OBS Studio – Record and Live Stream Videos from Linux Desktop

OBS Studio is a free and open source cross-platform app with which you can create video records of your desktop screen and also live stream directly.

You can use it to conveniently share your gaming, art, entertainment activities with Twitch.tv, YouTube, Hitbox.tv, DailyMotion, Connectcast.tv, CyberGame.tv, CashPlay.tv along with custom streaming servers free of charge!

It comes with many in-house features that allow you to produce professional videos e.g. Studio Mode lets you live preview and adjust your scenes and sources before making them available for public viewing; you can choose to set any combo of hotkeys to start/stop streams or recordings, switch between scenes, mute audio sources, e.t.c.

Features in OBS Studio

• FOSS – OBS Studio is a free and high-performance open source software with its source code available on GitHub.
• Support for several streaming platforms including Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Hitbox, e.t.c.
• Customization: Light and dark color themes.
• Quickly configure broadcasts and recordings with a streamlined settings panel.
• Real time video/audio recording and mixing.
• Switch seamlessly between unlimited scenes using custom transitions.
• Support for filters using image masks, chroma/color keying, color correction, e.t.c.
• Support for multiple user broadcast profiles.
• An intuitive audio mixer with per-source filters e.g. gain, noise gate, and noise cancellation.
• Support for VST plugins.

OBS Studio has an interface that is simple enough for a beginner to video recording and streaming to get up and running with. If you haven’t used it before I suggest you give it a try. You will probably fall in love with its efficiency, workflow, and extensibility.

Install OBS Studio in Ubuntu

For Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, FFmpeg is not included officially, so you need to install it using following specific PPA:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kirillshkrogalev/ffmpeg-next
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

For Ubuntu 15.04 and following versions, FFmpeg is officially included:

$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

After installing FFmpeg, install OBS Studio using:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install obs-studio

Install OBS Studio in Fedora

OBS Studio can be easily installed from RPM Fusion repository.

$ sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm 
$ sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
$ sudo dnf install obs-studio

For other Linux distributions, follow installation instructions at download page.

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What has been your experience with OBS Studio if you are familiar with it? Or perhaps you know of an efficient alternative? Feel free to drop your comments in the section below.