When I first started using OBS Studio, I was tremendously puzzled about its use of Scenes, Collections and Profiles. It all makes sense if you know what these mean, which I guess eventually you’ll find out – but I wish someone had explained this philosophy to me instead.
Let me help you with that in this article.
Continue reading About OBS Scenes, Collections and ProfilesI genuinely like what OBS has to offer – especially the new OBS 23. In fact I like it so much that I’ve decided to support Jim and his the entire project through their Patreon Campaign.
Today I’ve “refreshed” my Windows system, which is the system that I use OBS on primarily, and after every good Windows refresh comes that time when you have to restore your machine to a working condition. So the question arose, where did OBS save all my scenes, collections and profiles?
Thankfully, Windows is clever enough to make a backup of the old Windows folder, deep down in which those settings reside (it’s called Windows.old in case you’re in the same predicament). Even if you’re not in this situation, let’s take a look at where those settings are hiding so we can all make a backup and sleep a little easier at night.
On Windows 10, you’ll find the OBS settings in %appdata%\obs-studio. At least that’s what several forum posts tell us. To the likes of you and me however, that might not mean all that much.
You see, %appdata% is a Windows system variable that contains a path to application related data. Depending which drive Windows is installed on, and what user name you have, its contents varies.
Let’s say my user name is “versluis”, and Windows is installed on the C: drive. This means that the full path to to the OBS data location would be C:\Users\versluis\AppData\Roaming\obs-studio
You can back up the entire folder, or replace the contents of your current folder with that of a backup to bring back all your profiles, collections and scenes.
On macOS we’ll have to dig into the current user’s Library folder to find the same setup as above. The full path is ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio/
Much like in the above example, the Tilde symbol means “your current home folder” (macOS has two Library folders, one for each user, and one for the system). Again, if my user name was “versluis”, then the full path to the OBS Settings would be /Users/versluis/Library/Application Support/obs-studio
I haven’t OBS on Linux, but I believe the setup is similar to the Mac.
In this episode I’ll show you how to create an artificial depth of field effect in Photoshop, using the Blur Gallery. This can be useful for cutting down on render time, or to apply to images that have been taken with small fixed focus cameras (like the GoPro).
This technique is similar in style to this new “portrait mode” on iOS devices. The Blur Gallery has a lot to offer, I’m only scratching the surface by demonstrating both the Tilt/Shift and Iris Blur filters.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 20:13 — 18.5MB)
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I like the way my PlayStation 4 adds a soft round cutout mask to the PlayStation Camera Feed when streaming gameplay. I wondered how I could best recreate this effect in OBS Studio for a consistent experience, no matter which device I decide to stream from.
Here’s how I did it, with a little help from Photoshop – feel free to use the resulting asset without any need for further fiddling.
Continue reading Creating a round cutout mask for OBS Studio
In this episode I’ll show you how to create a moving Zoom Effect in Photoshop, using the Radial Blur Filter. I’ll also explain the use of Smart Objects and how to blend the original image with the blurred version using a Layer Mask.
I’ve used this effect to create the thumbnail for my Vertigo Shot animation here: https://youtu.be/M-UevHx5CsQ
Podcast: Download (Duration: 10:41 — 9.8MB)
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I recently had a clip in which the audio was only present on a single channel. Trying to edit that in iMovie proved impossible, because iMovie doesn’t have a way to deal with single tracks of audio. So I thought, I’m sure Premiere can do that.
The question was… how? It had occurred to me that I’ve never needed this feature in over 20 years of working with it.
I hunted around for less than one minute and found it – I thought I’d better write it down before I forget it again.
The trick to solve this puzzle was to open the Audio Effects palette and drag either Fill Left or Fill Right onto the audio track in question. This will double either channel onto the other one, ignoring whichever one is being filled in.
In my case, I had audio only on the left channel, and by my definition, I wanted my (empty) right channel to be filled with whatever was on the left channel.
Premiere does – of course – do the exact opposite: Fill Left will TAKE the left channel and FILL IN the right channel. And vice versa. Lucky for us there are only two of these options (at least in my version of Premiere Pro from 2011), so if Fill Left doesn’t do what you expect… try Fill Right 🤔
Anyway, another mystery solved!
Even my ageing version of Premiere Pro CS 5.5 has multi-camera editing capabilities built in. And even my ageing Mac Mini from 2012 can cope with full HD clips during those edits.
It’s a slightly mysterious process, and until very recently I didn’t quite know how to do it, but with my desire to do multi-camera interviews with inspirational people, it’s something wanted to research. This workflow is also helpful if you have a single camera feed and want to switch live (vision mixer style) to zoomed-in versions of the same.
Now I know how to do it (works fine in present versions of Premiere Pro too). Before I forget this concept again, I thought I’d better write it down and share it with you (and my future me).
In short, we need to
Jonathan Lang explains it here:
Continue reading Multi Camera Editing in Premiere Pro CS 5.5
In this episode I’ll show you how to use the SVG file with curve information and turn it into an extruded logo using Blender. I’ll setup the scene and ground plane, get the camera ready and turn the default light into a strong side light. This will serve as a starting point to creating our logo.
This is part 2 of a mini series about how to create a logo from a screen grab in Blender. You can watch the whole series on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPcx_LSSGfZcC3_xaHyio5zs31Y5VyWpZ
Podcast: Download (Duration: 14:14 — 13.0MB)
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The other day I wanted to convert a logo into a path, so that I could use it as a shape in Blender. It was in fact the WordPress logo that was provided as a PNG or PDF from the WordPress Branding section.
The trouble was, both the PNG and the PDF are rasterised, and as such cannot easily be used for an extrusion in 3D as an SVG file would. The question then was, how do I convert an image into an SVG in Photoshop, so that I could import it into Blender?
It took a bit of fiddling, but here’s how I did it.
SVG files can actually contain three types of data:
What I needed in Blender was indeed a Vector Path. Although the other two data types can be contained in an SVG file, Blender can only read path information at the time of writing. It makes sense too, because really I’d like to the path information available as a curve in Blender, not the potential raster or font information.
I’m mentioning this here because
Thanks to cegaton on Blender Stackexchange for this explanation!
Hence, for Photoshop to export vector data instead of raster data in our SVG file, we need to jump through a few hoops – but it is possible. Let’s see how!
Continue reading How to turn a Raster Image into a vectorised SVG in Photoshop
Podcast: Download (Duration: 19:57 — 18.3MB)
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I made some new lower-third captions for my YouTube channel in Premiere the other day. I had a vision for some animations, and rather than spend several hundred dollars on pre-made snazzy clips, I thought I’d take on the task myself.
For those to be usable on top of other video footage in my screen casting software (Camtasia Studio 3), I needed the animations to be rendered out with an Alpha Channel. That way a mask is automatically created, letting other programmes crop out everything around the titles.
Since I never had to do that before, I asked myself: How do we render a clip with an alpha channel in Premiere?
After careful research, combined with some tireless trial and error, I found the solution to this puzzle – and here’s how to do it.
Continue reading How to render media with Alpha Channel in Premiere Pro