Question / Help "Test, test, test!" How exactly?

RiDDiCK51PB

New Member
As the wiki so perfectly sums it up:

Test, test, test! Now it's time to start testing! Are the settings working? Is the stream running smooth? Are all your Scenes configured how you want them? It's strongly recommended that you test everything as best as you can before starting your first live stream. This can help work out any kinks or performance issues you might be having ahead of time, and save the embarrassment of any issues on the stream itself.​


Now, my question is: How do I "mirror" my "streaming experience" so that I can see just exactly what it is that I am streaming to twitch.tv/youtube gaming? Certainly this functionality is provided in OBS Studio and I just don't know where to look.
 

Osiris

Active Member
Preview window, Record with same settings as streaming, use a test channel, in case of Twitch use their inspector.
So plenty of ways...
 

RiDDiCK51PB

New Member
Thank you for checking in. I can't seem to find "Preview window" in OBS Studio. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.
 

RytoEX

Forum Admin
Forum Moderator
Developer
There is currently no built-in test function in OBS. To try to test your streaming environment, you can run a "test" stream with Twitch by adding "?bandwidthtest" or "?bandwidthtest=true" to the end of your stream key string. After that, you can start a stream from OBS Studio which will allow you to see your streaming bitrate in your Twitch Dashboard or in Twitch Inspector, and you can preview what the stream would look like in the OBS Studio preview. Do all the usual things you would do while streaming to ensure a reliable recreation/test of your bandwidth usage. You can review the stream quality (in terms of bitrate stability) in Twitch Inspector afterward. Use this to iron out connection issues. However, you currently are not able to see the stream output on Twitch using this method.

As @Osiris and @Isegrim said, you can record locally to see how the video would likely be output to stream. This will allow you to check that colors and framerate are as you expect them, and you can check the resulting audio levels. As of OBS Studio 18.0.0 on Windows, you can also monitor your audio levels live within OBS Studio.

As @Osiris said, you can also use a test channel. You can also include "testing settings" in your stream title and just not advertise that you're going live, if you're comfortable with that - I've seen plenty of partnered streamers do this.
 

Unimatrix36

Member
I set up the stream settings and then I do a recording to the hard drive with those settings to check video quality and audio volume.
 
Top