OBS is the tool I see most often from hosts who are a little technical and a little stubborn, in a good way, right, the gamers who started a talk show, the software founders who already had OBS open for product demos, the coaches who stream a weekly call and want it turned into an episode afterwards. OBS Studio is free and open source software for recording and live streaming, and the one fact that shapes every OBS podcast edit is that OBS records the scene you build as a single video file, so whatever layout was on screen when you hit record is baked into the picture for good. I'm Samy, and my team in Dubai runs Pixel Samy Podcast, a podcast video editing service where human editors go through every minute of your recording and make each cut by hand, and OBS files are a big part of what lands in our folders. The good news is that OBS can also write several separate audio tracks into one recording, in formats that support it such as MKV or MOV, and that single setting is the difference between an edit that sounds fixed and one that sounds finished.
What does it mean that an OBS recording has the layout baked in?
An OBS recording having the layout baked in means the video file contains exactly the scene you built in OBS, every camera box, background, overlay, logo and chat window in the same positions they had on screen, flattened into one picture, so an editor working with that file cannot move, remove or resize those elements separately later, only crop, cover or cut around them.
I find hosts understand this best when I compare it to a photo of a desk versus the desk itself. With the desk, you can move the coffee cup. With the photo, the cup is where it is, and all you can do is crop it out or put something on top of it. An OBS scene recording is the photo, right, and the desk is gone the moment you stop recording. If your webcam sat in a small box in the corner with a big branded frame around it, that small box is the size your face will be in the episode, and if we zoom in to make it bigger, we are zooming into the pixels that box had, which on a busy layout is not many.
This is not a flaw in OBS, it is simply how scene recording works, and for a lot of streams it is exactly what you want. The trouble only starts when a stream layout, built to look good live with chat and alerts and a countdown timer, becomes the raw material for a podcast episode that is meant to feel clean and focused. If your OBS file started life as a live broadcast, with a countdown screen and a chat column, I go through cutting the dead pre-show and handling viewer chatter in how a stream replay becomes an episode people finish.
Whatever was on screen when you pressed record is what the episode is made of, so build the scene for the edit, not just for the stream.
Can a podcast editor change the layout of an OBS recording after the fact?
A podcast editor can change the layout of an OBS recording after the fact only in limited ways, cropping into a camera box, covering overlays with new graphics, cutting away from cluttered sections or reframing within the pixels that exist, but cannot pull out a webcam that sat behind an overlay or separate elements that OBS merged into one picture.
That said, there is more room than people assume, as long as the camera boxes in your scene were reasonably large. If your layout was two cameras side by side, each taking half the frame, we can usually crop to each person and build the episode as if it were a two camera show, cutting to whoever is talking. If one camera filled most of the frame and the other was a small inset, we can crop to the big one comfortably and to the small one only gently before it softens. Overlays that sat over empty background can often be hidden under your own lower thirds, so they look intentional rather than leftover. What we cannot do is see behind anything, right, so a chat box that covered half your guest's shoulder in the recording covers it in every version of the edit.
The cleanest workaround is one I recommend to every OBS host who records for a podcast and not just a stream, which is to build a separate recording scene that is only the cameras, full frame or in a simple split, with no overlays, no chat and no alerts, and leave the graphics for the edit. You can still stream your fancy layout if you want, but the recording you send us should be the plainest version of the show you can make.
How do I set up separate audio tracks in OBS before recording a podcast?
Setting up separate audio tracks in OBS before recording a podcast means assigning each microphone, and any remote guest or desktop audio, to its own track in OBS, choosing a recording format that supports several tracks such as MKV or MOV, and checking a short test file before the real session so every voice arrives in the edit on a track of its own.
I cannot stress the before part enough, right, because this is the one thing nobody can add later. If every mic was mixed together into a single track in the recording, then the host's keyboard clicks, the guest's air conditioner and the cohost's habit of leaning away from the mic are all welded into the same waveform, and our editors are cleaning one blended sound instead of three separate voices. With separate tracks, each voice gets levelled and cleaned on its own, a cough on one mic can be removed without touching the others, and a guest who spoke too quietly can be lifted without lifting the room. That is one reason, and the third thing is timing, because separate tracks let us tighten a moment where two people talked over each other, which is impossible when they share a track.
