Online calls audio and video recording in OBS

This guide is about recording a video call between you and an online guest (for example, an interview or presentation) and saving it in a single video file with individual audio tracks of you and the online guest for further editing.

The following items are required for this setup:

- Laptop or desktop Mac/PC

- A webcam (external or the one of the laptop)

- OBS Open Broadcast Software (free and opensource recording software)

- A pair of headphones (Bluetooth or via cable doesn't matter)

- A microphone (either integrated into the Bluetooth headphones, external, or the one of the computer itself)

The primary tool used is OBS, and this guide will mainly focus on setting it up. OBS is very flexible and can be set up to record video and audio into a single file for further editing.

The general connections are shown in the schema below, summarising the setup. Later, the detailed setup is explained. In a concise description:

- The webcam is selected both OBS, and in the calling software (Teams, Meet, Skype, etc.)

- The microphone is also selected in the OBS and the calling software. In OBS, it is set to be recorded on the audio track number 1.

- In OBS, the screen is captured as a video, and the audio (desktop audio) on the audio track number 2.

- The desktop audio is listened to through headphones and not the computer speakers, so the microphone won't pick up both the guest's and your audio from the speakers, keeping the audio tracks separated.

Create a new scene with those Sources:

- Video Capture Device: select the Mac/PC integrated webcam

- Screen Capture: the laptop/PC screen video recording, if available, tick the "Hide OBS from capture." This will record the online guest video (whatever online call software you use)

- Audio Input Capture: select the microphone you use as the audio input for track 1. You can set it as mono track.

For the Audio Mixer, click the gear icon to open the Advanced Audio Properties panel and set the microphone as track 1 (your audio) and the Screen Capture (desktop audio) as track 2 (the online guest audio).

You can open the settings from the Control panel > Settings and set up the recording parameter as shown in the images and captions.

A special note goes to the video size. To capture both the video of your webcam and the guest (via the screen capture) in one video file, double the height of your video.

A FullHD video has a resolution of 1920px horizontally and 1080px vertically.

If you double the vertical pixel height (1080px becomes 2160px), you can fit both video feeds (webcam and screen capture) in a video with a resolution of 1920x2160px, placed on the top part of the video and the other one on the bottom part:

It's a small hacking that works!

Once ready, start the call with the online guest as usual, and on the Controls panel in OBS, press "Start recording."

It'd be best to do a quick recording test with a colleague before the call and play it back to check that everything is good.

The audio track number 2 won't be played back with a generic video player. You can test it if you import the video file into a video editing software like Davinci Resolve (free to use the non-Studio version) or Adobe Premiere Pro; place the video clip on the timeline, the audio track 2 will appear, and you can listen to that as well.

Import the video using your preferred video editing software like Davinci Resolve (free to use the non-Studio version), Adobe Premiere Pro, or any other, and create a new timeline/sequence. You will need a timeline with two audio tracks and two video tracks:

- Audio tracks: the video file audio track 1 will be on the first one, and audio track 2 will be on the second one.

- Video tracks: according to the video aspect ratio that you need (vertical for socials or horizontal for a website or YouTube), duplicate the video track on the two tracks and move, scale, and mask them as you need.

Export your video once you are done with the video and audio editing.