Need some help setting up OBS to only show live ("program") device / camera

A

ahelton

New Member
Hi,

I'm attempting to set up OBS Studio for my church. I'm a bit stuck. Never done this before. I've got my Video Capture Device added, but all I'm getting is a screen that looks like this in OBS:

1780245071583.png


How do I get it to only showing the "Program" camera and not the entire preview? Or what did I hook up wrongly? It seems to be capturing the screen from my preview monitor / multiview. Is that what it's supposed do, and then I somehow manipulate the screen in OBS to only show the live view?
 
Am I supposed to just crop the scene? My video gets blurry once I do that and then fit it to the screen. Guessing there's a better way to accomplish what I want.
 
I'm guessing your video capture is not actually a video capture device, but an application capture screen instead? maybe a (PTZ) control application? Correct, you don't want to crop a scaled down application window... you want the full resolution video feed direct from the camera... but it doesn't look like you set that up. And depending on your camera video output technology, there may or may not be a corresponding native OBS Studio Video Capture input. But not to worry, as there are 3rd party plugins and other methods to connect input from non-natively supported Sources

In your case, the 1st question is what type of cameras are you using, and how are they connected to OBS Studio computer? This could be USB, HDMI (usually via a switcher) old school SDI, NDI (Ethernet) or some cheap ethernet cameras will use RTSP. Each one requires a different approach to getting into OBS Studio. so - the answer to your question is - it depends (sorry, couldn't help myself)
I personally prefer NDI PTZ cameras BUT there is no native NDI video feed into OBS Studio. I set up Panasonic PTZ cameras and Panasonic provides a free VirtualUSB driver that accepts video feed from cameras and makes them appear as locally connected USB cameras (which makes using in OBS Studio very simple/native)... But like most things tech - has its own Pro's & Con's

It looks like you have 2 cameras. right?
 
@Lawrence_SoCal

I should clarify one thing. This used to work fine. We physically reconfigured the church A/V booth and when I plugged things back in I ran into this issue. Not sure what I did wrong, but I added a second monitor to our streaming PC (just so I could see multiview mode at all times and not have to change sources like on a single monitor setup).

Here's what we have:
- 2x Lumens VC-A50P Cameras
- 1x Halls Research UHBX-3S
- 1x Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio HD
- 1x Blackmagic MultiView 4 HD
- 1x Blackmagic Hyperdeck Studio Mini
- 1x Cisco Switch
- 1x ASUS Router

The streaming PC currently has an AJA U-TAP 3G-SDI Capture Device connected to it via USB cable. The capture device then connects to the Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio HD via SDI. The cameras also connect to this device via SDI.

The MultiView 4 HD isn't plugged in anywhere at the moment. I found it buried behind other equipment and swear it only had a cable plugged into the "in" port and not the "out" port, but now I'm doubting myself. It seems it allows for viewing multiple SDI sources on a single monitor...but I'm already doing that via the TV Studio HD so is the Multiview 4 HD even necessary?

I've recently purchased a Blackmagic Design DeckLink Mini Record 4K PCIe card that I hope can replace the above AJA capture device (trying to get rid of adapters and cables where I can), but for now the AJA capture device is still in play.
 
that helps... but I've never used SDI, so my following comments are based on thread watching for last 6 years

I suspect you have a SDI switcher, which externally selects which video feed to pass along (similar to what a HDMI switcher does)... but could be wrong? It may be that your AJA U-TAP 3G-SDI Capture Device (USB) sends all video signals to computer?
you may have changed USB ports (and or something else related) and now the Video sources no longer see the AJA U-TAP 3G-SDI Capture Device signals ... this is my top suspicion. You may need to simply re-select/reset the video sources in OBS Studio and have them come back up.
but you didn't follow pinned post in this forum regarding OBS Studio log, so I don't know your OBS Studio setup to comment further

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/multiview yea, looks like a way to set up an external monitor, for up to 4 SDI camera inputs, but if using computer (and it has sufficient resources to process video and run OBS Studio) then, yea, possibly not needed.. but using multiview for 2nd monitor might reduce workload on OBS Studio PC. And you indicate you are already monitor video via the TV Studio HD ... which is 'best'? it depends, and could change .. but yea, seems like multiview is no longer relevant to your setup

I suspect you have a situation where you are using video feeds for more than OBS Studio (livestreaming), right? are you using the ATEM Television Studio for distributing video to on-premise screens?

