A small bug report and a request for suggestions. The thread is related to sound.

[Tamago4a]

1. It would be cool to be able to record video from the screen with a wav audio track. Because AAC records sound with compression, that is, with losses. And FLAC is not supported in adobe premiere pro. Yes, I know that basically Adobe is the problem, because FLAC is the de facto standard, but they don't want to add support for it.
2. It would be cool to be able to choose which audio devices I want to record in stereo and which in "5.1" format. For example, I would like to record windows sounds in the "5.1" format, but if this is selected, OBS starts recording the microphone in this format, although this is not necessary at all. Because the microphone in any case can give out no more than 2 channels, which are essentially the same excess, because most microphones are structurally unable to record ASMR sound.
3. If you select the recording format 7.1, then the final file will contain 2 audio tracks. But when I put them in adobe premiere pro, they turn into 16 audio tracks. Microphone audio still uses 2 of the 8 channels and the remaining 6 channels are quiet. And in the sound recorded from windows, all 8 tracks contain audio data and they are recorded correctly. When I choose 5.1 this problem is not observed. Adobe premiere pro normally detects these tracks as two tracks and makes a label that this sound is in "5.1" format.

 

[AaronD]

I think this is related to the "OBS needs to be a DAW" suggestions. Lots of those already, and it's just not in scope. If you really need more than a single mic and stereo desktop capture, you should probably look at a for-real DAW. Do all of your audio processing in there, and bring the final result into OBS as its only audio source at all, to pass through unchanged.

That's in line with the professional mentality that picture and sound are completely separate things and should therefore be handled separately. OBS does video, and the DAW does audio. Right tool, right job.

I think most DAW's will record in whatever channel count each track is, independently of each other or all lumped into the same file as a selectable option.

I would also like to see OBS record as WAV, just so I KNOW it's lossless, but since I also know that FLAC is, that's technically fine. If you really need to convert between the two, Audacity does a good job of that.

Audacity: Free, Open-Source Audio Editing Software

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Edit, mix, and enhance your audio tracks with the power of Audacity. Download now.

www.audacityteam.org

 

[Tamago4a]

I think this is related to the "OBS needs to be a DAW" suggestions. Lots of those already, and it's just not in scope. If you really need more than a single mic and stereo desktop capture, you should probably look at a for-real DAW. Do all of your audio processing in there, and bring the final result into OBS as its only audio source at all, to pass through unchanged.

That's in line with the professional mentality that picture and sound are completely separate things and should therefore be handled separately. OBS does video, and the DAW does audio. Right tool, right job.

I think most DAW's will record in whatever channel count each track is, independently of each other or all lumped into the same file as a selectable option.

I would also like to see OBS record as WAV, just so I KNOW it's lossless, but since I also know that FLAC is, that's technically fine. If you really need to convert between the two, Audacity does a good job of that.

Audacity: Free, Open-Source Audio Editing Software

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Edit, mix, and enhance your audio tracks with the power of Audacity. Download now.

www.audacityteam.org

It is very inconvenient to convert audio from video every time. The thing is, I have a lot of videos. By themselves, they cannot be put into adobe audition or audaciti. First you need to pull out the FLAC audio separately from the video. This is a real pain in the ass. I'm not going to make a film, but just make a let's play. What is a DAW and how to work with it, unfortunately, I have no idea.

 

[AaronD]

I have a lot of videos. By themselves, they cannot be put into adobe audition or audaciti. First you need to pull out the FLAC audio separately from the video. This is a real pain in the ass.

Audacity can take video too. Just drag it in. It'll pull out the soundtrack just fine.

What is a DAW and how to work with it, unfortunately, I have no idea.

Digital Audio Workstation. Essentially a complete sound studio all in one app. It can record and play multitrack, process any or all of it in any way you can imagine, mixdown, etc. The processing is done live as you play the tracks, which also means it can work on actual live signals.

Once you're happy with a song, theatrical score, or whatever, and you want to make a single file of it, it can ignore the actual notion of time and just run all of the processing at 100% CPU load, whatever speedup that is. That works because DSP functions (Digital Signal Processing) don't actually care about time at all, only samples. (so when you change the sample rate, all of that wacky math - and it *is* pretty weird and unintuitive - has to be updated to get it back to the same actual time/frequency again)

For live work alone, you're only really interested in the mixer part and its processing/plugins, and it's pretty much the best you can get, for stuff that's already in the computer. For stage work, you still want a physical console though.

 

[Tamago4a]

Audacity can take video too. Just drag it in. It'll pull out the soundtrack just fine.

First screenshot.

