[HN Gopher] OBS (macOS) Virtual Camera
___________________________________________________________________
OBS (macOS) Virtual Camera
Author : mistersquid
Score : 246 points
Date : 2020-06-03 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ceocoder wrote:
| If you are a linux user and own a nice camera you can use gphoto2
| and ffmpeg to create a virtual camera. I posted howto on HN
| couple of days ago[0][1], here it is for anyone who might need
| it. I tried it with both Sony RX100VA and Sony A7III, in both
| cases it works really well.
|
| edit: forgot to mention that this works over USB, you don't have
| to pay crazy markup for capture card
|
| edit2: (because I'm so excited about getting this to work) here
| is a list of supported cameras[2] - sadly I was _not_ able to get
| GoPro Hero 6 to work.
|
| [0] https://www.crackedthecode.co/how-to-use-your-dslr-as-a-
| webc...
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23325143
|
| [2] http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php
| londons_explore wrote:
| Shame that there is a perfectly good standard for cameras...
| The USB Video Class... Why have all these cameras decided to go
| use a different set of protocols that don't work out of the box
| in any OS?
| snazz wrote:
| I'm guessing this is because proper live view video from a
| DSLR requires much higher bandwidth than USB can provide. The
| protocols used for remote capture and download over USB
| should be more standardized, for sure, but live view seems
| really hard.
| woofie11 wrote:
| It's actually much more because the DSLR companies, for the
| most part, are technologically-backwards, and don't get
| things like platforms, APIs, or similar. It's nineties-
| style closed thinking. It's a big part of why cell phones
| are now eating their lunch. I used to be a pretty serious
| photographer, and own probably $10,000 worth of camera
| equipment.
|
| I mostly shoot with my cell phone these days, not because I
| mind spending money on cameras, but because it's a better
| device for most photography. It integrates with the world.
| Cameras integrate with their manufacturer's closed
| ecosystems.
| londons_explore wrote:
| USB Video class allows the device to provide a list of
| formats supported, and the host to choose one. That seems
| suitable for the host to manage bandwidth across its USB
| links, even if other devices are also using bandwidth.
| morsch wrote:
| My Sony a6300 is supported, but I can't get it to work. Doesn't
| even show up on lsusb when I connect in PC remote mode, much
| less in gphoto2 --auto-detect. I'm stumped. Too bad, that would
| have been useful.
| ceocoder wrote:
| You should try another microUSB cable - my first microUSB
| cable did not work because it was charging-only.
| morsch wrote:
| Thanks. I tried several, but I suppose they could all be
| bad. Mass storage mode works, though.
| enjoylife wrote:
| The USB mode has to be changed. Set it to "PC Remote" mode. h
| ttps://helpguide.sony.net/gbmig/44840601/v1/eng/contents/TP..
| .
| morsch wrote:
| Thanks. That's what I did. When set to PC Remote mode, the
| camera does not show up is lsusb or gphoto2. The other
| modes work, but don't support capture.
| christiangenco wrote:
| Hah, I just followed your guide after stumbling on it on Google
| yesterday to set up a Canon M50 on Linux Mint! It works
| incredibly well--heads and shoulders above the video quality
| from a webcam, and now that I'm piping video through ffmpeg
| there's tons of potential to do some weird stuff with filters
| and swapping to pre-recorded video.
| ceocoder wrote:
| I wish I can take credit for this, Ben Chapman did all the
| work, I just happened to google it :)
|
| And yeah, 100% agree on video quality, it is so much better
| than what you get from that potato sensor on MBP
| bronco21016 wrote:
| Do you have any idea if this works with the older GoPro models?
|
| Plan to give it a go later tonight but wondering if anyone has
| any success stories.
| ceocoder wrote:
| This is what I found while I was trying to get GoPro to work
| with gphoto2[0] - would love to know if you do get it to work
| somehow.
|
| [0]https://sourceforge.net/p/gphoto/mailman/message/36174298/
| dmerrick wrote:
| It does not look like it does:
| http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php
| bronco21016 wrote:
| That table is why I posted the question.
|
| It's unclear if that's the list of supported cameras or if
| it's a list of cameras and only those with entries in the
| next two columns are supported.
|
| Either way I can't wait to get home and mess with it.
| ericol wrote:
| Hey! I was trying to do this a while back, and couldn't make it
| work.
