Raspberry Pi 4 - OBS Studio

Raspberry Pi 4: Chronicling the Desktop Experience – OBS Studio – Week 20

Last Updated on August 20, 2020

This is a weekly blog about the Raspberry Pi 4 (“RPI4”), the latest product in the popular Raspberry Pi range of computers.

To date, this blog has focused on software that’s available in the Raspbian repositories. As this mirrors Debian stable, I’ve often grumbled that most of the packages lag behind software’s latest releases. Sometimes the software present in the Raspbian repositories is so old it’s unusable, putting the RPI4 in a bad light and giving a totally false impression of the capabilities of the tiny device.

In many instances it’s worth compiling software for yourself. At least that way you can use the latest version, even if compiling is not always straightforward.

In the field of open source video recording, my preferred application is OBS Studio. It’s definitely a wondrous class cross-platform application that’s proficient for both video recording and live streaming. Open source at its very finest.

In week 13 of my blog, I lamented that OBS Studio is not present in the Raspbian repositories. A reader has directed me to a forum post which details how to get OBS Studio up-and running on the RPI4.

First, I’ll walk through the steps you need to follow to get OBS Studio installed and ready to use.

Next page: Page 2 – Installation

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – Installation
Page 3 – In Operation
Page 4 – Summary


Read all my blog posts about the RPI4.

Raspberry Pi 4 Blog
Week 36Manage your personal collections on the RPI4
Week 35Survey of terminal emulators
Week 34Search the desktop with the latest version of Recoll
Week 33Personal Information Managers on the RPI4
Week 32Keep a diary with the RPI4
Week 31Process complex mathematical functions, plot 2D and 3D graphs with calculators
Week 30Internet radio on this tiny computer. A detailed survey of open source software
Week 29Professionally manage your photo collection with digiKam
Week 28Typeset beautifully with LyX
Week 27Software that teaches young people how to learn basic computing skills and beyond
Week 26Firefox revisited - Raspbian now offers a real alternative to Chromium
Week 25Turn the Raspberry Pi 4 into a low power writing machine
Week 24Keep the kids learning and having fun
Week 23Lots of choices to view images
Week 22Listening to podcasts on the RPI4
Week 21File management on the RPI4
Week 20Open Broadcaster Software (OBS Studio) on the RPI4
Week 19Keep up-to-date with these news aggregators
Week 18Web Browsers Again: Firefox
Week 17Retro gaming on the RPI4
Week 16Screen capturing with the RPI4
Week 15Emulate the Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and the Atari ST on the RPI4
Week 14Choose the right model of the RPI4 for your desktop needs
Week 13Using the RPI4 as a screencaster
Week 12Have fun reading comics on the RPI4 with YACReader, MComix, and more
Week 11Turn the RPI4 into a complete home theater
Week 10Watching locally stored video with VLC, OMXPlayer, and others
Week 9PDF viewing on the RPI4
Week 8Access the RPI4 remotely running GUI apps
Week 7e-book tools are put under the microscope
Week 6The office suite is the archetypal business software. LibreOffice is tested
Week 5Managing your email box with the RPI4
Week 4Web surfing on the RPI4 looking at Chromium, Vivaldi, Firefox, and Midori
Week 3Video streaming with Chromium & omxplayerGUI as well as streamlink
Week 2A survey of open source music players on the RPI4 including Tauon Music Box
Week 1An introduction to the world of the RPI4 looking at musikcube and PiPackages

This blog is written on the RPI4.

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Terry Boulder
Terry Boulder
4 years ago

I’m really enjoying this series. It seems that OBS Studio is out of RPI4’s capabilities. At least until the GPU is used.

I’d like to see coverage of productivity apps on the RPI4 – things like Evernote clients covered. Any plans?

atelierelealbe
atelierelealbe
4 years ago

Looks like obs is using software encoder although rpi4 can do fullhd HARDWARE encoding. Too bad.

Trent Calder
Trent Calder
4 years ago
Reply to  atelierelealbe

You’re just repeating what Luke says in his Summary — “The RPI4 has a VideoCore VI GPU, but this isn’t being used by OBS Studio. Direct encoder support would offer much better performance.”

John Sawyer
John Sawyer
4 years ago
Reply to  Trent Calder

Some things are worth repeating

Robnoordt
Robnoordt
2 years ago

Problems installing OBS-studio on pi4
CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.16/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:146 (message):
Could NOT find Wayland (missing: WAYLAND_LIBRARIES WAYLAND_INCLUDE_DIRS)
Call Stack (most recent call first):
/usr/share/cmake-3.16/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:393 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE)
cmake/Modules/FindWayland.cmake:76 (find_package_handle_standard_args)
libobs-opengl/CMakeLists.txt:55 (find_package)

— Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also “/home/pi/Downloads/obs-studio/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log”.
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi/Downloads/obs-studio/build# make -j4
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi/Downloads/obs-studio/build#
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi/Downloads/obs-studio/build#