My OBS setup for recording screencasts

on February 21, 2018. in Software, Blablabla. A 2 minute read.

Last year I started recording my contributions to open source. I wasn’t really regular, so today I published only the 9th episode: OSS Contribution 9.

Anyway, now I’m at the point where I am happy with the overall quality of the recording, both with the video and the audio and I want to write down the current setup so that I can recreate it in the future if I need to.

I’m using a Sennheiser GSP 300 headset and the microphone that comes with it. A really great product, I love it.

PulseAudio is responsible for the audio in my Fedora system. In the “Input Devices” settings of PulseAudio, I have set the “loudness” of the microphone to 25% or -35.94dB. I got there after a lot of trial and error.

As for the recording software, I was first using Zoom, which is a video conferencing and screen sharing tool. Start a meeting with myself, share screen, record. Buuut… I was never really happy with the audio.

I tried out Open Broadcaster Software, or OBS, last week. Again, after a lot of trial and error, I think I have the perfect settings given the hardware that I’m using. I picked it up from Swizec, he’s using it for his live coding sessions I believe.

“Settings > Output”: Output mode: simple, video bitrate: 2500, encode: software (x264), audio bitrate: 160, recording quality: indistinguishable quality, recording format: mp4. “Settings > Audio”: Sample rate: 44.1khz, the rest is all default. “Settings > Video”: Base resolution: 1920x1080, output resolution 1920x1080, the rest is default.

The most improvement came from setting filters on the microphone — “Mic/Aux > gear icon > Filters”. The first filter I added is “Noise Suppression” with a value of -17. The second filter is “Noise Gate” with a “Close Threshold” of -44, “Open Threshold” of -42, “Attack Time” 25ms, “Hold Time” 200ms, and “Release Time” 150ms. These last three might be the defaults, I’m not sure. I did play around with them.

Now, I said I’m happy with the audio, but I know it can be much better. One, I need to speak louder, and two, if these screencast become a more regular thing then I’ll invest in a better microphone. Until then, this will do.

Happy hackin’!