OBS Studio for Engineers — The Complete Guide: Free Recording of Tutorials and Technical Talks
OBS Studio is open-source software for screen recording and live streaming. It combines several sources in one frame — screen, application window, webcam, microphone and images — and records in high quality, with no watermark and no time limit.
OBS Studio
OBS Project
Screen recording and streaming — software tutorials, model walkthroughs and recorded lectures in high quality.
Get it from the vendorEngineering uses
- Software tutorials — recording how to use a design or calculation program for the team, a client or students.
- Model walkthroughs — a tour of a 3D model or of simulation results, with voice explanation.
- Lectures — slides next to the webcam window, for recording or streaming.
- Bug reports — recording a software problem to show support exactly what happened.
Getting started
The first-run wizard picks sensible settings for your computer. Add a “scene” and, inside it, “sources”: screen or window capture, webcam and microphone. For normal recording choose MP4 or MKV (which can be remuxed to MP4 inside the program). Use the graphics card's hardware encoder so recording does not slow down your design software.
Related tools
For a quick screenshot or a short recording of a screen region — ShareX. To edit images before putting them in a presentation — GIMP. For renderings and animations of models — Blender.
ShareX
ShareX team
Screenshots and screen recording for Windows — annotate with arrows and labels, and extract text with OCR.
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GIMP
GIMP team
Advanced image editing — site photos, perspective correction, marking defects and preparing images for reports.
Get it from the vendor
Blender
Blender Foundation
Full 3D suite — modelling, visualisation and presentation-quality rendering, with Python scripting.
Get it from the vendor
LibreOffice
The Document Foundation
A full office suite — documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, compatible with Office files.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
OBS Studio is the most professional free tool for screen recording, and it suits any engineer who explains, teaches or presents work.