|
| I followed the instructions in your post, and (Although it
| didn't work upfront) gave me the will to make it work ;)
|
| Little advice: I fixed my set up by finding the correct v4l2
| device, because video0 was already assigned. If you run:
|
| v4l2-ctl --list-devices
|
| it will tell you where v4l2 is plugged in your machine, in
| order to enter the correct command (That was the only part
| missing for my puzzle) as if you already have a webcam in your
| computer it will already /dev/video0 assigned, and the gphoto |
| ffmpeg piping gives too cryptic messages (It complains about
| the formats not being correct, while it should complain about
| it not being a v4l2 device)
| AdamMeghji wrote:
| Is this possible in MacOS at all? I have an RX100 V and an
| Elgato Camlink HD, but would love to use that capture card w
| another cam, and use the RX100 over USB simultaneously.
| evan_ wrote:
| Cascable Pro Webcam claims to support the RX100 V:
|
| https://cascable.se/pro-webcam/
|
| Compatibility table:
|
| https://cascable.se/help/compatibility/
| enjoylife wrote:
| It works for Mac brew install gphoto2
| brew install ffmpeg --with-ffplay gphoto2 --abilities
| # Abilities for camera : Sony Alpha-A6300
| (Control) # ... gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie
| | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0
| -f matroska - | ffplay -
|
| I'm piping it to ffplay, so tbd for compatibility into OBS or
| another app, but this will at least let you test your camera.
| Also, make sure your cameras usb mode is not set to "mass
| storage" but to a "Remote Camera Control".
| ceocoder wrote:
| can you try piping that to gstreamer?
| enjoylife wrote:
| Sure, not sure what gstreamer plugin/sink would create a
| loopback device, but this plays as well.
| gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec
| rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0 -f matroska - |
| gst-launch-1.0 fdsrc fd=0 ! decodebin ! videoconvert !
| videoscale ! autovideosink
| ceocoder wrote:
| Looks like both gphoto2 and ffmepg are available on homebrew,
| worth giving it a shot for sure. FWIW - I did end up building
| my own ffmpeg because debian default didn't have NVIDIA
| support. Want me to give it a try?
| rayshan wrote:
| Yes please! Would love to use my X-T30 as a webcam on my
| mac.
| dmerrick wrote:
| I'd love it if you gave it a try! I've already spent enough
| hours re-compiling ffmpeg to get nvenc support :)
| ceocoder wrote:
| Spoke too soon, v4l2loopback-utils is the missing piece
| on mac. Found this with a basic search[0], if anyone
| enterprising enough wants to take a crack at it
|
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/353168/how-can-
| i-c...
| webscalist wrote:
| Where does audio come from? From DSLR? If you need a separate
| mic, is there a/v sync issue?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yet another way that my Panasonic GX-1 can't capture video :(.
| It has a mini HDMI port, so I thought I could do it there, but
| it doesn't do live-view over HDMI, just playback.
| ReverseCold wrote:
| Oh no... I just got a capture card to use with my A7 III :(
|
| Will give this a shot, luckily I'm still in the return window.
|
| E: Works great! Make sure to enable "PC Control" in settings
| for other Sony cameras. I had it set to USB Mass Storage (which
| is maybe the default?)
| dillonmckay wrote:
| What card did you get?
| ReverseCold wrote:
| Razer Ripsaw HD - it's apparently equivalent to an Elgato
| HD60S, but most importantly it's actually in stock :)
| diroussel wrote:
| This should work in Zoom, as in the latest release of Zoom 5 they
| have re-enabled virtual webcam support.
| tpetry wrote:
| Why can zoom block a virtual camera? Couldn't the virtual
| camera just pretend to be like any other real camera?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's seemingly a MacOS Code Signing limitation.
|
| https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam/issues/4
| jiveturkey wrote:
| optional restriction, not limitation.
| comex wrote:
| The limitation is that CoreMediaIO plugins still run in-
| process (and not just in some daemon but in arbitrary
| application processes!), when Apple's direction for over
| a decade has been to move all plugin mechanisms towards
| an out-of-process model. There's nothing about video
| plugins in particular that would prevent them from being
| out-of-process; in fact, most of Apple's CoreMediaIO
| plugins _already_ have the bulk of the logic in a
| separate "assistant" process, but the IPC layer is
| reimplemented by each individual plugin rather than being
| done generically by CoreMediaIO itself. It's clear what
| has to happen, but Apple hasn't done it yet.
| galad87 wrote:
| Because an app can disable loading libraries/plugins signed
| with a different developer id certificate, and it seems Core
| Media IO wants to load the plugin in the actually app
| process, and it doesn't use an helper process.
