How to view your stream chat overtop of your games

While streaming, it is very important to be able to monitor your channel's chat so you can properly engage and interact with your community.  To be able to do this you need to be able to be playing your game while keeping an eye on a chat window.  The most common solution to needing to be viewing two important program windows in short periods of time is to have two computer monitors.  One for your full screen game and the second for your chat and any other additional windows you like to have open during your stream.  While a simple solution, it's not a very appealing to those who do not have the fiscal means of obtaining a second monitor.  Another solution is using the twitch/YouTube gaming app on your phone or tablet to monitor your chat, but that involves needing a stand for your device to ensure you can view it without straining yourself. So what is the single monitor streamer to do?

Thankfully, there are a couple of options which can solve this problem.

OBS Studio Automatic Scene Switcher

OBS and OBS Studio both have a nifty feature for switching your displayed scene while a particular window is active, the Automatic Scene Switcher plugin.  I feel it's an under-utilized feature which is incredibly easy to setup.

Co-op Streams with Skype/Google Hangout Video

Using a web cam to show off your reactions to funny, scary and downright crazy events in games has now become commonplace among Twitch.tv and Youtube gaming streamers.

Just as commonplace is the streaming of co-operative game sessions while including your friends/family audio over Skype or google hangouts.

If only we could meld these two ideas of co-op streams and web cams together... oh wait, we can!

Co-opulous OBS Settings

The weekly Co-opulous stream works on a rather small upload rate.  My current internet plan restricts me a 2.5 Mbps upload rate. To accommodate this small upload rate while still trying to maintain a decent video appearance and sound quality in order to entertain viewers we use the below settings in OBS Studio.

Removing Background noise with OBS Studio

Part of setting up a successful stream with live commentary is clear audio.  Most any microphone is fine for providing commentary, but it's important to ensure that the audio you are providing is coming through with as little background noise as possible.  Thankfully, OBS Studio gives us some of these tools built in to help lower that background noise while still making your voice heard.

Fix for Black Screen Game Capture in OBS Studio

A common problem which I've seen on many forums and subreddits is that a game is not showing up in OBS after adding the game capture window as a source.  Instead of being able to see the game screen in OBS, they are greeted with a giant black box.

The fix for this? 
Open OBS as an administrator.

How does one do this?
Hold Shift -> Right Click the OBS icon -> Choose the option "Run as administrator".

This has fixed the black box error which I've encountered in both Star Trek Online and Darkest Dungeon.  I'm sure there are other games which fall victim to this problem.

OBS Studio Settings

OBS settings for optimal streaming performance and viewer pleasure can be difficult to balance when one is just starting out in the world of streaming.  The biggest question that comes up is "what is the best OBS settings for <X>? where 'X' can be a certain game, an Internet bandwidth or a set of computer specs.  The unfortunate answer is there is no 'one size fits all' solution when it comes to setting up OBS.  The below information may help demystify some of these settings and help you on your way to hitting that 'broadcast' button sooner than you thought.