OBS Studio is a Windows software for capturing the video signal from your monitor and streaming it online or recording to a file on the hard drive.

Usage instructions

The main window contains a preview section and several toolbars for adjusting stream properties. Users can create and save custom window layouts. It is possible to select any webcam, video file or image as a broadcasting source. Moreover, there are separate volume sliders for the speakers and the microphone.

Scene transitions are customizable. Available options include fading, swiping and sliding visual effects. You are able to choose the duration of the transition.

Recording

Like in NVIDIA Broadcast, an option to simultaneously stream and capture the video source is provided. Users can configure output quality settings such as the framerate, resulting resolution and the downscale filter type. Audio sample rate and channel configuration are adjustable as well.

There are keyboard shortcuts for starting and stopping the recording process. You are able to change the default target directory.

Features

free to download and use;
provides professional instruments for organizing online broadcasts;
there is a wide variety of flexible streaming parameters;
you can record display output to a video file;
it is possible to adjust the resulting resolution, frame rate and sound channel configuration;
compatible with modern versions of Windows.