn't lag behind or get put behind something stupid like Discord or Chrome on my PC's processing list.

Video: If you are on Windows 10 you should select Direct3D 12. I'm on Win8.1 so I'm stuck with Direct3D 11. Color format...idk. NV12 has worked fine for me.

Recording: Nothing important here, just the file name format. This is what your file name will look like when it saves to your PC.

Stream Delay: This is up to you. You'll want to change this to 30+ seconds if you are playing a competitive game and need to worry about stream snipers. Not much to worry about while streaming Arma.

Automatically Reconnect and Network: Just do what I did above.

Sources: I have Hardware Acceleration selected because I can? If you find that you are having issues with a black screen while recording or something, this could be one of your options to select/deselect.

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If anyone has any further insight on the subject of using OBS and can expand on other settings and set ups, please do not hesitate to reply below with your details.