Live Streaming your Golf Sim using OBS

OBS is a great piece of software if you want to run live stream or record your golf simulator action but I want to start off and clarify a common misconception in regards for using it for slow-motion replays.

If you have no intent on streaming your simulator or recording what’s happening on the screen and you just want slow-motion replays then jump over to my guide for using Kinovea for automatic slow-motion replays.

If you want to setup up a live stream or make videos from your indoor golf simulator then read on, OBS is great.

What is OBS?

OBS is a free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. It has a ton of uses and there are hundreds of Youtube videos explaining how to use it for different things. For the sake of this guide, we’ll be focusing on the instant replays and the live streaming.

It works on Mac, PC, and Linux and can be downloaded from OBSproject.com.

Step 1. Download and Install OBS

Using the link above, go ahead and get OBS up and running. It is as straight-forward as installing any other application.

Step 2. Install the Instant Replay Plugin

OBS uses plugins to add more functionality. The Instant Replay plugin is free and you can get it from GitHub here.

Download and install the OBS-replay-source plugin.

Installation is easy, on PC, just extract the two files into the OBS plugin folders. I’m using the 64-bit version so my default location is C:\Program Files (x86)\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit

There are also a ton of plugins available on the OBS forum.

Step 3. Setting up OBS

Setting up OBS is a multi-step process. It’s not hard but it will be unique to your setup (number of cameras, mic, etc) so the setup we are using will be using as an example is two high-speed cameras, a mic and a projector streaming GSPro.

In OBS you’ll need to create a scene. A scene is a configuration that will hold all of your settings. You can create multiple scenes for whatever you’re trying to do. We’ll go over that as well.

When setting up OBS for the first time, it will ask you how you plan on using OBS. I don’t know exactly what it changes but I always use the first option ‘Optimize for streaming, recording is secondary’

To create a scene in OBS

A. By default, OBS will come with a blank scene pre-made for you called “Scene”. You can use this one or create a new one. You create a new one by clicking on the plus button and naming it whatever you want. I labeled mine “Full Golf Stream”

Adding your cameras to OBS

B. Next you’ll move over one box to the right to the “Sources” section. This is where you’ll add all your devices that you want to show up in the stream. We’ll start by adding the first camera.

B-1. Click on the plus button

B-2. from the list, select “Video Capture Device”

Create new and name it appropriately

A screen will pop up for you to select your camera. I’m writing this on my laptop currently so I only have one camera in the list.

Set the preset to “High” and click OK

You should now see your camera in the sources list. You can toggle it on or off with the 👁️ icon or lock the settings with the 🔓 icon.

Repeat this process to get all of your cams into your source list, it should look something like this:

Setting up Instant Replay.

I wasn’t aware of this at first but OBS instant replay isn’t as good for doing swing analysis as Kinovea. If you’re interested in that, I have a full guide to setting up Kinovea for instant-replay.

I love having OBS instant-replay in my live stream though and here’s how you set that up.

Just like above where you added your cams, click the + and click on “Replay Source”

1. Name is something like DTL-slow
2. On the next screen, select the camera you added above. For me its [down-the-linve]

3. Check “Capture Internal Frames”
4. Audio Source select your mic. * If you don’t have a mic visible, add one the same way you did the cameras above but select “Audio Capture”
5. Set duration to 3500ms (which equals 3.5s of video for the replay). Adjust this up or down depending on how long you want your replay clips.
6. Set the Load Delay to 1000ms
7. Set the Speed Percentage to whatever you like, for me 30-35% works well

So far your settings should look like this

8. Select “Sound Trigger Load Replay”
9. Set the Threshold db to -25. This may vary depending on your setup, in the summer when I have a fan going in the garage, I need to up this to -50
10. Click “Load replay” and then click “OK”.

Repeat this step for each camera you have added which you want a slow-mo video from.

So now you have 2-4 windows in your OBS stream. Some might overlay on top of others so you’ll need to rearrange and resize the windows to fit.

In the image below you can see the top 2 images are my live stream and the bottom image is the one slow-mo I set up. If I were to start my live stream, this is what the viewers would see.

Adding GSPro Live View

If you’ve ever seen a TXG video on YouTube, this is probably how they record the ball flight after swings.

Similar to setting up cameras, mics, and replays, you’ll go back to the “Sources” box, click the + and select the display you want to capture. On my laptop, it says “Mac OS Screen Capture” but on my simulator at home it says the projector name “Optima Something”

After you get that added and your windows resized, it will look something like this and this is what my viewers would see.

Set up Streaming

I’m not going to take a deep dive into streaming setup but it is as easy as selecting your service and connecting your account in the stream settings