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Sorry to spoil the party, but my experience with OBS for creating a webinar video was not good. OBS is powerful, but it lacks decent defaults. Creating a simple

by amai 4y ago

Sorry to spoil the party, but my experience with OBS for creating a webinar video was not good. OBS is powerful, but it lacks decent defaults. Creating a simple overlay of my webcam in circular form over the presentation was not possible. But even a rectangular side-by-side of my webcam next to the presentation didn't look good ( the position was always wrong by a few pixels) because you have to position everything manually. It would be very nice if one could position things by selecting say top left corner, center, bottom right corner and also simply select shapes for the video view. For doing webinars I'm now using the functionality built into Apple Keynote, which is great and simple to use: https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/add-live-video-tan6a7b90433/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/add-live-video-tan6a... Also - in opposition to OBS - Keynote will not use 100% of my CPU to render the live presentation.

Daunk 4y ago
You can absolutely have your webcam take a circular form. Just apply a mask to your webcam as a filter and use any image you want to make it take that shape.
- amai 4y ago
  But you have to first create a such a mask with some image software: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Filters-Guide#image-maskblend https://obsproject.com/wiki/Filters-Guide#image-maskblend This costs a lot of time and generates questions, for example what resolution should my mask image be? OBS doesn't offer even the simplest default shapes like a circle. This is annoying and makes OBS not suited for beginners and simple tasks.
  - corobo 4y ago
    Does it really? I mean you can download one that someone else has already made or you could whip one up in 20 seconds in whatever design app you use - draw a black circle on a white background and you're done. Add some feathering to the circle if you want to get fancy. Not to assume you know how to use masks of course, but this information is readily available when googling something like "webcam circle obs" Resolution wise I just match the input rather than think about it. If my webcam is 1080p, so is my mask. I would like if you could natively round elements for sure, dunno when I'd use personally it but it could be useful. There are plugins to do this for you out there too but learning masks and other filters is a super useful skill if you're getting into video Additionally regarding positioning of things from the top level comment I'm pretty sure there's a positioning menu when you right click that lets you chuck things to the top/bottom/right/left etc
    - amai 4y ago
      > Does it really? I mean you can download one that someone else has already made or you could whip one up in 20 seconds in whatever design app you use - draw a black circle on a white background and you're done. Add some feathering to the circle if you want to get fancy. In Keynote I can change the radius of the circle in realtime. That is a lot faster than even your optimistic 20 seconds. I also don't need to care about the resolution of the camera. I can even add effects in realtime like borders, a fancy mirror effect below the camera view etc. I can try out effects in realtime. This is simply much more user friendly than creating image masks manually in an external program. > but learning masks and other filters is a super useful skill if you're getting into video But some people don't want to get into video, they just want to create a webinar with an overlay of the speaker. > I'm pretty sure there's a positioning menu when you right click that lets you chuck things to the top/bottom/right/left I'm pretty sure there is no such thing. Positioning things in OBS is a mess, because everything is based on pixels. Even if you manage to create a template, if you change the resolution of your canvas, you cannot reuse the template, because it doesn't fit to the new resolution. https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/sources-keep-moving-resizing-centering-after-closing-after-updates-and-occasionally-at-random.139669/post-512878 https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/sources-keep-moving-res...
      - corobo 4y ago
        > But some people don't want to get into video, fair > I'm pretty sure there is no such thing. Positioning things in OBS is a mess Huh. Could have sworn there was. There's center horiz/vert but no corners. Maybe I'm thinking of Streamlabs' version of OBS or something.
411111111111111 4y ago
Spoken like a true apple user. Judgemental about missing features despite not actually taking the time to get to know the software. It's literally just a right click on the input to apply a filter. OBS has issues, feature discoverability being one of them... But the way you've phrased the critique is borderline flamebait
- Akronymus 4y ago
  I am of the opinion that the defaults importance is WAY underrated.
- amai 4y ago
  I worked several weeks with OBS. I also evaluated a lot of different software. E.g. Powerpoint offers also live video, but it allows only to show your webcam in one corner next to your presentation without any customization. A lot of other software on the market wants you to upload your video to some cloud first, before you can do anything. I'm sorry to say that, but Apple Keynote hit the sweet spot between customizability, usability and price ( it's free on Apple ) for my purposes. If that sounds like flame bait for you, then be it. Others might be thankful for a different point of view.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    > I'm sorry to say that, but Apple Keynote hit the sweet spot between customizability, usability and price ( it's free on Apple ) for my purposes. If that sounds like flame bait for you, then be it. You're misunderstanding the point. It's great that you're happy with keynote. It's likely a great choice for what you want to do. > I worked several weeks with OBS And yet you say it can't overlay a round camera cutout over the screen, which is just wrong.
    - amai 4y ago
      > And yet you say it can't overlay a round camera cutout over the screen, which is just wrong. How do you change the radius of the circle in realtime? You can do that in Keynote, but you can't in OBS, because that would mean uploading a new mask image for every new radius. Also if you switch to another camera resolution you have to recreate your mask, because your new camera has a new resolution. So technically you can overlay a round cutout, but from a users point of view this feature is not very usable. Keynote allows to do the same much, much simpler.

