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Isbey
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

How do I stream through OBS?

I'm following the instructions from here https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9825342?hl=en&ref_topic=9825535

But the video that comes out is a blank screen with the webcam showing in the corner. You can't see the game at all. 

I'm thinking that I need to add a new source on OBS that shows the gameplay, but I can't figure out how to do that. Am I just supposed to use screen capture? That doesn't seem right because then what's the need for connecting my youtube account to my stadia account? I was thinking the video would go directly from stadia to youtube. Am I doing something wrong here?

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5 Replies
JohnZoidberg
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide

Hello @Isbey 

First, a significant caveat – I don't stream, and I am not familiar with OBS. But, I know a bit about how Stadia streaming works. The two sets of instructions on that page describe two different methods for streaming. The first option, streaming directly, doesn't need (or use) OBS, and doesn't support including a webcam picture-in-picture, etc. But, it does get a copy of the Stadia game video stream directly from the Stadia game server and uses that as the source of the YouTube game stream. So, in that case, you don't need to do a local capture, encode, and upload at all.

The second set of instructions describe using something like OBS to capture your local screen, and composite your webcam view into it, etc. followed by encoding and uploading that stream to YouTube – just like you would for non-Stadia game play. I believe the instructions for connecting your Stadia game session to the YouTube stream are to enable support for things like Stadia-specific features (like Crowd Choice or Crowd Play).

So, I would pick one of those two sets of approaches and stick with it.

Why not Zoidberg?
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Isbey
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

So from what you're saying, there's no way to get a direct feed of your game into OBS, you have to do screen capture? I'm confused why these options would be there if you can't get a direct feed. On those instructions under step 3 number 8, it says, "IF the game supports features like Crowd Choice or Crowd play, turn them on or off." But if the game doesn't support those features, you can skip step 3 altogether, right? 

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JohnZoidberg
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide

I'm afraid I can't provide more details, since I don't use the streaming feature myself. But, I believe the incoming stream gets decoded for local display only – I don't think there's any way for OBS to capture it in its encoded form. It would only be able to capture the screen contents to re-encode for upload. Even if it could capture the encoded version of the stream, it would have to decode it to composite your webcam PiP into it and then re-encode the result.

Why not Zoidberg?
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JamesFromGoogle
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi everyone,
Thanks @JohnZoidberg for your help on this post. It looks like we've been able to come to an understanding here so we'll go ahead and leave this topic open for another day or so in case there are any follow up questions or comments.

Thank you,
James

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JamesFromGoogle
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi again,
Going to close this topic now. Please feel free to create a new post if anything else comes up. We'd be more than happy to help.

Thank you,
James

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