This guide assumes that you have a PC with a discrete graphics card and processorpowerful enough to stream games. To start broadcasting to Twitch, you’ll need two additional things: desktop software that can record and stream footage from your gaming computer, and a Twitch account. We’ll start with the software.

Options abound for desktop streaming software. You can find debates over the relative merits online, but we recommend one broadcasting suite that’s free and easy to set up—plus it integrates nicely with Twitch. The program is called Open Broadcaster Software Studio (frequently shortened to OBS Studio), which is the replacement for the classic OBS software.

Once you’ve downloaded OBS Studio and run through the installer, the client will launch. You’ll see a window with an empty letterbox screen, and a bank of options at the bottom. Here, you’ll set up the “scene” and sources for your broadcast. The scene in OBS Studio is the final product that you’ll show on Twitch, while the sources are all the various elements that make up your scene.

Most Twitch gaming streams aren’t just a plain screencast of the game itself; they usually include multiple sources, such as a picture-in-picture webcam feed of the player, a watermark, and sometimes even animated screen overlays. Animations are beyond the scope of this tutorial for beginners. We’ll stick to the three basic sources: the game, the webcam, and the watermark.

Adding a webcam stream gives your gameplay a personal touch. For Twitch streamers, the webcam feed is standard practice. If your PC doesn’t have a webcam, the Logitech C922 ($80 on Amazon) is a stellar one you can add to any PC. It’s very popular with streamers.

To set it up, click the plus sign in the Sources box once again, and from the context menu select Video Capture Device. Once again, a small window pops up that you can pretty much ignore. Just hit OK to get to the new properties window.

OBS Studio should automatically choose your webcam. If you have two or more options, however, just choose the appropriate one for your broadcast. You can mess with the settings in this window, but as long as your webcam is selected from the drop-down list at the very top, it should work just fine.

The more important thing is to decide on the angle for your webcam. Do you want it to shoot you from above, like it’s sitting on top of your display? Or would you prefer a straight-on shot or something from below? To get an idea of webcam placement see what others are doing on Twitch and find what works for you. Also pay attention to lighting to make sure you’re clearly visible.

If you’d rather not have the background of your home office or den show up, you’ll needto use a chroma key to get that green screen effect. You can actually make this happen with nothing more than a sheet or large curtain and some even lighting, though basic green screen setups can be found online for as little as $20. To play with chroma key settings in OBS Studio, right-click on Video Capture Device in the Sources panel and select Filters > Effect Filters > Chroma Key.

If you need detailed help to set this up, there are tons of tutorials on YouTube—such as this one—that show the process.

Once your webcam is enabled as a source, you can choose where it will appear in the final broadcast. The default is the upper-left corner, but you can adjust this by dragging the window around the letterbox area in the main OBS Studio window. You can also use the red border around the webcam to size it to your preference. Many Twitch streamers position their webcam feed in a small area in the lower right corner. That’s far from the rule, however, and the onscreen elements of the game you’re streaming will likely dictate where you place your webcam feed.

To give a stream that extra veneer of professionalism, you can add a watermark—the ghostly little logo that appears in the bottom corner of TV broadcasts.

Click the plus sign again in the Sources box, select Image, and click OK to get to the third window. Choose your image from your PC and then click OK again.

Going back to the main window, click on the watermark image in the letterbox window and it will be outlined in red. Now adjust it for placement and size. If you want to make the image transparent, right-click the image and select Filters > Chroma Key. Then choose a numeric value (out of 100) in the Opacity option to make it more transparent. You can also play around with the various sliders to get your desired affect.