How do I combine guitar tracks and vocal in OBS?

[batwoman]

What I want is a video that includes the guitar tracks I’ve recorded in Reaper, the vocal I record through my AI using my Rode mic, using OBS and my webcam.

I know how to record a vocal using the the gear mentioned. Don’t know how to add the guitars.

I’ve tried making a video with my webcam, then importing it into Reaper, deleting the webcam audio and then rendering the guitars and vocal I recorded in Reaper plus the webcam video. Although I have a perfect match in the sound, my face and the way in which I shape my tone doesn’t match the video. It’s disconcerting for me to watch, and would be so much more so for a vocal coach or anyone familiar with tone shaping.

To put it another way, I want the singing to match the face and I want the guitar tracks as backing.

[jkahn]

From what I understand OBS doesn’t have a built in video editor. So if you’re mixing tracks in post I don’t think you can use OBS.

I understand Reaper has some basic video editing tech. Not sure how good it is - I use Cyberlink PowerDirector for video and mixing in audio from DAW. I’ve tried Corel & Adobe Premiere Elements too and found PowerDirector worked best for me at a reasonable cost. So you may be able to use Reaper as your video editor.

There’s a few ways to skin this cat, but I think the key thing to get the video matching your singing face the way you want to is ensuring you’re using the vocal audio track that was recorded in the exact same take as the video.

Here’s what I would do:

1. Record guitar backing track in DAW (no vocal) as base track. No video.
2. Record vocal track in DAW, while guitar backing tracking playing so you’re singing on top of it. Take video with webcam at same time, with webcam audio enabled so you can easily sync it. This is the important bit, the video is of the same audio that is being recorded in DAW as vocal track.
3. Set audio levels between the 2 audio tracks in DAW and export as WAV.
4. Import webcam video (with audio) and DAW WAV into video editor. AV sync so they’re at exact same time - this feature is why I use PowerDirector, Corel’s didn’t work for me.
5. Mute webcam audio track, so only audio is the one you recorded with DAW
6. Export as video

[batwoman]

Thanks JK, I’ll give that a try. Your detail is much appreciated.

I already have the guitars and vocal in Reaper. I think that trying to make a video later to the same tracks is what’s making this difficult. I sing with a different face every time. I need to do them all at the same time.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Thanks a lot.

I’ll try a whole new recording.

[jkahn]

@batwoman

I sing with a different face every time. I need to do them all at the same time.

Yep pretty sure that’s what it will be

[roger_holland]

Hi , @batwoman and @jkahn
One day this won’t read as if it says Chinese…I’ll save this topic for later reference…
Hi Maggie ,Are you busy putting “that” song on video and (apparently then) perfecting what I heard with that big message in it?..I’m burning with desire ,but the longer it takes the better it tastes …good luck and have fun with the music recording thing stuff hassle …
Greetings,Rogier

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Maggie

Is the video of you singing captured in OBS, with the guitar audio fed into OBS from Reaper ? You can use ReaRoute to send Reaper audio to OBS and capture the video & sound in OBS. So if you have pre=recorded Guitar Tracks in Reaper, you just need to add a Vox track there and treat it as if you were just recording in Reaper. But using ReaRoute the Audio is sent to OBS.

If that’s what the plan is let me know and I’ll add the How. With family here I am behind on OM prep and just spent an hour figuring out with Zoom was not playing nicely with OBS ie No sound in Zoom and 36 hours to go. Yep normal drama. One of the OM tech posts has the details, so won’t take me long to gran the info if that is what you want to do.

Cheers

Toby

[batwoman]

@roger_holland

have fun with the music recording thing stuff hassle

How well you sum this up @roger_holland Rogier

@TheMadman_tobyjenner thanks. You seem to have rather enough to deal with right now, so let’s leave it till after the OM. I’ll try a variation of what JK has suggested first. I hope you get your tech to work with you.

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Maggie

As if by magic (well, after several reboots!) all is well and I sail towards the OM with gay abandon. So more than happy to help, as I have been down that road before. So no need to reinvent the wheel, I have a few laying around !

Cheers

Toby

[sairfingers]

@batwoman

I sing with a different face every time.

I can’t help you with the techie stuff Maggie but this made me laugh out loud!

[Socio]

The one thing that I tried the other day was recording in both reaper and OBS. Then using Movavi Studio (cheap software) added both the Reaper and OBS output files then selected both audio part of OBS recording and Reaper recording then auto synched. Then detached and deleted the audio part from the OBS file on Movavi. It was a simple process and synchronisation seemed decent. It just needed to have something in common (and that could be the vocals) that is recorded on both OBS and Reaper to be able to sync against.

[batwoman]

@Socio this made the wheels in my head spin a little bit too fast James, so I’ll come back to it later today when I’m older and wiser It sounds like a good idea. Thanks so much.

[SgtColon]

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

Is the video of you singing captured in OBS, with the guitar audio fed into OBS from Reaper ? You can use ReaRoute to send Reaper audio to OBS and capture the video & sound in OBS. So if you have pre=recorded Guitar Tracks in Reaper, you just need to add a Vox track there and treat it as if you were just recording in Reaper. But using ReaRoute the Audio is sent to OBS.

Toby, if possible please could you post the instructions on how to do this?

Thank you.

