How to make stunning online presentations for free

In this blog, I want to share some ideas on how to make better and more impressive presentations online. You may be a victim of home-office days during COVID-19 crises, but you might still like using a PowerPoint presentation along with a whiteboard and expose yourself during the presentation. You are maybe trying to use different tools and online meeting tools like Microsoft Teams, Goto Meeting, Skype, etc. However, you might still struggle to balance between screen-sharing, some whiteboard app, and show yourself on the camera. If this is your case, stay tuned because I’ve got you an excellent solution, and all that by using completely free tools.

The first step you need to do is installing the OBS studio. This software is a live streaming open-source software, and you can download it here for Windows, Mac, or Linux. You can use the same software to record video presentations or stream live on YouTube, Facebook, or any other platform. If this can help with sharing your presentation, go ahead, and use one of those platforms. But keep in mid that you can also share your stream on the webcam, so you can show your mix through any other medium that supports video conferences.

Introduction to OBS

OBS studio is a pretty intuitive and straightforward application to use. You can do screen recording, live streaming, and a lot of other manipulations like sharing your stream as a webcam. To get you introduced to OBS, we found a handy tutorial on YouTube. You can jump through the video, as described in the video description below the video.

How to share the OBS stream as a webcam?

To share your stream on an online meeting platform like Skype, MS Teams, Goto Meeting, or any other similar, you need first to install a plugin for OBS called OBS-VirtualCam. The following YouTube video explains how to install and use it in practice with different online meeting platforms.

Here is how I use this setup for presentations

Besides a laptop, my company provides me with two more external monitors. For this guide’s sake, this equipment is not necessarily required, but for the best results, you might consider having at least one additional monitor. I assume you watched the videos above, understood the content, and installed the necessary software. If so, here is my way of using this setup:

On the screen 1, I open the OBS studio. Previously I have set up three or four scenes. The first scene is for sharing screen 2, the second is for sharing screen 3, the third shares my actual webcam in case I want to show myself, and the fourth is a combination webcam with any other window or screen-sharing. On the screen 2, I usually have opened a whiteboard application, or here I show any real-time demonstration on the PC. Screen 3 is used for my slideshow presentation if there is one.

With having this set up, I open the webcam during the online meeting, and the client can see what I mix in OBS studio. You can be creative and even use a green-screen if you want and add stunning backgrounds to your streams while sharing your webcam.

We hope you like this blog post and share it with your friends and colleges. If you got any other ideas or inspirations from our blog, please feel free to share those in the comment section below; I am pleased to learn something new from you.