by amai 4y ago

Daunk 4y ago

You can absolutely have your webcam take a circular form. Just apply a mask to your webcam as a filter and use any image you want to make it take that shape.

amai 4y ago
But you have to first create a such a mask with some image software: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Filters-Guide#image-maskblend https://obsproject.com/wiki/Filters-Guide#image-maskblend This costs a lot of time and generates questions, for example what resolution should my mask image be? OBS doesn't offer even the simplest default shapes like a circle. This is annoying and makes OBS not suited for beginners and simple tasks.
- corobo 4y ago
  Does it really? I mean you can download one that someone else has already made or you could whip one up in 20 seconds in whatever design app you use - draw a black circle on a white background and you're done. Add some feathering to the circle if you want to get fancy. Not to assume you know how to use masks of course, but this information is readily available when googling something like "webcam circle obs" Resolution wise I just match the input rather than think about it. If my webcam is 1080p, so is my mask. I would like if you could natively round elements for sure, dunno when I'd use personally it but it could be useful. There are plugins to do this for you out there too but learning masks and other filters is a super useful skill if you're getting into video Additionally regarding positioning of things from the top level comment I'm pretty sure there's a positioning menu when you right click that lets you chuck things to the top/bottom/right/left etc
  - amai 4y ago
    > Does it really? I mean you can download one that someone else has already made or you could whip one up in 20 seconds in whatever design app you use - draw a black circle on a white background and you're done. Add some feathering to the circle if you want to get fancy. In Keynote I can change the radius of the circle in realtime. That is a lot faster than even your optimistic 20 seconds. I also don't need to care about the resolution of the camera. I can even add effects in realtime like borders, a fancy mirror effect below the camera view etc. I can try out effects in realtime. This is simply much more user friendly than creating image masks manually in an external program. > but learning masks and other filters is a super useful skill if you're getting into video But some people don't want to get into video, they just want to create a webinar with an overlay of the speaker. > I'm pretty sure there's a positioning menu when you right click that lets you chuck things to the top/bottom/right/left I'm pretty sure there is no such thing. Positioning things in OBS is a mess, because everything is based on pixels. Even if you manage to create a template, if you change the resolution of your canvas, you cannot reuse the template, because it doesn't fit to the new resolution. https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/sources-keep-moving-resizing-centering-after-closing-after-updates-and-occasionally-at-random.139669/post-512878 https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/sources-keep-moving-res...
    - corobo 4y ago
      > But some people don't want to get into video, fair > I'm pretty sure there is no such thing. Positioning things in OBS is a mess Huh. Could have sworn there was. There's center horiz/vert but no corners. Maybe I'm thinking of Streamlabs' version of OBS or something.

411111111111111 4y ago

Spoken like a true apple user. Judgemental about missing features despite not actually taking the time to get to know the software. It's literally just a right click on the input to apply a filter. OBS has issues, feature discoverability being one of them... But the way you've phrased the critique is borderline flamebait

Akronymus 4y ago
I am of the opinion that the defaults importance is WAY underrated.
amai 4y ago
I worked several weeks with OBS. I also evaluated a lot of different software. E.g. Powerpoint offers also live video, but it allows only to show your webcam in one corner next to your presentation without any customization. A lot of other software on the market wants you to upload your video to some cloud first, before you can do anything. I'm sorry to say that, but Apple Keynote hit the sweet spot between customizability, usability and price ( it's free on Apple ) for my purposes. If that sounds like flame bait for you, then be it. Others might be thankful for a different point of view.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  > I'm sorry to say that, but Apple Keynote hit the sweet spot between customizability, usability and price ( it's free on Apple ) for my purposes. If that sounds like flame bait for you, then be it. You're misunderstanding the point. It's great that you're happy with keynote. It's likely a great choice for what you want to do. > I worked several weeks with OBS And yet you say it can't overlay a round camera cutout over the screen, which is just wrong.
  - amai 4y ago
    > And yet you say it can't overlay a round camera cutout over the screen, which is just wrong. How do you change the radius of the circle in realtime? You can do that in Keynote, but you can't in OBS, because that would mean uploading a new mask image for every new radius. Also if you switch to another camera resolution you have to recreate your mask, because your new camera has a new resolution. So technically you can overlay a round cutout, but from a users point of view this feature is not very usable. Keynote allows to do the same much, much simpler.