Setting up OBS for screen sharing presentations and webinars

The video below looks at how to overlay presentations with a mask so that it wraps up various media into a single cohesive presentation that you can screen share. The positioning of the speaker’s webcam in virtual presentations has never been quite satisfactory. In Zoom, you disappear altogether, while in Teams you are relegated to a little blob at the bottom of the screen. There is often value in having a larger speaker view; to impart the human gestures accompanying presentation or for particular teaching moments where you might want to share some detail on camera. David Read told me 10 years ago about the importance of seeing the person on screen and I think we have all learned the hard way in the last year about how important this is!

I’ve been playing around with options for a while learning how to do this and share a video below how to achieve this.

Ingredients:

  1. I am using OBS – free software that takes various inputs and collates them into an output of your choice
  2. My method involves using a second monitor. It is possible but much more awkward to do it on a single monitor. The display is set up to “Extend” so that the second monitor content is independent of the first. I am working with a laptop and have a monitor as my second screen. (Post video Addendum – it is possible to project to a “Windowed Projector” at 10 min in the video which cold be used as a share application in a single screen set up)
  3. A “mask” that wraps around all the bits. You’ll see my mask below has two holes – one for webcam and one for PowerPoint. But this can be more or less intricate as you like. The mask dimensions should be the size of your “Display” screen, and should be a .png file so that it retains the transparency of the holes. I made mine in Illustrator and saved it with medium DPI for decent resolution. You can also use MS Paint.
  4. A webcam for video input.
  5. The slide deck that you will be presenting.