With a second input your phone becomes a second camera: OBS sends the gameplay to input 1, an SRT app on the phone sends to input 2, and you change between the two on the desk in the browser.

This is switching between two full-screen pictures, not picture-in-picture. A facecam that sits small in the game picture is still something you build in OBS. And with the picture the sound changes too: while the phone is on air, game sound and microphone from OBS are not heard.

What it is worth it for

  • A look at your setup, the keyboard or your hands on the controller.
  • A break in which you get up from the desk and take the phone along.
  • A moment between two rounds in which you talk to the viewers directly, in full picture size instead of in the small window.
  • Showing something in front of the camera that would be too small in the facecam's frame.

Setting it up

  1. Set two inputs. Set at least two inputs on the “Eingänge” (inputs) tab before you start the studio. In a running studio the number cannot be changed.
  2. Have OBS send to input 1. In OBS, enter the address of input 1 as the streaming destination. It has the form srt://<host>:<port>?streamid=<id>. With that, OBS no longer sends straight to Twitch but to your studio. The studio passes the program on to your destinations.
  3. Have the phone send to input 2. Install an app that sends SRT, for example Moblin on the iPhone, IRL Pro on Android or Larix Broadcaster on both. Enter the address of input 2. Some apps want host, port and stream ID in separate fields. With Moblin you scan the QR code next to the input instead, see Connecting Moblin with a QR code.
  4. Check the settings. Both sources send H.264 or H.265 with AAC sound and a keyframe every 2 seconds. See The right encoder settings.
  5. Open the desk. Put the desk in a browser tab on a second screen or open it on a tablet. You see two scenes with picture and level.
  6. Go on air. The gameplay is in the program, the phone on preview.

The addresses normally stay the same for every stream. You do the setup once.

Switching

With the phone on preview, “Take” is enough to change to the camera, and a second “Take” to return to the game. Both inputs keep running in the background; the cut takes effect at once. It is a hard cut. Fades do not exist yet.

If you do not want to reach for the mouse in the middle of the game, put the change on a key. The studio speaks the OBS WebSocket protocol, which is why Stream Deck plugins for OBS, Bitfocus Companion and apps such as OBS Blade work. The connection details are on the “Remote Control” page.

The sound changes with it

In the studio, what is heard is always the sound of the input that is in the program, plus the overlay's sound. The inputs are not mixed. If you cut to the phone, your viewers hear the phone's microphone. The game sound and your microphone from OBS are gone during that time.

That has consequences for the way you use the phone camera:

  • Use it for a deliberate camera moment. A change to the phone is a change of the whole scene, not an additional angle on top of the running game.
  • Speak into the phone while it is on air. Your headset microphone is connected to OBS and is not heard then. Hold the phone close enough or connect a microphone to it.
  • Match the volume. Set the fader of input 2 so that your voice from the phone is about as loud as in OBS. It is best to do that while the phone is on preview.
  • If the phone is only to deliver a picture, switch input 2 to “Stumm” (mute). Then only the overlay is heard during this scene.

What stays in OBS

Everything that is to lie in the game picture you go on building in OBS: the small facecam in the corner, frames, texts, image sources. The studio does not put sources side by side or inside each other. It switches between whole inputs and lays one overlay page over the picture.

You can include your alerts in one of two places, but not in both:

  • as a browser source in OBS. Then they are only visible while the gameplay is in the program.
  • as the overlay in the studio. Then they lie over every scene, the phone camera included.

The delay

The gameplay now runs through the studio instead of straight to the platform. The studio adds less than one second, plus the SRT latency of the link. Compared with the seconds the platform itself adds for the viewers, that is little. More on that in How much delay does the studio add?.

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