
Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS - prodigyboi
https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/2568
======
vortico
This makes me think. Is there a service that handles crowd-sourcing and
processing payments a bit like Kickstarter but on a smaller scale? Say, if
someone proposes a feature and the developer says "I'll do it for $300", users
could donate until the goal is reached. With the promise of payment, the
developer can go ahead and spend the time/effort, and everybody wins. But
setting up a Kickstarter, IndieGogo, etc is too big of a deal for a $300
feature/bug fix.

GitHub Sponsors ([https://github.com/sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors))
already exists, but I feel that they missed the point. As a user, I don't want
to throw money at a project like it's a charity, I want to throw money so
issues will be solved. As a developer, I don't want to accept unconditional
donations (and all the unwritten, assumed responsibilities it comes with), I
want to be funded in a concrete way so I can work on the issues users want so
much they'd pay for it.

~~~
est31
I think bounties create an unhealthy incentive structure. The kind of thinking
you expressed in your post that payments shouldn't be seen as "charity" leads
to people trying to not "waste" their bounties.

They'll add it to issues the maintainers won't do otherwise, which in turn
leads maintainers to hold the code hostage, not doing something they'd have
done had there been no bounty structure, hoping that someone posts a bounty
for it. Of course a maintainer is one of the world experts in that codebase so
knows really well which things can or have to be done. So that behaviour will
lead to maintainers not addressing issues they know will annoy users. It leads
to annoyance driven development.

Regular payments are far better IMO for projects long term because they allow
maintainers to actually maintain the software instead of hunting for bug
bounties. They give more security to maintainers (rent is pretty much a
constant for example) and less overhad for users (unless they want to save
money and use it most efficiently, but IMO that's not what donations should be
about). That being said, bounties aren't bad overall, they are definitely
great ideas if used here and there, but funding of open source projects
shouldn't be bounty-driven.

~~~
vortico
I can't speak for others, but many of my company's open-source projects are
not open-contribution (meaning I don't accept PRs unless I hire you). Features
are added because funding comes from somewhere else, but it would be nice to
have a second option for users to fund a feature _directly_.

~~~
oauea
Just curious, what do you gain from having your code be open-source if you do
not accept outside contributions?

~~~
vortico
Users can enjoy these four freedoms when using our software.
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-
sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html)

If you're asking what _we_ benefit from doing this, not much. We could have
released proprietary software, but as users of software ourselves, we enjoy
having these freedoms, so we don't want to restrict users of the software _we_
write.

~~~
bloodorange
Mate, I haven't felt as happy reading a comment on this website as when I read
this comment of yours. Keep up the excellent work and I hope you find a lot of
success!

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diggan
Let's not jump to conclusions here. The 10k bounty has been _proposed_ but not
yet accepted by the maintainers of OBS. As dodgepong writes:

> Thus, the only way I think we as OBS would be comfortable offering a bounty
> is if we have set concrete requirements for the PR ahead of time. That
> concrete set of requirements is defined and ironed out in the RFC process.

So they want to have a RFC with a bounty attached to it, before the bounty is
actually "activated".

In before all you rush to implement the feature.

~~~
dang
Ok, we've proposed the title above. Thanks!

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mrlambchop
For the purposes of pranking people on zoom calls, I setup a OBS / Syphon /
Camtwist flow that works great for my alternative conference requirements
(ranging from matrix style graphics, playing videos of me on the green screen
doing things in the background, scrolling comments on the meeting on my video
feed etc...).

However... it is a major MAJOR PITA to get going when I want to jump on a
quick call and more than often I'm in and out of the meeting a few times
because of annoying defaults or software I forgot to start. But that 1 in 10
prank feeling? Well worth the 9 false starts.

I'd love OBS to work on its own to remove a few more steps from my setup!

~~~
schrijver
If you can share a view details on your setup that would be great!

~~~
maeln
FYI Syphon (which is used to link OBS to CamTwist) stop working since MacOS
10.15 since their "hack" that was making the whole thing work, stopped
working.

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checker659
Man, I created ScreenTime
([https://tryscreentime.com](https://tryscreentime.com)) (yes I'm aware of the
name), which at its core, is a virtual camera driver.

This is right up my alley, but then I guess this isn't about paying one dev to
do the job, is it? More like contribution to the whole OBS project. I'm not
sure how this works (?)

