Question / Help Source is on a client pc in my home network

[danewatson]

Greetings - I am relatively new to OBS, I only do Recordings, not Streaming. I have just setup a mini network with my main (server) pc and a laptop (client), my server has OBS but I have some programs that I want to capture as Display Capture on my client laptop - is that possible?
I am using Windows 10 Home.

Regards,
Dane Watson

 

[koala]

Just install and run OBS on your laptop. For recording, you don't need any "Server". With recording, OBS is saving files to the local hard disk. In a postprocessing step, with any video editor, you can cut and include stuff you recorded on your laptop with the stuff you recorded on your main PC.

 

[danewatson]

Thank you for your reply. I apologize that I was not clear in my post, let me update my situation.
I have installed a second copy of OBS on my networked laptop for the main purpose of relieving the load on my main PC where I run my games and other related apps.
I also have some other apps on my laptop as well.
I want to be able to record my games and other apps that are on my main PC as well as the other apps on my networked laptop. I want to record using OBS from my laptop.

 

[koala]

To capture stuff from your main PC, you need to run OBS on your main PC. It's possible to relay captured data from your main PC to your laptop with the NDI plugin: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-ndi-newtek-ndi™-integration-into-obs-studio.528/
In this case you need OBS on your main PC (for capturing and sending) as well as on your laptop (for receiving, compositing and encoding).

But keep in mind this relaying isn't guaranteed to relieve your PC from load. The load might even increase, depending on what your main PC is capable of. For example, if it has a Nvidia GPU, your minimal system load would be to not send anything with NDI but to encode directly with the Nvenc (new) encoder. It's also possible your laptop isn't powerful enough to encode your video properly.

 

[danewatson]

Thank you again. I have now installed and setup NDI with OBS on both computers.
Everything is working very well, my next step is the very important one to see what sort of load it has on my main PC.

 

[danewatson]

To capture stuff from your main PC, you need to run OBS on your main PC. It's possible to relay captured data from your main PC to your laptop with the NDI plugin: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-ndi-newtek-ndi™-integration-into-obs-studio.528/
In this case you need OBS on your main PC (for capturing and sending) as well as on your laptop (for receiving, compositing and encoding).

But keep in mind this relaying isn't guaranteed to relieve your PC from load. The load might even increase, depending on what your main PC is capable of. For example, if it has a Nvidia GPU, your minimal system load would be to not send anything with NDI but to encode directly with the Nvenc (new) encoder. It's also possible your laptop isn't powerful enough to encode your video properly.

So I did go ahead and do a test and all seemed very good except there was some declining in FPS to the point where I was not happy with the results.
What I would really like to accomplish and am having a very difficult time figuring out how to setup my two PCs is to be able to RECORD my OBS from the Client Laptop - see my attached present and preferred layout - hope this is possible.

 

[koala]

You need OBS to actually perform the capture, so there is no way around installing OBS on every PC you want to capture from.

The alternative is to buy a capture device, install it on the laptop, and capture the hdmi signal from the gaming PC. This way you neither need OBS nor NDI on the gaming PC. Capture card in the streaming PC is the classic 2 PC scenario for streaming, also used for streaming consoles for example, since you cannot install OBS on a console.

 

[danewatson]

Thank you for your input and help.