Question / Help I'm new at this, and very stupid

[seanayb]

I only kind of know what a few of the functions of this program does. Here's what I'm attempting to do:

I would like to stream audio and video from one location, alongside simultaneous audio/video from another location, and broadcast the whole thing to facebook live in such a way that someone who logs on to our FB page can see me in one location and my boss from the other. Interactions between him and myself should be in real-time without significant, debilitating delay, but if the rest of the world sees what we do 20 seconds after we do it, that doesn't bother me at all.

I can make one Scene broadcast to FB live, I think, by just assigning as Sources my Macbook Air's built-in camera and microphone. How do I get audio/video from my boss? Does he need to have OBS as well?

Thank you for your help, I really don't know at all what I'm doing here.

 

[Narcogen]

You need some way of getting the remote video. This can be from videoconferencing software, like Skype, Zoom, Webex, Google Hangouts, whatever.

They could also use OBS and stream to a low latency provider like Mixer.com, but then they also have to set up OBS which is not made for conferencing, and then you'd need another method for them to see and hear you.

Once that part is done, in OBS you capture the audio and video from your computer.

For audio on MacOS, look here:

How to capture desktop audio on Mac

If you wish to use Skype for this, it can send audio and video through a method called NDI, and this can be used in OBS if you install this plugin:

DistroAV - Network Audio/Video in OBS-Studio using NDI® technology

This plugin adds simple audio/video input and output over IP using NDI® technology. Three integrations are currently available: - NDI Source: add NDI Sources into OBS like any traditional source - NDI Output: transmit the main program view over...

obsproject.com

However, be warned, as of this week the company that makes the underlying software that this plugin depends on, NewTek, updated NDI from version 4.1 to 4.5 and in the process broke this plugin on MacOS, so if you did not already have this functioning before last week this may not be an option for you until this issue is resolved.

Also keep in mind that a MacBook Air, for several reasons, is about the least well-suited piece of hardware for this task and that quality and performance are likely to suffer. OBS generally performs better on the same hardware in Windows than on MacOS; there are features missing from the MacOS version that are present in the Windows version, and the single most important feature of OBS is the ability to use hardware x264 video compression that is a feature of most modern GPUs, and on MacOS it is unable to use these features, and Apple does not ship hardware with the best available encoders in them.

Strongly advise another machine if any available; desktop with a wired internet connection preferable, late model Nvidia card with the NVENC feature would be best, desktop or not.