(FYI, if you're interested in running my app, you'll need to disable SIP on
10.14+)

~~~
dodgepong
You could probably do it yourself if you wanted, I don't see any reason why
not. I suppose the main concern is whether anyone else is already working on
it, and if it will be a race. If you want to work on it, I suggest you post
saying so, and start working on a design document to post on the RFC page.

------
schappim
Tobi (Shopify’s CEO) has put up the bounty.

------
haunter
> I personally use obs-virtual-cam on windows but most of my company and most
> of the tech world lives on mac for work.

I was wondering about that some days ago that how many "high profile" CEOs are
outliers in their company using Windows or Linux

~~~
xal
its just because my home office is a gaming PC. But now it turns out its
significantly better because of the obs-virtualcam plugin working well on
windows. This should be a default feature, hence the bounty.

~~~
haunter
Ah thanks for the personal reply, appreciate it

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schrijver
Not exactly the same scenario, but I just wanted to share a neat little hack I
discovered yesterday… I work with a team who now meet in Google Hangouts but
it doesn’t work over the company’s internal network yet… so I couldn’t share
my screen to do a demo of an internal app. Instead, I got another computer
which was on the internal network, plugged the HDMI output into an Elgato
Camlink, which made it show up as a Webcam. Beyond needing two computers, it
worked much easier than I thought—more reliably actuallly than any camera I’d
plugged into the Camlink until now.

~~~
Tepix
You can get a noname HDMI in USB 3.0 Capture box from AliExpress for around
$50 that will also work.

~~~
schrijver
Sure, I imagine any kind of HDMI capture solution would work! I was just
amused that this gadget I had which is marketed for capturing camera
output—for which it frankly doesn’t do a stellar job—worked so well for this
specific purpose

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wdroz
I'm using the v4l2sink plugin to stream into v4l2loopback and tell google
Meet/zoom/whatever "hey, dummy 0x00002 is my webcam".

~~~
lostapathy
What distro? Nobody I know has been able to make that work!

~~~
snorlaxle
Works for me on Ubuntu 18.04.

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Roritharr
Sounds interesting, what are the common use-cases for this?

~~~
wyager
You can use OBS for things like compositing a video of your face over a video
of your computer screen, and allowing output to a loopback monitor interface
(i.e. virtual camera / microphone) would allow you to share that view via
generic video conferencing software like Jitsi or Zoom.

~~~
geerlingguy
This. It's currently impossible, AFAICT, to use OBS to composite/produce a
stream that is fed into video chat software like Zoom, Hangouts, Bluejeans,
etc.

~~~
cricalix
Using a plugin for OBS (Windows at least), you can absolutely output to a
virtual camera, and use all of the compositing, filters, scenes etc in OBS.
You don't get audio output, but you could probably solve that with a virtual
audio cable. I do the video thing with Workchat and Bluejeans without issue,
and just use my headset for audio.

I currently composite a view of my local harbour, my webcam, and a chroma-
keyed nyancat gif, with a second scene for full-sized webcam. Works a charm,
and actually uses less CPU that Chrome does when Chrome is routing that video
to the VC.

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BrentOzar
On the Mac, Telestream Wirecast ($599) [1] does this.

Not saying Wirecast is better or worse than OBS - although for me, on the Mac
platform, Wirecast was way better. I can capture a desktop or app window,
overlay my webcam on top of it in the bottom corner, use chroma key to remove
my background, and then I float on top of apps. That video feed can be
outputted as a webcam stream that works with GoToWebinar, Skype, Hangouts,
etc.

You can see examples of what it looks like to attendees via my blog:
[https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2020/03/free-
fundamentals-...](https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2020/03/free-fundamentals-
of-query-tuning-week-part-5-common-t-sql-anti-patterns/)

One drawback is that some webcasting apps (GoToWebinar in particular) have a
max webcam output resolution, like in GoToWebinar's case, 720p. That means you
have to be really careful about which apps/screens you try to share as a
webcam.

[1]:
[https://www.telestream.net/wirecast/](https://www.telestream.net/wirecast/)

~~~
frankc
OBS can do all of that except nativley output a virtual camera. I use windows
and the virtual cam plugin works well for that, though it doesnt do the audio.
I think you can set it up externally to obs using a virtual audio cable driver
but I haven't really needed it.

~~~
BrentOzar
> OBS can do all of that except nativley output a virtual camera.

