Using OBS to Stream Your Teams Meetings to Social Media

Open Broadcast Software (OBS) is a powerful recording and streaming platform that is widely used for streaming media across different channels. It is being used increasingly to live stream video games on social media. However, organizations are learning that they too can take advantage of the platform to their advantage. Educational institutions can engage with their students better while businesses can communicate more clearly with their employees and clients. Interestingly, OBS Studio can be integrated with other software to enhance its capabilities. Microsoft Teams, being one of the most widely used tools for communication and collaboration across organizations is one such platform that can work with OBS Studio. Let us look at the process involved in using OBS to Stream your Teams Meetings to social media.

Advantages of Combining OBS Studio with Teams

As an external encoder, OBS provides greater flexibility in capturing and customizing audio and video from multiple sources like camera, microphone, desktop screen capture, etc. Here are some of the added advantages of combining OBS with Teams.

• Perform audio/video mixing in real-time while live streaming.
• Use filters and audio mixers and other tools to deliver better output.
• Provides an additional space within a video for screen recording.
• Allows the flexibility of customizing videos to pause a live session and add some kind of multimedia.
• Allows screen sharing and displaying screen recording in live events.
• Customize videos with images, watermarks, and other elements.
• Reach a much broader audience on multiple social media sites without them having to install Teams on their local machines.

Prerequisites for Using OBS Studio with Microsoft Teams

Setting up OBS Studio for streaming Microsoft Teams content to different platforms is fairly simple. Below are the prerequisites

• OBS and OBS VirtualCam installed on a desktop, server, or a hosted solution like Apps4Rent Hosted OBS Desktop.
• A web camera.
• Microsoft Teams account.
• Social media site accounts.

How to Stream Microsoft Teams Meetings with OBS Studio

OBS Studio can be used to stream Microsoft Teams meetings to virtually any social media site. At a time when organizations are increasingly adopting work-from-home policies, this feature empowers corporations to communicate important events to their wider following on various social media channels. Here’s how Teams meetings can be broadcasted over social media channels.

• Click on the + icon in the sources panel on OBS and insert a window capture.
• Add an appropriate name to it. Microsoft Teams would be a good choice to indicate that the specific window will capture the contents on the Microsoft Teams application even after you tab out.
• Expand the dropdown for the Window option and select Teams.exe. Note that Microsoft Teams application should be running for the team.exe source to be present.
• Once you schedule a meeting or start one by clicking on the camcorder symbol, you start a meeting in Microsoft Teams that will be visible on the window you created in OBS.
• On this window, you can add customizations like logos, text, background colors, and other elements over the Teams meeting view. This final view is what users will see on social media channels.
• Navigate to the social media channel you need to broadcast on and copy the RTMP URL and stream key. On Facebook, for example, you can find these in the Live Stream section when you create a post and click on Live. On YouTube, you can find them in YouTube Studio once you create a stream.
• Once you have copied the RTMP URL and stream key, navigate to setting on the bottom-right of OBS.
• Click on the stream option and paste the RTMP server URL in the server bar and the stream key in the Stream Key bar and apply the changes and click on OK.
• Click on Start Streaming at the bottom right of the OBS application to transmit the feed to the social media application. Note that you have not yet gone live. Use this opportunity to check the strength of the connection, CPU consumption, and other settings.
• Navigate to the social media site to which you want to stream the Microsoft Teams meeting. Click on the go-live or its equivalent option on the social media site.

Interestingly, it is even possible to restream to several social media sites simultaneously.

Apps4Rent Can Help You Stream Meetings to Social Media

Apps4Rent is a tier 1 Microsoft CSP with deep expertise in implementing and customizing Microsoft solutions for clients across the globe. Microsoft Teams is available with the Microsoft 365 productivity suite that we can help you acquire and customize at promotional prices. We also offer a choice of OBS hosting plans to help you get started quickly with sufficient computing power and resources for high-quality streaming. Our experts provide 24/7 assistance via phone, chat, and email for hosting services and Microsoft solutions. Contact us today for assistance on using OBS to stream your Teams Meetings to social media.