| sschueller wrote:
| This is the downside of a walled garden and locked down
| devices. Of course many will say its for security and its
| wonderful but how much freedom are you willing to give up for
| security?
| colecut wrote:
| I'm unfortunately not seeing it in Zoom, even after
| reinstalling zoom.
|
| I see "OBS Virtual Camera" in the source list of Video Capture
| Device, so I know it's running.
|
| I do see Snap Cam (from SnapChat) listed in Zoom, so it doesn't
| seem to be a global virtual webcam block.
| johnboiles wrote:
| The Zoom release notes are a bit misleading. They didn't enable
| all virtual cameras, but instead a very specific list of
| virtual cameras. Here's how you can see that list
|
| strings /Applications/zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/nydus.fra
| mework/Versions/A/nydus | grep "Developer ID Application"
|
| A number of folks have reached out to Zoom support to request
| that my plugin be added. See the latest in
| https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam/issues/4 for
| details.
|
| I wouldn't fault Zoom for being restrictive about what they
| include in their allow list, since every addition adds risk,
| but it looks like they've already included closed-source
| applications from individuals as of 5.0.5. At least my code is
| open source and auditable!
| developer2 wrote:
| Doing that grep interestingly includes "Developer ID
| Application: NewTek, Inc. (W8U66ET244)", which may match the
| other comment thread[1] talking about NewTek's NDI Virtual
| Input (note: the top comment there mistyped "NewTek" as
| "MediaTek"). So using the NDI solution may work with Zoom
| without editing entitlements.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406438
| wilsmex wrote:
| Did @johnboiles get the 10k bounty that was put up (I think by
| Shopify CEO) for this plugin?
| johnboiles wrote:
| No but iirc the terms from @tobi were that the feature needs to
| be cross-platform and merged into the main OBS codebase. There
| is work happening on both of these fronts, and absolutely my
| goal is to get this plugin merged into OBS eventually. We'll
| figure out some sort of splitting scheme when that time comes.
| Vinnl wrote:
| More info can be found in the recently merged RFC for those
| interested: https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15
| supernintendo wrote:
| For anyone looking to set up a virtual OBS webcam in Arch Linux,
| here's how I did it:
|
| 1. Install headers for your Linux kernel: - sudo
| pacman -S linux56-headers
|
| 2. Install v4l2loopback-dkms from AUR: - git
| clone https://aur.archlinux.org/v4l2loopback-dkms.git
| - cd v4l2loopback-dkms - makepkg -scCi
|
| 3. Create a virtual video capture device: - sudo
| modprobe v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=10 card_label="OBS Cam"
| exclusive_caps=1
|
| 4. Set up a virtual audio device to avoid latency:
| - sudo modprobe snd-aloop index=10 id="OBS Mic" -
| pacmd 'update-source-proplist alsa_input.platform-
| snd_aloop.0.analog-stereo device.description="OBS Mic"'
|
| 5. Run ffmpeg: ffmpeg -an -probesize 32
| -analyzeduration 0 -listen 1 -i rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935/live/test
| -f v4l2 -vcodec rawvideo /dev/video10
|
| 6. Setup OBS to stream to ffmpeg: - File >
| Settings > Stream, set Service to "Custom..." and "Server" to
| `rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935/live/test`
|
| 7. Setup low latency streaming: - File > Settings
| > Output, set Buffer Size to 0, CPU Usage Preset to "ultrafast"
| and Tune to "zerolatency".
|
| 8. Start Streaming in OBS.
|
| 9. Select your virtual camera and audio devices in Google Meet /
| Zoom / etc.
|
| I get virtually no latency with this setup but I'm running an AMD
| Ryzen 7 2700X with 32GB of RAM. As always, YMMV.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| I recently tried to do some work on making a virtual camera, and
| was shocked to see just how difficult it is, let alone making
| something cross-platform. Anyone know of any projects that are
| trying to make this easier to hack on?
| johnboiles wrote:
| Not sure about cross-platform, but for macOS I started this
| plugin by creating a minimal virtual camera:
| https://github.com/johnboiles/coremediaio-dal-minimal-exampl...
|
| @seanchas116 made a Swift port of my minimal example
| https://github.com/seanchas116/SimpleDALPlugin
|
| Overall it _was_ very difficult! Apple's documentation and
| sample code for CoreMediaIO DAL (virtual camera) plugins are
| terrible. I just brute forced it for hours trying all sorts of
| different combinations of things before I got something to
| work.
