Nothing works

[Matthew Pollock]

I have set up OBS on Windows 10, and use Firefox. I am trying to use OBS for the simplest kind of recording. Several times I have got it to work, for instance with Zoom, but other times, with very little different, it fails completely. I have tried blocking Avast, as this was raised as a possible problem. Sometimes one source works, sometimes another, but it is very rare that they all work, and I have rarely got zoom recording to work. The unreliability is pretty worrying, given that I am not changing much, and that learning something requires a certain amount of experimentation.

Unfortunately very few people around here - a fairly media-savvy city, full of web specialists - seem to know how to use OBS. Even people who work professionally in broadcasting have no idea what to do. I can't find anyone who teaches it. The standard web tutorials seem a little lacking in "user experience" instinct, confining themselves to the "Hey guys, what's up" approach and simply recite the standard setup specifications, which doesn't anticipate problems or solve them when they occur - not helpful.

Grumbling is clearly not the way to get myself helped, but I'm just trying to be honest. I have spent a lot of time on this system and have become very frustrated that what seems a tremendously promising system doesn't work for me.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

First - real-time video compositing is computationally demanding.
So whether using OBS Studio, or any similar solution, you MUST be attentive to your hardware resource utilization (and most don't, so things seem random, when they aren't)

Yes, as free, open-source software, there is a decent learning curve. And not the most thorough, up-to-date documentation. ... a common trade-off for free.

OBS Studio is very flexible, and in such can work fine with lower settings (resource demands) on older gear, to settings that can bring a new US$10K workstation to its knees. The onus is on the user to understand their settings selections and their impact. And beware YouTubers who post how to get something to work, without explaining/detailing the hardware and settings required to make that work. And Operating System optimizations. etc. If you have an older, or under-powered, thermally throttled system (ex laptop, especially if ultra-low power CPU (U models)), then you may be simply asking your computer to do more than it is capable. Or are you out of RAM, disk I/O, etc?

IF you want others to take a look at your OBS Studio settings, you could follow the instructions in the pinned post in this forum (link in my .sig) regarding asking for help with a problem.
And depending on what you are doing, sometimes DRM (digital rights mgmt) intentionally is getting in the way.

 

[koala]

Look into the knowledgebase for quickstart guides and more help. And don't ignore the sticky threads here in the support forum.

Knowledge Base | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.

obsproject.com

 

[qhobbes]

Does Zoom work in a Browser source? If it does, I'm wondering if that would be more efficient than an external browser/app capture as the video would be directly rendered in OBS.