The desk shows two pictures. Program (“Programm”) is what is on air right now. Preview (“Vorschau”) is what you are preparing next. With Take you swap the two; with “Schneiden” (cut) you bring a scene straight into the program.
A scene is an input. If you have three inputs, you have three scenes.
The two sides
Program and preview each have a picture, a sound and level meters. So you see before the change whether the next camera delivers a picture and whether its sound arrives.
The picture in the browser is a control picture with few pictures per second. It shows you what is on which side, not the quality of the stream. Your viewers see the program smoothly and in full resolution.
Two switches help with checking:
- “Mithören” (listen in) lets you hear the sound of one of the two sides in the browser.
- “Flüssige Vorschau” (smooth preview) shows more pictures per second.
Changing with preview and Take
This is the safe way, because you see the scene before it goes on air.
- Click the scene that is to come next. It is on preview now.
- Check picture and level. If you want to hear the sound, switch on “Mithören” for the preview.
- Click Take at the right moment. Preview and program swap places.
After the take, the scene that was on air a moment ago is on preview. A second take brings it back. For a conversation between two cameras this one button is therefore enough.
Cutting directly
“Schneiden” brings a scene into the program without the detour through the preview. That is right when it has to be fast, for example when the camera on air has just dropped out. You do not see the scene on preview first then. A glance at whether the input has a signal at all is worth it all the same.
The sound follows the cut
What is heard is always the sound of the input that is in the program, plus the sound of your overlay. If you change the scene, the sound changes with it. The inputs are not mixed together.
The transition in the sound is a very short cross-fade, so that the cut does not click. More on that in Mixing sound: volume, mute and mono.
What a cut is and what it is not
- The change is a hard cut. Fades and other transitions do not exist yet; they are planned.
- The cut takes effect at once. All inputs keep running in the background, on air or not. So nothing has to start up first when you change.
- Your overlay lies over the program, whichever camera is there. Only the fallback scene is shown alone, without the overlay.
- The studio does not cut between your cameras by itself. If a camera drops out, you change to another source by hand. By itself it only switches to the fallback scene, if you have set one up and switched on “Automatisch umschalten” (switch automatically); a cut by hand always takes precedence there. See What happens when a camera drops out and Switching to “be right back” automatically.
Making settings on preview
The preview is also the right place to change something on an input. The picture-sound offset, for example, causes a short jump on this input with every change. If the input is on preview, nobody notices.
A remote control instead of the mouse
The desk runs in the browser, on the phone too. If you prefer pressing keys, connect a device or an app that speaks the OBS WebSocket protocol, for example Bitfocus Companion or a Stream Deck plugin for OBS. Scenes can be changed with that. The connection details are on the “Remote Control” page.
In short
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Click a scene | The scene is on preview. |
| Take | Preview and program swap. |
| “Schneiden” (cut) | The scene goes straight into the program. |
| “Mithören” (listen in) | You hear one of the two sides in the browser. |
| “Flüssige Vorschau” (smooth preview) | More pictures per second in the control picture. |