| andrekandre wrote:
| this is fantastic, i wish i had your example when i worked on
| mine (closed source)... it was the same for me, total brute
| force
|
| ... and apples examples are in c++ but i ended up doing it
| using straight c out of frustration since thier (c++)
| examples were so convoluted
| farisjarrah wrote:
| This project seems like its the farthest along in this endeavor
| on linux:
|
| https://github.com/umlaeute/v4l2loopback
| alpb wrote:
| I've been using this repo for a while now and it's a champ. It
| has been making my webcam rock, as OBS does a great job chroma
| key'ing green screen behind me. Plus I can add effects as I wish.
|
| Thanks for reminding this and I'll make a donation to this
| person. Hope this becomes the actual implementation and he gets
| the $10k bounty by @tobi.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Been hoping to use this but it just brings my MBP 2019 to it's
| knees, like actually feels dangerously hot about 30 seconds after
| activating it.
|
| Windows version doing the same thing feels light as a feather
| when running (3% CPU, <10% GPU usage)
| aksss wrote:
| May go without saying but disabling the video preview really
| helps resource usage.
| johnboiles wrote:
| Whoa I didn't even know this was an OBS feature and
| (obviously) I've spent a good bit of time with OBS :)
|
| I'll definitely be using this!
| johnboiles wrote:
| FWIW there's definitely some performance optimization that
| could be done in my plugin. Three things I know of:
|
| 1) Potentially an entire framebuffer memory copy could be
| avoided if we could get CMBlockBufferCreateWithMemoryBlock to
| work. See the CMSampleBufferCreateFromDataNoCopy method
| (currently unused -- linked below) in my code. It mostly worked
| but the virtual camera video wouldn't show up at full
| resolution in OBS, which is how I typically test while
| developing. Not sure why it wasn't working; possible it's an
| obscure OBS bug.
|
| https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam/blob/master...
|
| 2) It might also be possible to get the virtual camera to
| advertise one of the pixel formats that OBS supports natively
| which would avoid the pixel format conversion in the CPU. I
| _bet_ this is where the majority of the performance hit from my
| plugin happens. I'm not sure if this is possible, however.
| Maybe OBS doesn't natively support any formats you can use for
| virtual cameras.
|
| https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam/issues/102
|
| 3) If #2 isn't possible, maybe the pixel format transformation
| could happen on the GPU? I don't know much about GPU
| programming but maybe this would help.
| buglite wrote:
| Right now there is an open issue about a performance
| degradation in the last versions of OBS for macOS.
|
| https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/2841
|
| I don't know if it is correlated to your problem though.
| trillic wrote:
| 13" or 15"? Dedicated GPU? Looking for some more info before I
| attempt to use it on my machine.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| 13" no GPU.
| codazoda wrote:
| Make sure the power adapter is connected at the right (not
| left) side of the MBP.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Don't have a choice, my MBP only has two ports on the left
| side.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| i'm marveling at how well this comment exemplifies everything
| that's wrong with USB-C.
| Dunedan wrote:
| That's not related to problems with USB-C, but to Apple
| messing up their hardware design. This was discussed
| recently here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22957573
| groobongithub wrote:
| My experience has been that my MBP gets hot if I try to share a
| specific window. Switching from a window as a source, to a full
| screen source has improved OBS performance quite a bit.
|
| And I do use this plugin.
| wastedhours wrote:
| Tangentially related, I've seen that behaviour with Google
| Meet as well. Sharing a specific tab takes a much bigger
| performance hit than sharing the whole screen.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Tab sharing has code _deep_ into the Blink rendering
| engine... To the extent that it 's actually possible to
| share a specific <div> or other HTML element, even if it
| isn't visible! (Not sure if you can do that from
| javascript, but you can totally do it from C++)
|
| The side effects seems to be that a bunch of the code that
| prevents the same thing being re-rendered with every frame
| if it hasn't changed gets bypassed, and I'd bet that kills
| performance.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| What surface were you using your laptop on? IMO Apple made the
| design choice to be hot as hell on some surfaces as a trade off
| for other advantages, so maybe some of the fault is not on this
| software.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Wooden table.
| oger wrote:
| Finally. I've been waiting / looking for a decent solution for
| quite a while now...
| wegs wrote:
| What was wrong with CamTwist? I've been using OBS+CamTwist to
| do this for years now. I mean, this will save a couple minutes
| setup time, but it's not like that wasn't decent.
| BrandonSmith wrote:
| CamTwist requires disabling macOS SIP. For many this is too
| high bar.
