obs

Ubuntu Live Streaming to Twitch.tv!

September 3, 2014 in Gaming, Linux, Ubuntu

Good news for Linux users, the popular application for live streaming on Windows “Open Broadcasting Software” commonly known as OBS has been rewritten and now supports Linux. Ubuntu Live Streaming is now a thing with OBS.

First off, you will need a more up to date ffmpeg, found at the very common ppa:jon-severinsson/ffmpeg PPA.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:jon-severinsson/ffmpeg
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Then you will need the PPA provided by the OBS developer for almost daily updates:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:btbn/obs-studio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install obs-studio

You will now have OBS installed.  Newest builds should have an Application Icon added for you, so find it under Audio/Video.

If your new to using this app – a quick run down of the terminology:

• Scene: Configuration of multiple video/image sources to be output. You can have multiple scenes, such as 1 for left monitor, 1 for right monitor, 1 for ONLY a game, 1 for only a webcam, etc. You can switch between these while streaming to change what you are broadcasting.
• Sources: Actual video and imagery sources. You add sources to a Scene such as your entire desktop or a single app, or your webcam, or a static image.

Play around with sources, each one should be obvious as to what it does, and build you a setup. When you add a source, you can resize and move it around the screen.

One issue I am having is that it does not work for my Webcam. Webcam works fine for other apps, so this has to be an issue with OBS, and another user also reports the problem.

To put my webcam into my stream, I opened up the Cheese application, then added a new Source that targets only that window, and crops off window parts and other non camera feed parts. I did have to invert Red/Blue.

Since its targeting a window and not the full desktop, you can safely minimize it and it works fine.

Now to stream to Twitch, you need to simply go to settings, go to the Streaming section, and put in your Stream key and select which server is closest to you.

Oh and one final detail (hopefully it hasn’t gotten you yet) The app likes to crash a lot when changing settings, so be sure to close the app after making a few changes to make it save them incase it crashes. I haven’t had any mid-stream crash issues though.

Good luck!