Right, that's literally the title of the article we're commenting on: OBS
can't do that thing that we need.

~~~
tyrust
I think that person's reply was prompted by you saying that Telestream was
"way better for you" but then listing all but one feature provided by OBS.

Note that I don't have a horse in this race. I've only used basic features of
OBS and have never heard of Telestream. I'm just pointing out the possible
miscommunication here.

------
PunksATawnyFill
What's "OBS?"

That would be valuable information.

~~~
cheschire
OBS is probably most widely known in the twitch / mixer streaming world.

It allows you to layer your inputs and different overlays together to create a
single video output that includes things such as video games, webcam feed,
etc. The video output is typically either recorded straight to video file for
upload to youtube, or for streaming directly to a supported streaming service.

It's not purely used for video games, mind you.

In this case I believe the idea is that you would use OBS on your local
workstation to setup your own web cam and a view of your desktop / work space
for the purposes of peer development etc, and then pipe that out as a virtual
webcam to other software that only support webcams as inputs.

That's my guess for what's going on here. Hope someone gets some good money
from this.

~~~
bbrazil
> It's not purely used for video games, mind you.

Indeed. I also use it to stream sports with the scores as an overlay, and to
record training videos.

Basically if you're doing anything "live" with video, it's the tool you want.

~~~
geerlingguy
Another option that's a little higher end is to use a dedicated video
production rig, and feed that into your computer (or use the rig's direct
integrations). Something like a Tricaster
([https://www.newtek.com/tricaster/](https://www.newtek.com/tricaster/)),
which is very popular for live event video production.

The more complex the setup, though, the more likely you'd need additional
people working the controls. (But also, the more flexibility and conveniences
you get).

~~~
dylan604
This is how I use OBS as well. I use a Tricaster Mini, and it has the ability
to do a live stream of its output as a feature. However, it taxes this little
computer to such an extent that the external power supply gets incredibly hot
(too hot to touch). I now use OBS on a laptop to create the stream relieving
the Tricaster of that duty. The Tricast power supply doesn't even get warm
now.

------
rahimnathwani
Webcamoid (which can add special effects to video) has virtual camera support
for MacOS but, due to driver signing requirements, it only works if you're
willing to disable SIP.

[https://webcamoid.github.io/](https://webcamoid.github.io/)

------
teruakohatu
Slightly on topic: Does anyone know if a solution to get remote guests into
OBS? Vimeo Studio 6 supports sharing a web link to a page that then feeds the
guest webcam back to Studio and guests appear as video sources.

There are some propriety Skype solutions, but they are not cross platform and
Zoom can share a feed, but neither give you access to the individual camera
and audio feeds.

------
songshuu
I'd like the audio input to be able to pick up desktop sounds on MacOS the way
it works on Windows. Is there a bounty on that?

~~~
BrentOzar
> I'd like the audio input to be able to pick up desktop sounds on MacOS the
> way it works on Windows.

Even paid apps like Wirecast are having a hard time figuring out a workaround
for that. I ended up using Loopback from Rogue Amoeba ($99), and it does the
job absolutely beautifully. You configure your Mac's audio output to point to
Loopback (which shows up as an audio output device), and then you use your
broadcasting tools to use Loopback (which also shows up as an audio input
device). You can do mixing, too.

~~~
haywirez
Blackhole[1] is a better, newer and free solution for these kinds of internal
OSX audio routing issues.

[1]
[https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole](https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole)

~~~
BrentOzar
> Blackhole[1] is a better

I took a quick look at the issues list & features request, and I'm going to
disagree with you there. For example, you can't route the output to different
monitor devices and change their volumes. (I often use my headphones as a
mixing monitor.) It looks like a neat free alternative, though.

~~~
songshuu
Very thoughtful replies! Thanks to both of you!

------
jacobush
Wow, what a badermeinhof, yesterday I tinkered with installing the virtual
camera plugin in OBS to prank my coworkers with some Fraggle Rock action.
Video works, but not audio. Which maybe is just as well for my use case.

Oh. Yeah, the self quarantine - of course many will be find out about OBS
these days.

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akerro
Linux is supported with V4L2
[https://imgur.com/a/BvkPfP9](https://imgur.com/a/BvkPfP9)

What's the problem with it?

~~~
bbrazil
This isn't about getting input from a camera (which works fine), but making
the output of OBS appear as a camera to the rest of the system.

~~~
jnwatson
That's what the above software is for.