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Stefan I assume you are asking about the Rearoute set up, not setting up tracks in Reaper ?
It was buried in my original DAW to Zoom via OBS post in the OM Tech Guide section.

DAW-OBS-Zoom

This a much easy substitute for Reastream and is well explained in the linked video. And its a lot cleaner, as you don’t have to find spare audio devices.

Open Mic Tech Talk - For Advanced Users : How to connect your DAW to OBS and send audio and video to Zoom

UPDATE - As Status Quo once famously asked “Is There A Better Way ?” OK this may be of interest to some users but after a week, of snap crackle and pop, playing in a cavern and then finding one of my webcam mics was picking up my vox and guitar and muddying video recordings in Zoom, I have found a more elegant way of connecting Reaper to OBS. So Yes that was the issue at OM5 not my studio mic after all This does not involve Reastream and therefore does not piggy back audio via the backd…

Hope that helps.

[SgtColon]

That is correct Toby and thank you very much for this, I’ll give it a read and a play.

I’m still messing around try get get my recordings with my electric right, so I’m hoping this is going to help.

[CD02]

Hi @batwoman, I am exploring the best way to do this at the moment, did you end up up finding a suitable solution or is it still a work in progress?

[jkahn]

What are you trying to do Craig - mix multiple tracks together with video, or just record everything all at once (video, guitar, vocals)?

There are many ways to do things.

[batwoman]

@CD02 Craig I abandoned the idea. @jkahn has lots of tech know how, I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.

[CD02]

@batwoman

Craig I abandoned the idea

Yes, it can be a massive rabbit hole

@jkahn

What are you trying to do Craig

Hi JK, I was really looking to see what other newcomers to the recording side of things were doing. I read a lot of the articles relating to DAWs, AIs, OBS, & Zoom and some of them get pretty heavy Albeit very interesting.

Having recently moved up in some basic hardware I was exploring my options. Originally I wanted to record my Gtr into DAW (I’m using Reaper) then add a vocal track on top (so far so good as I can already do that easily) but then add it the video of playing I realised that it just wasn’t possible as I would never get the vocal and gtr to line up properly with the video and decided that I was making it all too hard after all its rally about playing and singing not spending hours pawing through software packages so I don’t want to get too distracted, although it is interesting.

So, today I installed OBS and had Reaper input to OBS via ReaRoute and have trialed a recording just live vocal and guitar during an OBS record session. it’s ok, but I’m after what gives me the best sound/video (= performance) output.

I guess down the track I may even venture on to an OM night

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Craig you have a couple options to mix and master the audio.

Firstly you can import the OBS video into Reaper and mix and master there and export the video.

Secondly you can record your Gtr and Vox tracks in Reaper and adjust the mix adding FX etc until you get the sound you want for each track. Once you have that set up, remove the audio files in Reaper leaving the tracks as they are and then record Audio and Video in OBS.

Thirdly, set up the gtr and vox tracks in Reaper and record them there AND record the audio and video in OBS simultaneously. You can then import the video back into Reaper and use the waveforms of the Gtr Vox and Video track to synchronise the sound. You can then play around with the gtr and vox tracks until you are happy (mute the video audio). And export the video, with mixed soundtrack from Reaper,

If you are synchronising and mixing/mastering in Reaper, the easiest way to align tracks is use a count in, click track, simple drum sample of 1 2 3 4 on its own track. The count in waveform on the OBS video can the be aligned with the waveform in Reaper. You can also switch of the Reaper gridlines and just slide the OBS track into position so it matches the original count in Reaper - then switch the gridlines back on.

Hope that helps, happy recording.

[DavidP]

@CD02
Craig, I may be wrong in the following, if so hopefully others more knowledgeable will correct.

The audio, guitar direct if an electro-acoustic/electric and vocal via the mic, is routed into the PC using an audio interface. The computer will use appropriate drivers to handle the audio interface.

Given that the quality of the recorded audio in Reaper and OBS will be the same. At least I think so as I’d assume this is driven by the interface and drivers.

In Reaper you can do processing on the recorded audio after completing the recording. Can be as simple as balancing levels and panning, or more sophisticated using fx plugins, eg to add reverb and delay, EQ, compression, etc. Once satisfied then you can render a final audio file.

OBS is simply a recording (or streaming) application. You can source multiple inputs separately from the interface using the same drivers. But the final video saved will have the combined audio, no opportunity edit individual tracks after recording.

That said, you can setup levels to balance vocal and guitar before recording. And OBS enables the adding of fx on each track, which it calls filters. If you have Reaper setup then OBS will be able to access the plugins as filters. You can also work with panning in OBS. The downside is you need to set everything up before recording. Initially I found that quite time consuming but once you get the hang of it, it is pretty quick.

As Toby said, you can record audio in Reaper and OBS concurrently. Then you can use a video editor to import the video with audio from OBS and a process audio from Reaper. Many video editors have automatic syncing that will align the video with audio and the audio-only source. Actually while Reaper is a DAW, it has some basic video editing capability, and I have produced a video with me playing 4 parts in Reaper, syncing up all the video and audio.

So I see no reason why you’d not get similar quality from OBS as Reaper, with the difference being the effort is upfront with OBS to set it up and may be after recording with Reaper. These days I make videos for AVOYP and stream to Zoom for OMs just using Reaper. I find the fewer apps in the mix the simpler.

Hope that makes sense, ask if not.