Camera

A webcam or camcorder mounted high enough to see the full table works fine to start — you don't need broadcast gear. Aim for an angle that keeps both the baulk and top cushion in frame without heavy distortion at the edges; most club rigs land somewhere above head height, angled down at the table.

Capture

If your camera outputs HDMI, a USB capture card gets it into your laptop as a normal webcam source in OBS. Test the source in OBS before match night — check for delay, and that the resolution and frame rate actually match what you've set the canvas to, since a mismatch here is the most common last-minute streaming surprise.

Laptop

You'll be running OBS and the referee pad side by side, so anything from the last few years handles it fine — the load is mostly video encoding, not the app itself. Keep it plugged into power for the whole session, and use a wired ethernet connection over Wi-Fi if the venue has one; upload stability matters far more than raw bandwidth for a stream that doesn't drop frames.

OBS scene

Build the scene with your camera feed as the base layer, then add the SnookerFlow overlay as a Browser Source on top — it's transparent, so it composites directly over the table feed with nothing to key out. Size the Browser Source to match your canvas exactly so the scoreboard doesn't look stretched or offset.

Overlay link

See Adding the overlay to OBS for the exact steps — copy the link from the referee pad, add it as a Browser Source, and it updates live with no further setup once it's in.

Sponsor rotation

If your club has sponsors to credit on stream, add their logos from Match Settings before you go live — see Branding and sponsor slideshow for how the rotation and display durations work.

Going live on YouTube

Grab your stream key from YouTube Studio's Go Live page, paste it into OBS's stream settings, and start streaming a few minutes before the first frame so viewers have time to find the link and settle in. Double-check the stream's visibility (public, unlisted, or scheduled) before you go live — YouTube won't let you change some of these mid-stream.