OBS

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a free open-source software created for broadcasting and recording on your desktop. You can take advantage of this tool to stream high-quality video to your viewers in real-time using the Dolby.io Real-time Streaming service.

In this guide, we'll showcase a number of different ways to leverage Dolby.io and OBS to broadcast high-quality, low-delay streams:

See the official obsproject.com documentation for installation instructions and additional support.

WebRTC with OBS

WebRTC streams allow for low-latency high-quality broadcasts with can scale to global audiences with Dolby.io. At the moment, in order to use OBS with WebRTC, you must use a modified version that has been extended to interface with the Dolby.io Real-time Streaming servers. You can download the latest version from our repository HERE.

Once downloaded, go to the OBS settings panel and click to open it.

From the "Controls" menu click on the "Settings" button which will open the settings panel. From here, click on the "Stream" option. Then from the "Stream Type" dropdown, select "Millicast WebRTC Streaming Platform".

To stream, you require a Dolby.io token which provides you with a "Stream Name" and a "Publishing Token". To access this information, go to the Publish Tokens list in the Live Broadcast section of the Dolby.io dashboard and either create a new token or choose an existing one.

Open the management view by clicking the settings button from the items quick action menu. This will open the settings panel, within this panel click on the API tab.

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Learn more about the Dolby.io Dashboard
To learn more about the dashboard explore About the Dashboard.

Copy the Stream Name, and the Publishing Token and add them to the corresponding fields in OBS.

Click "OK" to accept the change. With the streaming credentials set up, you can check your mic and camera or share your screen and begin a broadcast.

To view and/or share your live broadcast, simply go to the Playback panel of your chosen token in the Dolby.io Dashboard and copy the "Hosted Player Path" link. You can share this path or paste it into a browser to view your own stream.

SRT with OBS

Streaming with the SRT protocol requires OBS Studio version 25.0 or newer. You can download the client here: https://obsproject.com/download.

Once you have downloaded OBS Studio you can get the required SRT details from the Dolby.io dashboard. To learn how to do this follow our Using Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) to publish to Dolby.io Real-time Streaming document.

To begin, first download and install OBS Studio on your PC or Mac. Then go to the OBS settings panel and click to open it.

From the "Controls" menu click on the Settings button which will open the Settings panel. Click on the "Stream" option. Then from the "Stream Type" dropdown, select "Custom".

Fill the Server input field with the SRT publish URL from the dashboard.

To access the SRT publish URL, go to the Publish Tokens list in the Live Broadcast section of the Dolby.io dashboard.

If you have not created a token for publishing yet, follow the instructions here.

Each token item has a quick action menu that gives you options for easy access.

To learn about the action menu in detail see Using the Quick Action Menu in the How to Broadcast page.

Open the management view by clicking the settings button from the items quick action menu. This will open the settings panel, within this panel click on the Publishing tab.

Copy the SRT publish URL from this page into the Server field of the OBS stream settings page.
Click "OK" to accept the change, check your mic and camera, then start your broadcast.

To playback your live broadcast, simply go to the same Manage Token panel and copy the "Hosted Player Path" link. You can share this path, or paste it in a browser to view your own stream.

RTMP with OBS

RTMP with OBS is already a standard feature in the original OBS studio version. You can download the client here: https://obsproject.com/download.

Note: Using the RTMP feature may add some additional latency to the output.

Once you have downloaded OBS Studio you can get the required RTMP paths from the Dolby.io dashboard. To learn how to do this follow our RTMP with Dolby.io Real-time Streaming document.

Broadcasting Surround Sound with OBS

Dolby.io streaming supports delivering up to 8 audio channels enabling surround sound. The audio channels can be surround sound channels or more general multichannel ones. Dolby.io in-browser viewer will support the playback of surround sounds.

Setup

To get started make sure you have OBS installed on your device. Once installed head to Settings then Audio. Select a channel different from Mono or Stereo in the Channels list in general. Click OK on the Warning pop-up and restart OBS.

Next switch to Output and select "Advanced" for Output Mode. Select the Audio tab and pick a large bitrate. By default, OBS-Studio selects 160 kbs for stereo. This is insufficient for surround sound. As a rule of thumb, 64 kbs multiplied by the number of channels should be an appropriate amount of bandwidth.

Interfacing with a DAW

Digital Audio Workstations or DAWs are used to manage media tracks as inputs for OBS studio. You need to download and install one and assign it as an input source for the audio on OBS.

Windows

SAR (requires having an ASIO driver, for instance, ASIO4ALL if you don't own an ASIO card). Reroute (from Reaper, with up to 256 channels) if using ASIO plugin
Voicemeeter (Excellent guide here by Jack0r for Voicemeeter Banana)
Virtual Audio Cable (requires v.4.50 or later).

MacOS

A few available options for MAC:

Ambisonics

If you have an Ambisonic it is also possible to publish spatial audio using the same setup. Here for the demo a Zoom H3-VR can be used. Set for Dolby.io OBS WebRTC is the same as 5.1 and with Zoom mic you will see for channels to capture and stream to your surround sound set up.

Properly set up for 4-channel ambisonics. This can be paired with a 360 camera.

Playback

Windows

Set up requires proper sound settings enabled on your speakers. The setup shown is on a Vizio 5.1.2 Atmos sound bar.

On your Windows make sure you are using Chrome browser for your viewer.

MAC

Surround sound playback should be enabled by default on your MAC. You can listen to the stream in-browser or via the Dolby.io Stream Monitor app can be installed for free on your iPad or AppleTV.