OBS for Toastmasters – Part I

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Photo By Samuel Pereira from Unsplash

OBS is a famous video streaming software, open source and free. It can be used on many occasions. Today I am going to introduce how to use it for Toastmasters Club.

This is the first article of series to introduce OBS, following topics will be covered in this article.

  1. Prerequisites
  2. Install OBS
  3. Video with Green screen setup
  4. Add virtual background
  5. Use it in Zoom

Prerequisites

  1. To fully use the power of OBS, you need a green screen (Buy from Amazon, Shopee, Taobao) or simply paint your wall to green color.
  2. A pc/laptop, camera (built-in or separately). OS: Windows/Mac/Linux.

Install OBS

Open https://obsproject.com in browser, download installation file according to your OS.

After installation and open it, skip the first setup about streaming as we will not use it.

The OBS Windows

Video with Green screen setup

Click Plus icon under Source, then choose Video Capture Devices, then click OK.

Under Device, choose your camera. Then click OK.

Right click new created Video Capture Devices, choose Filters.

Under Effect Filters, click Plus icon and choose Chrome Key. Keep Key Colour Type as Green or Blue if you use blue screen.

Under Effect Filters, click Plus icon and choose Crop/Pad. You can crop your video here.

When you choose the camera windows, you can drag the red border to enlarge/shrink it and pan it.

For advanced user, you can set up more than one camera and shot different objects.

Add virtual background

There are a lot of virtual backgrounds we can choose in OBS. The most useful ones for TM are Image and Window Capture. For example, we can add TM background, or timer background and even video, slides.

This is example of choosing CCKTMC background.

This is example of choosing Chrome browser window which is playing CCKTMC birthday.

You can crop it and pan using Effect Filters just like we did for camera.

If your camera is covered by background, use mouse drag and adjust sequence like this.

Use it in Zoom

After all video setting finished, click Start Virtual Camera button. It will install a device in your PC/Mac if it is used for first time.

Open Zoom, set Virtual Backgrounds to None.

Choose your camera to OBS Virtual Camera, then your camera will look like this.

Next

I will talk about Audio setup next time. With audio setup in OBS, we can add Noise Suppression/Compressor for audio and enable recording.

PS. If you are interested in Toastmasters Club, please visit our club website. Chua Chu Kang Toastermasters Club

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