Do me a favour and open the last OBS file you recorded in a player that shows audio tracks, and count how many there are, because if the answer is one, the next recording is the one to fix. Separate OBS tracks are what make a proper balance possible, and the levelling, compression and loudness work I expect on every show is described in what a mix and master should actually deliver. Even a show recorded through a gaming headset in OBS ends up mastered near the level Apple sets in its loudness guidance for podcast feeds, so it does not jump out quieter or louder than the episode a listener played before it.
What an editor can still fix in an OBS file
Plenty, right, as long as the basics were recorded properly. Colour is fully adjustable, so a webcam that ran a bit orange under desk lamps can be balanced, and two cameras that never matched can be brought closer together. Cut points are entirely ours, so the slow start, the dead air while a guest reconnected, the false starts and the long goodbye all come out. Noise, levels and room sound can be worked on per track if you recorded separate tracks, and on the whole mix if you did not, although the second is always a compromise. New graphics, lower thirds and titles can go on top of anything, including over old overlays you no longer want. Desk fans, keyboard clatter and a gaming chair that creaks are the usual OBS suspects, and how far our podcast audio cleanup goes before a voice starts to sound processed is something I care about a lot.
The things that stay fixed are the ones baked into the scene, the position and size of every camera box, anything that sat in front of a camera, and the framing of each shot. And if audio was mixed to one track, the balance between voices is fixed in the sense that we can improve it but never fully separate it.
Recording the cameras clean as well as the scene
If your show uses more than one camera, OBS will record whatever arrangement of them your scene shows, which means the angles are only as flexible as the layout allowed. For hosts who want a show that cuts between people properly, I usually suggest the simple fix of making the recording scene a plain split or a full frame of the main camera, and if you can, having each camera also record on its own device, so we get the scene file plus clean individual angles to cut between. Hosts who go that way are effectively running a small multi-camera setup, and the decisions around cameras, framing and sync from the editor's side are in the multi-cam podcast setup guide. For the broader setup questions, mics, lighting, framing and what to spend on first, see what actually matters in a podcast recording setup for video.
How long does OBS podcast editing take once the file is uploaded?
OBS podcast editing takes about 48 hours for the first cut once the full recording is in the shared folder, after which you send a single round of notes and the revised episode comes back a working day later, and an OBS file with four cameras, very heavy graphics or a recording well over an hour can need one extra day, which I tell you about when I quote.
Send the file exactly as OBS wrote it, right, without converting it first, because converting an MKV or MOV with several tracks into another format is the easiest way to lose the extra audio tracks by accident. If you also have separate camera files from other devices, upload them alongside with names that make clear which person is which. The Pixel Samy Podcast team sits in Dubai, so an OBS recording you upload in a US evening is usually waiting for us early in our day.
What does OBS podcast editing cost per episode?
For an OBS podcast recorded as one scene file, I put the show on Starter, which is 199 dollars per episode as long as the recording runs no longer than 60 minutes and covers the full edit, intro, outro, audio levelling, noise cleanup and one revision, while OBS shows with separate camera files for two to four people move to the Studio plan, all priced in US dollars and paid per episode.
Most OBS hosts I speak to start on Starter, right, because their recording is one scene file and that is exactly what Starter is built for, and only move up once they add clean camera files from other devices. The rest of the lengths, packs and add-ons, including vertical clips from the episode, are on the Starter and Studio price list. Billing happens per OBS recording with no contract behind it, and the editing projects travel back to you with each delivery. Before your next session, you are welcome to email a ten minute sample of your scene to samy@pixelsamy.com or jump on a short call, and I will tell you which boxes, overlays and track settings I would change before the guest sits down.
When OBS is not the best recorder for your show
OBS is wonderful if you are comfortable building scenes and you stream as well as record, right, and plenty of hosts are neither. If you are not, and you just want a clean in-person conversation recorded with the least possible fuss, a hardware recorder that writes each mic to its own file may be simpler, and what to send an editor from one of those is in editing a RODECaster multitrack recording. If your stream already looks exactly how you want the episode to look, layout and all, you might not need a full edit, for instance a simple trim of the start and end, which you could do yourself in a few minutes. And if your guests are always remote, a dedicated remote recorder may give you cleaner individual files than routing calls through OBS. The current downloads and documentation for OBS itself live at obsproject.com.
Build the recording for the edit
An OBS podcast edit is only ever as flexible as the recording you made, so the work that matters most happens before you press the button, a clean recording scene, separate audio tracks, a format that keeps them, and a short test to prove it worked. Get those four things in place and the file you send us stops being a frozen stream and becomes an episode we can actually shape.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.