OBS Scenes, Sources and Audio: Build a Clean Stream Layout
OBS Studio gives you a lot of control, and most of it comes down to two ideas: scenes and sources. Once these click, building a layout and fixing audio becomes straightforward. This guide covers the essentials without assuming prior experience.
Scenes and sources
A source is one thing OBS can show or capture: your camera, a game, a window, an image, text, a browser overlay. A scene is a saved arrangement of sources. You switch between scenes while live, the way a TV director cuts between camera setups.
Common sources:
- Video Capture Device — your webcam or a capture card.
- Game Capture — captures a specific game efficiently.
- Window Capture and Display Capture — capture an application window or an entire screen.
- Image and Text — logos, borders, social handles, schedule text.
- Browser — web-based overlays such as alerts or a chat box.
- Audio Input Capture and Audio Output Capture — microphone and system sound.
A starter set of scenes
| Scene | Contains | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Starting soon | Background image, title text, optional countdown | Five minutes before you begin, so viewers arriving early see something intentional |
| Main | Game or screen capture plus a small camera box | The core of the show |
| Camera only | Full-screen camera | Talking, Q&A, reacting |
| Be right back | Background and a message | Breaks, so viewers know you are coming back |
| Ending | Thanks, schedule, where to find you | The last minute of the show |
Keep it simple at first. Three well-made scenes serve better than ten messy ones.
Laying out a scene
- Resize a source by dragging its corners while holding Shift to avoid distorting it, or use Alt to crop.
- Place the camera where it does not cover important game information such as the map or health display.
- Keep text large enough to read on a phone screen.
- Right-click a source and use Lock once it is placed, so you do not nudge it by accident.
Audio basics
The Audio Mixer panel shows a meter for each audio source. As a rule of thumb, aim for speech peaking in the upper green to lower yellow range, and avoid the red, which means distortion.
- Balance voice against game sound. Your voice should be clearly louder than background music or game audio. Lower the game slider until you can be understood without effort.
- Add filters to the microphone. Right-click the mic → Filters. Useful ones: Noise Suppression to reduce steady background hiss or fan noise, Noise Gate to silence the mic between sentences, Compressor to even out loud and quiet speech, and Limiter to catch sudden peaks.
- Monitor correctly. Listen through headphones with monitoring set to Monitor Only for sources you want to hear but not send twice.
- Use separate tracks when you record. If you also record the stream, putting music on its own track lets you remove it from the saved recording later. See music and copyright on live streams.
Test before you go live
- Record a one-minute clip and listen back to it through speakers and through a phone.
- Check that your voice is clear, game audio is not overpowering, and no notification sounds leak through.
- Switch through every scene once to confirm each source still appears.
With your scenes ready, connect OBS to your destinations using the OBS multistream setup guide.