SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion returns from a short sabbatical and introduces OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), describing it as a TV studio for your computer. Although he avoided OBS for years due to its complexity, he explains that it has become much easier to use and is now widely adopted by professional and independent livestreamers.
Motivated by plans to launch a new livestream and video channel, Tom researched what top streamers use and found that OBS—free for Mac and PC and supported by major platforms like YouTube and X—is the most common solution. After following YouTube tutorials, he was able to set it up efficiently.
Tom explains how OBS works through profiles, each tailored to a specific type of show. Profiles can include:
• Live streaming to YouTube
• High-quality audio and video sources
• Guest layouts
• Overlays such as countdown timers, “be right back” screens, and show-ending notices
• Reaction videos with shared screen content and picture-in-picture video
• Comment and Super Chat integration
He emphasizes the value of using two monitors to manage reaction videos and live content smoothly. OBS allows him to operate everything solo—switching scenes, playing videos, managing audio, and engaging with viewers—without hiring a production team.
Tom also mentions future plans to integrate OBS with StreamYard for multi-platform streaming, though he notes that adds complexity.
He concludes by recommending OBS as a powerful, professional, and cost-free tool that is now accessible to “mere mortals,” encourages listeners to explore his school and mentor programs, and signs off for the next episode.

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Episode 1061 - OBS
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1061 of Screw the Commute podcast, and I've taken a little bit of a sabbatical. We had a boiler, you know, go kaput up in a cold area in the north in my childhood home. So I had to go up there and fix that. But back in the saddle again here heading towards the holidays. And we're going to talk about OBS today. So it's kind of like a TV studio for your computer. And I avoided it for years. But I'll tell you why I'm going back to it now. I hope you didn't miss episodes 1055 to 1060. That was your beautiful AI primer. If you're getting buried with AI programs and you don't know what to do or which way to turn, I gave you a primer on how to find a bunch of them super cheap. I mean, we're talking like pennies every time you wanted to do some fantastic graphic for you or video, uh, that kind of thing. And I showed you which programs are are good and the pros and cons of them and all that. So that was episodes 1055 to 1060. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. Okay. Let's see. Pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Make sure you get version 3.0. That's the latest. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of internet and digital marketing.

[00:02:09] And check out my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV. That's the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because its quality distance learning and you get a scholarship to that school if you happen to be in my mentor program.

[00:02:29] All right. Here we go. Let's talk about OBS. Now, OBS, like I said, it's like a TV studio for your computer where you can control a lot of things and look very professional. But I avoided it for years. It's been around for, I don't know how many years, but I avoided it because it was so complicated. And you had to be a super nerd geek to just install it and get it to run that. I just avoided it, you know, for years and years and years. And then I started, I'm getting ready to roll out a live stream and a new video channel this coming year, and I thought, I'll go to to ChatGPT and ask, what are the some of the major streamers using to control their streams? And I watch a lot of these people and say, oh, that's nice. The way they pop the comments on the screen and the way they do reaction videos and discuss things and bring on guests and all that stuff. And many of them don't have a producer like Megyn Kelly does or the other big people that do this kind of stuff.

[00:03:45] So I started looking into it and they said, and I said, hey, I used to look at OBS, but it was too complicated. Has it improved? And the ChatGPT came back and said, oh man, it's so easy now. And this is what virtually all the streamers are doing, most of them anyway. Not all because you can even go to fancier, bigger, more expensive software than this. And well, it doesn't take much to be more expensive because guess what? It's free. Obs is free for Mac and PC. It's one of those project kind of things, but it's supported by YouTube and X and all the major players and a bunch of other places. I see so so it's now usable by a mere human. Now, that doesn't mean you don't have to study a little bit. And I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, and the one guy just led me through the setup for exactly what I wanted to do. So kind of the way it works is that you build a profile for a type of show that you want to do, and you can have multiple profiles. So I'll tell you what I'm trying to do and I'll tell you about the profile for it. But then if I want to do a different type of show, I can make a different profile. And in all the thing is set up for that. Once you set it up once, then you can just pick which kind of show you want to do that day.