If you don't already have it, I'd make a drawing showing all your audio and video sources, and how they are routed, and then where those signals go (I'm suspecting multiple in and multiple outputs, and not all being through the OBS Studio PC .. and that is relevant).
 
ahelton said:
Hi,

I'm attempting to set up OBS Studio for my church. I'm a bit stuck. Never done this before. I've got my Video Capture Device added, but all I'm getting is a screen that looks like this in OBS:

View attachment 119804

How do I get it to only showing the "Program" camera and not the entire preview? Or what did I hook up wrongly? It seems to be capturing the screen from my preview monitor / multiview. Is that what it's supposed do, and then I somehow manipulate the screen in OBS to only show the live view? Cool Games
Click to expand...
If my assumption is correct, the issue is not in OBS itself but in the source being sent to OBS. I would check what signal the capture device is connected to. Ideally, it should receive either the camera's HDMI output directly or the Program Out output from your video switcher, not the Multiview output.
 
@Lawrence_SoCal

I'll see if I can describe what's going on from a connection standpoint. I'm much more of a traditional I.T. person with regular networking, servers, and traditional PC endpoints. My A/V knowledge is far more limited.

We have 3 wall projectors. The Halls Research device appears to be a splitter that takes an HDMI Input (in this case it would be a software running on another computer in the sound booth called Proclaim) and converts it to CAT cabling which then runs out to our projectors (there additionally are some small boxes at each project that convert this back to HDMI). The HDMI Input for the Halls Research device comes from a small Blackmagic SDI to HDMI converter, which in turn connects to an SDI port (output) on the Blackmagic ATEM TV Studio box. So basically, we have a PC running Proclaim and this is transmitted to the Blackmagic ATEM TV Studio Box via SDI then then out to the Halls Research device where it is propagated to our projectors. Of course, we also sometimes need to transmit this to our live stream as well.

The "SDI switcher" I think is one and the same as the Blackmagic ATEM TV Studio box. There's a lot of SDI ports on it and buttons to switch between sources. Everything feeds to this box. I have ATEM software on my streaming PC that mimics the physical buttons on the device to allow me to transition / switch between scenes, whether it be our cameras or somethings from another source (like our PC running Proclaim).

There's a multiview output HDMI port on the Blackmagic ATEM TV Studio. It runs to one of my monitors so that I can get a preview of our different scenes, make sure everything looks right before going live with a shot so to speak. There's also an SDI cable (output) running from the TV Studio to my capture device which then connects to the Streaming PC via USB.

What appears to be happening to me is that the capture device is capturing the multiview output and not whatever is actually live (program, to use OBS terminology). What's appearing in OBS looks exactly like what's appearing on my multiview monitor. I think @bradpitt is correct on this. However, I don't now how/why this is happening as the multivew port is connected to my monitor and not the capture card.

Here's my log file: https://obsproject.com/logs/sOh8Yrg8u8hDrjBh
 
Problem resolved! Turns out there's a multiview SDI port and a multiview HDMI port. I had plugged in the SDI cable feeding to the capture card to the multiview SDI port. I couldn't see the small print on the back of the box because there's barely in space to operate underneath the counter where the A/V rack is located. Glad it was something simple. Figured it was.
 
thanks for the update, and good luck. I, too was traditional IT, until I offered to start livestream... then I got to learn (6+ years ago)
not being able to read the fine print comes with age...

At some point, you or others may want to learn more about OBS Studio... and prefer reading well-edited content.. in which case, I suggest PTZ Optics resources, at https://streamgeeks.us/ > Online Resources
there is both The Unofficial Guide to Open Broadcaster Software and The OBS Superuser Guidebook, amongst others
also, https://streamgeeks.us/fix-audio-sync-issue-in-obs/

In your case, and for others reference, a common external switcher (be that HDMI, SDI, or other) accepts the incoming signal and based on selection sends along a single signal (in this case, i stead of an internal config to adjust output, looks like your switcher has separate physical outputs for A. selected signal, and B. multiview
The other approach is to send all video feeds to the streaming computer (OBS Studio) and let it switch between the feeds, which enables fades, Picture-inPicture, and more (which an advanced external switcher may have, cheaper ones usually don't). OBS can even act (with plugins) based on video in feed not being streamed (because it is processing all feeds simultaneously). The downside (cost) to OBS Studio PC processing all videos feeds is that the computer has to be powerful enough to process all of that video. And real-time video decoding, encoding, etc is computationally intensive, so resource constraint mgmt gets even more sophisticated (potentially).
- if ATEM switcher is physically beside OBS Studio PC, and person selecting camera is sitting at PC (vs using physical interface on switcher), I'd be inclined to have monitor attached to switcher (not PC) to display the multiview... this avoids the GPU, RAM, etc load on the OBS Studio PC to process that video, saving the resources on OBS Studio PC for other tasks.

In the setup I did, I used 2 monitors... the 2nd had the PTZ camera controls, the first being OBS Studio, Digital Usher (ie livestream feed monitoring in a browser session), and Service Bulletin (which we broadcast vs full screen video.. not useful on mobile devices, but with many watching at home on TVs, this works well). Yes, running OBS Studio, PTZ controls, and advancing the service bulletin, and acting as Digital Usher is a 'many balls in the air at once setup' but totally doable.
 
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