How do I stream using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio?

OBS is an excellent open source (free) encoder that can be used to stream with our Wowza Streaming Service. OBS can be downloaded from the OBS website and supports Windows, Mac and Linux.

When you run the OBS application, it looks something like this:

To get OBS to connect to your streaming, you'll need to click the Settings button in the lower right hand corner and then choose the Stream tab on the left side of the pop-up Settings window. Change the Service value to Custom..., and use your streaming configuration details to configured the remainder of the values. The end result should look something like this:

Your streaming welcome email provides instructions for retrieving the values you'll need to plug into the above fields. You'll log into our streaming control panel to obtain the information. The streaming control panel will display the information on the streaming overview page in a box labeled "Live stream to service", and the data will look similar to this:

Server URL: rtmp://s2.streamcp.com:1935/8000
Stream Key: 8000
Username: 8000
Password: [censored]

You can see in the screenshot above that this information is entered in OBS in the exact same order. Make sure you choose "Custom Streaming Server" as the Stream Type at the very top, and then copy and paste the rest of the information into the fields below in exactly the same order, noting that Stream Key will mask the pasted value but it should be set to the value from the control panel.

Once you've configured the settings on the Stream tab, select the Output tab and change the Output Mode field at the very top from Simple to Advanced and then set the Keyframe Interval to 2. This is important to keep your streaming running smoothly. The below image shows the Output tab with the settings as they should be. Additionally, depending on the maximum bitrate of your streaming plan, set the Bitrate value appropriately as well.

This is the bare minimum needed to get OBS connected and streaming. Of course this only covers the streaming side--you'll still need to have your video sources configured and displaying on the main windows in order to get the audio/video content streaming.