[00:05:17] All right. So for instance, for me, my plan is, is I want to live stream to YouTube. Okay. Now you can live stream to multiple places if you add another thing to it like a streamyard, which is what I use to to stream to multiple places. But that's not what we're talking about right now. We can get into another video for that, but I want to live stream to YouTube. I want my audio to come through. These are all little elements that you set up in your profile. And then when I want to get on and do a live stream to YouTube, I hit the profile for okay, live stream to YouTube. And all these elements are in the program where I can just click on them and go and do all kinds of cool stuff. Okay, so by myself, by the way, because I don't really hire a lot of people, especially, uh, nowadays, especially with all this power that you can do with yourself with no extra expenses. All right. So anyway, I want to live stream to YouTube. So you have to do you have to sign up with YouTube and then you connect that to your OBS. Then I want my audio to come through beautifully, which I have this great Sm7 B microphone going through a rodecaster duo. But you can plug a USB microphone right into your computer and get pretty good audio, but I want the audio to be in that profile from me.

[00:06:54] Then I want to be able to have a guest on if I want to on this particular profile. So I put that element in so that OBS will will We'll show myself and a guest on the screen. Then I want some nice backgrounds and they're called overlays in OBS, for instance, uh, before my show starts, I'm going to have a countdown timer that says, uh, the show's starting in five minutes and then it counts down until it's time to show. That's called an overlay. So that can be playing until I get ready to go live. And then one of the things I want to do is reaction videos. And so that means I need an element that shows another screen of videos, either YouTube or Vimeo or something off my desktop. And so I put that in the profile that I want to be able to do that, but I'm not going to be doing it 100% of the time. So all I have to do when I'm ready to do that in the middle of my live stream is just click on okay. You could call it reaction video or I call it monitor two. Now it does. It is helpful to have two monitors. And I have been preaching that for 150 years. Your life will change when you change from one monitor to two monitors. And you could go down to a pawn shop and get a crappy $15 monitor and your life will still change for the better.

[00:08:36] So I got a second monitor. So I just called that monitor two and that means hey, it's going to show this other reaction video, but it's also going to have me much smaller. So you still see me while you see the video that I'm talking about. And you can hear the next element is to be able to hear that video that I'm playing on the other monitor, and you can hear me also. So that means I can talk and I can pause it and, you know, discuss it, or I can make comments while it's playing, you know. So I could say, oh that's crap right there. Look at that. You know, so that all comes through on the final stream. And then also, you know, a lot of live streams depend on comments and, and super chats where people give you money. And so yes, I want that money, but, uh, I think that I'm going to, uh, make my super chats, you know, a certain percentage of it, I don't know, 80 or 90% will go to scholarships for disabled people, and the rest of it will go just for the cost of running this whole deal. So that's the profile for me doing a show like that, a live stream show. But let's say I'm not doing a reaction video where where I don't need that whole video operation to be in the profile, so I might make another profile.

[00:10:10] That's just me. My microphone, my video. Another thing you do is you have a video capture device, you put it in, and I just use my webcam, but you could use the built in webcam on your computer. Or if you have a fancy camera, you could use it and just pick which one you want to use. Or you can have multiple cameras too, if you want different angles to be shot during the thing, and you can easily switch between them. But anyway, let's say my next profile is I just have several guests on. We're going to have a discussion and we're not showing any videos. And so I click that one and then a profile comes up and it has placeholders for my guests and looks pretty. And it has the overlays. And uh, and there's more than one overlay just for like the show starting overlay can be uh, the background of your, your video. And it could be, let's say I'm doing a really long live stream and I got to go to the bathroom. I got an overlay that'll say, be right back. Then you got another one. Is, uh, shows ending in five minutes. I mean, you you can have any kind of overlays you want in there. So that's obs, and like I said, I, uh, I avoided it for many, many years because it was great, but it was just far too complicated. So now I'm going to be using it to operate like like I said, it's like a TV studio to operate and go back and forth to all these elements by myself for free.

[00:11:44] The whole program is for free right now. Uh, I will do another video one of these days on StreamYard, which is I can connect OBS to StreamYard and then have my stream going to multiple places at once. And then I have to get another little kind of plug in to be able to get the comments from all the other streams in one place, because the last thing you want to do is stream somewhere and people are were commenting and then you never answer them, say or acknowledge them. so that's more complicated. But just to get started, OBS is doable by mere mortals. You just have to watch some YouTube videos. And like I said, this one guy, he had a 90 minute video. And I just sat there and did exactly what he told me. And then my thing is set up, you know? So. So that was beautiful. Didn't cost me nothing. All right. So that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Check out my school. It'll save you hundreds of thousands of dollars and give you, give you or your loved one a highly in-demand skill in as little as six months. We've actually had people making money long before they graduate. So check it out at IMTCVA.org And I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.