Listen this isn’t a revolutionary topic, and honestly if this blog is about advanced creator education. Then why is something so simple being the topic of this week’s episode?

Well simply because of how fundamental this concept is, and the lack of awareness by so many creators of all levels.

Setting Up Your Recording

This really is regardless of the tool you use, but I would assume something like OBS would be even easier. Although Meld Studio and Ecamm probably still give you pretty decent configurability.

It does play out a bit different with Riverside or other Podcast Recording tools, which I get into a bit in the video. Although its more how you export from the tool itself in that case!

There seems to be THREE options for how you record your sources separately. Mind you this is for ONE orientation, and not necessarily helping as much for the other (horizontal vs vertical).

  1. You can orient your scene as a double wide 1080p canvas. Meaning two 1080 screens side by side into one recording file.
  2. Use the plugin source record (which I could never get to work, let alone get it off my pc so I don’t suggest it).
  3. Open up a second OBS instance, or a second recording tool, to record while you do your main recording/streaming in the first tool.

All three have their caveats, setup, and methodology of how you can USE the file afterwards. If you do the double wide you only have one file, so might be easier to manipulate, but you have split the recordings in the editor.

If you do the other two methods, then you’ll have TWO* (+/- however many sources you are recording) files that you would then have to merge for your output file. Whether that is vertical or horizontal.

In any case you have the POWER to choose how the final output looks, and you can change things how you like.

Setting Up Your Streaming

This is an important aspect that Streamers will obviously think about when they set up OBS, but a lot of people set and forget it.

Then later they realize oh I need to make clips from my stream, but the only recording is the VOD on Twitch or YouTube (be careful cause Twitch deletes your stuff after 7/30/60 days depending on your partner/non-partner status).

The problem is now that their VOD is the only file, the facecam is now only 360x180 resolution in the corner of their 1080p stream. Meaning their face is blurry, and if you try to stretch it out for a TikTok clip it will look garbage.

Thus the best action at that point is to ignore the facecam, and simply focus on the gameplay for the clip. However that loses the appeal of having a face, and a lot of viewers want that.

The solution is to change how you are recording during your stream. Set up a second instance where you have your facecam separately, or depending on your stream scene setup change how it outputs.

The same situation from the recording section above applies, but it gets more complicated as you also need a SCENE for streaming that includes your facecam. Thus the final result is a facecam footage, gameplay footage, and presumably a combined footage from the stream. Now you don’t need to keep the latter, as you can always get it from the aforementioned streaming site’s VOD if needed (and if it is still around). However it may be useful in other cases too. Perhaps if you just want to cut a 10min segment from the stream, without having to readd the facecam.

Most of the videos that talk about how to record your facecam and gameplay separate are 2-5 years old. I’ll make a tutorial video if enough people request it, but really you can find videos already of the methods I mentioned earlier.

What you really need to figure out right now is which method will work best for you and your computer specs.

Feel free to let me know if you have an alternative method that we haven’t thought of yet!!

What is the point?

The point is that you need to think of your recording as two separate parts, the video of YOU, and the video of your shared screen. Or in the case of an interview, one of you, and one of your guest.

Each video needs to have at least a 1080p resolution, so that you can properly repurpose it, and even just frame it well in a combined canvas.

When you make an interview for example, if you use zoom, then it just records you in a tiny window with a super small resolution. If you use a proper recording tool, then you can have each person have their own 1080p canvas frame.

Then if you put each video side by side, you can not only fill the screen visually, but also each person will look a lot more crisp.

Even for gameplay it is the same way, you can have your facecam look so much more crisp by having the gameplay be high quality, and then you overlay your facecam. 1080p then squish it down in editing to where you want the facecam to be. It might be the same size but it will look 10x better, as it is starting from a higher resolution. Or you can use the separate facecam file for repurposing. Such as if you are doing a vertical canvas for shorts, then you can change the positioning of both screens into the new orientation.