Skip to main content

Black Friday Sale!

Get 50% OFF
Sources & Filters

How to use OBS Screen Capture

OBS Studio is a powerful video streaming and recording tool that offers lots of amazing features for any PC user. One of them is the Screen Capture option. You can record everything that’s going on on your screen and the result to make professional tutorials, guides, and presentations. Let’s learn how to use the OBS Screen Capture feature.

  1. Download the latest stable version of OBS Studio from the official website and install the software.
  2. Let the Auto-Configuration Wizard optimize the software’s settings based on your hardware.
  3. By default, OBS creates one scene for you to work with right away. You can see it in the bottom left box called Scenes. You can rename it or create a new one if you like.
  4. The next step is to add a source for OBS to know what to capture. Click the + button in the Sources dock to the right of the Scenes box and select Display Capture. You can rename the source if you are planning on recording several displays.
  5. Now you can select a display you want to capture and choose whether you want the cursor to be visible on the recording.
  6. OBS is capturing your device’s default audio, so you don’t have to worry about the sound, but you can always change the audio device in the OBS settings or add an audio device as a source to any scene where it’s needed. You can either mute the audio in the Audio Mixer or adjust the volume.
  7. Last but not least, you should adjust your recording settings. Go to Settings on the bottom right and select the Output tab. We suggest changing the following options: Recording Quality: High Quality, Medium File Size; Recording Format: MKV or FLV; Encoder: Hardware (if you have a beefy GPU — otherwise, select Software).
  8. You can also change the Recording Path if you want to save your files elsewhere.
  9. And that’s basically it. You can hit the Start Recording button to start capturing your screen in OBS.