Essentially a complete sound studio all in one app. It can record and play multitrack, process any or all of it in any way you can imagine, mixdown, etc.

Cool. And how should I deal with the synchronization of audio with video? Imagine that I have 100 short videos of 2.5 minutes each, and one audio track for 5 hours. How will I synchronize the recorded audio with the video? This is another thorn in the side, not a video editing.

What about the second screenshot? Why does it look like a stereo recording, but both soundtracks end up as "5.1"? This is a clear oversight from the developers.

 

[AaronD]

First screenshot.

Ah! Yeah. You need to install the FFmpeg library. That comes separate. Then it works. Look closer on Audacity's website.

While you're at it, you can install the other external libraries. You may or may not end up using them, but they don't hurt anything to be there, and it might save you some headaches later to have that "just work" too.

Cool. And how should I deal with the synchronization of audio with video? Imagine that I have 100 short videos of 2.5 minutes each, and one audio track for 5 hours. How will I synchronize the recorded audio with the video? This is another thorn in the side, not a video editing.

You mean sync between OBS and the DAW for live work? That's not really a sync problem per se, as much as it is a latency problem. Start with no delays anywhere, and see what that does. If the audio is early, add a delay in the DAW. If the picture is early, add a delay filter for that source in OBS.

What about the second screenshot? Why does it look like a stereo recording, but both soundtracks end up as "5.1"? This is a clear oversight from the developers.

The *source* is stereo or 5.1 or whatever it is, but the *tracks* are whatever OBS itself is set for. The recording is simply what was on the track(s). So if you had a 6-channel track with 4 channels silent, then you'll have a 6-channel file with 4 channels silent.

It makes the code easier to have everything standardized like that. Again, OBS is not a DAW.

In the professional world, whatever audio might be included in a video tool is universally considered "token" and not taken seriously. Use it for the operator's headphones, if even that. The encoder takes the two completely separate and finished streams, and sends them out together with no artistic modification whatsoever.

It may also help to recognize the old analog TV standard as two completely separate devices in one box: an AM radio for the picture signal, and an FM radio for the sound. The FM audio receiver was EXACTLY the same as what was in a car, boombox, or home stereo, except that it had a different tuning range and was linked to the AM picture tuner. Selecting a TV channel controlled both of those separate radios together. Besides the tuning control and the shared antenna, there was no connection whatsoever between picture and sound.

OBS is a video tool, not audio, that also happens to include the encoding step as well. So it does have audio for that reason. But anything beyond a dumb passthrough to feed the encoder should be viewed as "token". For those that *can* get away with the built-in audio tools, that's fine, but don't get used to or expect anything beyond a dumb single passthrough to the encoder.

 

[theBullringLive]

Can you run say protools and OBS on the same puter or should you have a 2nd one?

 

[AaronD]

Can you run say protools and OBS on the same puter or should you have a 2nd one?

I run Ardour (a different DAW) and two instances of OBS on the same machine all the time. Command-line flags for the two OBS's to not complain about each other, and audio loopbacks to get the raw video soundtracks from one OBS into the DAW (that's the only place they go), and the finished soundtrack from the DAW into the other OBS (that's all it gets).

Mics go directly to the DAW, and nowhere else. In fact, EVERYTHING goes to the DAW in some way or another, and then the DAW feeds everything with its own separate dedicated mix for each.

For automation, Ardour can use what appears to be almost every protocol there ever was! I use Open Sound Control (OSC) messages, sent from the Advanced Scene Switcher plugin in OBS. Because those are single messages that take effect immediately, I actually use them to control the auxiliary sends of an additional channel strip, that has a 20kHz full-scale sinewave generator on it. Those aux sends then feed the side-chain inputs of various noise gates on other channel strips and mix busses, so that their timing controls create a nice fade in or out of those signals, triggered from Adv. SS.

So yes, you can run the entire rig on one machine. Good for noise and cabling that way too. :-) Just set up my "Mobile Workstation" laptop, run the script to set up all the software (there's more going on than I can trust myself to remember), and go.

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For gaming streams, I typically recommend that the game be on one machine and all the video production stuff on another, with a dedicated physical VIDEO cord in between, and a (good!) video capture device on the media machine. Usually HDMI.

That's so the gaming machine can be optimized for that alone, and the media machine can be optimized for that, and the two uses don't try to fight each other for the same single resource, or require different configurations that aren't compatible. A game plus OBS is somewhat like two games, and games don't always like to share their host machines.

But for a bunch of media stuff, yeah, just toss it all on the same machine, as long as you've got the processing power for it.

 

[theBullringLive]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like quite the setup you've got going on.