Set up OBS

If you already stream your breaks through OBS, skip this and go straight to Add Breakcastr to OBS. This page is for everyone else: it gets you from nothing to a working portrait scene with your camera and microphone in it. Breakcastr goes in after that.

Take your time here. This is the only genuinely fiddly part of the whole setup, and you do it once.

Install OBS

OBS Studio is free and open source, on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Download it from obsproject.com  and install it like any other app.

The first time you open it, OBS offers an Auto-Configuration Wizard. You can run it or skip it. Either way you will set the important things by hand below, because a vertical break stream is not what its defaults assume.

Two words you need

Everything in OBS hangs off these, and the rest of our docs use them as given:

• A scene is one arrangement of things to show. Most breakers need exactly one.
• A source is one thing inside a scene: your camera, your microphone, an image, or a web page. Your Breakcastr overlay is a source.

Sources stack. Whatever sits highest in the Sources list draws on top of everything below it. That one fact explains most “my graphics disappeared” problems later.

Step 1: Set a portrait canvas

Your canvas is the shape of your whole stream, and everything else sits inside it. Breakcastr is built for vertical (9:16 portrait), which matches the platforms breakers sell on.

Do this before you add your camera, or you will have to reframe it afterwards.

1. Go to Settings → Video.
2. Set both Base (Canvas) Resolution and Output (Scaled) Resolution to 1080x1920.
3. Leave FPS at 30. Use 60 only on a strong connection.
4. Click Apply, then OK.

The preview area changes from a wide rectangle to a tall one. That is your stream.

Step 2: Add your camera

1. In the Sources box, click + and choose Video Capture Device.
2. Name it something like Camera, then click OK.
3. Pick your camera under Device and click OK.

On macOS the first time you do this, the system asks permission to use the camera. Allow it, and if the preview stays black, quit and reopen OBS.

Fit a wide camera into a tall canvas

Almost every webcam and phone shoots 16:9 wide, and your canvas is now 9:16 tall. So a camera dropped in as-is sits as a short strip across the middle with empty space above and below. You have two reasonable options:

• Fill the screen and crop the sides. Drag a corner handle (hold Shift to keep the shape) until the camera covers the full height, then drag it left or right so you are centred. You lose the edges of the frame, which is usually fine because you are in the middle of it.
• Keep the whole frame and use the space. Leave the camera as a band across the middle and let your overlay use the room above and below it. Plenty of breakers do this deliberately: it gives the fill board somewhere clean to live.

Right-click the source and choose Transform → Fit to screen at any point to start over.

Step 3: Add your microphone

OBS usually picks up a default microphone on its own. Check the Audio Mixer panel: talk, and you should see a bar move next to Mic/Aux.

If nothing moves, set it explicitly in Settings → Audio → Mic/Auxiliary Audio, or add a source: + → Audio Input Capture, then pick your microphone.

Aim for your speaking level to bounce in the yellow, and only touch red when you get excited. If you are consistently in the red, pull the slider down.

Step 4: Hear what your viewers hear

This one catches everybody. By default OBS sends audio to your stream but does not play it back to you, so your celebration sounds will be going out perfectly while you sit there convinced they are broken.

1. Set your headphones as the playback device in Settings → Audio → Monitoring Device.
2. Open the Audio Mixer, click the ⋮ menu on any source, and choose Advanced Audio Properties.
3. Find the Audio Monitoring column and set the sources you want to hear to Monitor and Output.

Leave your microphone on Monitor Off unless you like hearing yourself, which most people do not. The one you want to monitor is the Breakcastr overlay browser source you are about to add, so you can hear your effect sounds and judge their volume against your voice.

Come back to this after you add the overlay in the next guide. Its slider in the Audio Mixer is how you balance effect volume against your talking.

You are ready

You now have a portrait scene with your camera and your microphone in it, and no Breakcastr in it yet.

Next: Add Breakcastr to OBS adds the overlay and points OBS at the platform you sell on. It takes about two minutes.