| rcarmo wrote:
| You can also use MediaTek's NDI Virtual Input with some desktop
| apps (like Skype), but I personally use this with OBS to do two
| things:
|
| - Send out a composite overlay (screen capture + webcam + lower
| thirds) on Teams/Skype/etc.
|
| - Send out screen capture from another machine (usually OBS to
| OBS via NDI and then out via this plugin)
|
| OBS is a lot of fun, but, alas, extremely demanding on system
| resources in some configurations, enough that I've started
| considering getting a new machine solely for video conferencing.
| aksss wrote:
| Ha, OBS was the straw that broke the camels back on my work
| laptop, performance-wise. Built an AMD desktop system and it's
| been glorious - forgot what I was missing. Now the laptop
| mostly sits in a bag.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| This works well, when it works, but it seemed like at least
| with my setup it seriously exacerbated performance problems.
| Using the older OBS -> Zoom Windows solution of swapping out a
| video api DLL ("virtual camera") never caused performance
| problems but stopped working when Zoom started integrity
| checking/whitelisting all libraries[1]. I switched to the NDI
| solution which seems to be more "official" but gave up on using
| it as it would consistently work fine for a while, and then
| framerate would drop to <2 per second. This was on a reasonably
| new/high end machine (X1 Carbon 6th gen) with hardware video
| encoding in OBS so it almost seems less like an absolute
| performance problem and more like some kind of lock
| competition, but I didn't really dig into it very deep at all -
| it's possible that the NDI stack was doing some software
| encoding I wasn't aware of and that was just too much.
|
| [1] this happened in the middle of all the zoom bombing and
| I've seen an allegation that Zoom did this to intentionally
| nerf that OBS -> Zoom pathway as it was found to have been used
| by many zoom bombers, but I have no idea if this is true so
| don't get out pitchforks about it.
| mistersquid wrote:
| Searching for "MediaTek NDI Virtual Input" does not turn up
| results with "MediaTek" for me. Did you mean "NewTek" or
| another NDI tool?
|
| I couldn't find an NDI product for macOS from NewTek.
| kfriede wrote:
| Yes, it's NewTek. Specifically you're looking for this page:
| https://ndi.tv/tools/#download-tools
| EricE wrote:
| https://ndi.tv/tools/
|
| He's talking about the poorly named NDI Scan Converter
| m0shen wrote:
| Pretty sure he's talking about the NDI Virtual Input (which
| acts as a virtual camera on Windows)
| fsflyer wrote:
| NewTek does NDI for Mac. The tools and SDK are available for
| Mac.
|
| https://ndi.tv/tools/
|
| The OBS NDI plugin is not part of OBS proper, but available
| separately:
|
| https://github.com/Palakis/obs-ndi/releases
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Use Wirecast instead. It works better.
|
| OBS just isn't for macOS users. If you record video with it it'll
| be corrupted. The performance is bad. It's for people who stream
| to Twitch on a Windows computer.
|
| The real problem is that the macOS security model broke virtual
| cameras in the latest version of Zoom.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| Can you substantiate any of your claims? I've used OBS on macOS
| for a long time and your experience doesn't correspond to mine.
|
| It's true that there are some performance concerns and hardware
| encoding isn't available for streaming purposes on macOS due
| Apple's Video Toolbox API not exposing the appropriate encoder
| options.
|
| However, I doubt that OBS would be responsible for corrupted
| video. It uses the industry-standard x264 encoder -- if there's
| a problem with the video, it derives from (A) your settings,
| and (B) x264. I'm more inclined to believe A than B.
|
| I'm more than happy to use Wirecast if you'll pay for a
| licence. I and most other people, mostly amateurs, don't have a
| spare US$599 lying around.
| weakwire wrote:
| Finally!
| skrowl wrote:
| DroidCam (works on iOS too despite the name)
| https://www.dev47apps.com/ works great on Windows if you're
| looking for an alternative on a business / gaming OS and you have
| a smartphone (or tablet).
|
| I've used it with Zoom / Google Meet / Discord and it's never
| failed me.
| dfabulich wrote:
| I don't understand what problem OBS solves. It records video, but
| Windows and macOS already come with video recorders built in.
|
| So OBS is better somehow. How? Why is OBS better than built-in OS
| recorders?
| dbbk wrote:
| It does more than record video. The use case I have for it is
| applying green screen to a camera feed, and then being able to
| pipe that video into an app that doesn't natively support green
| screens (ie Google Meet)
| aloer wrote:
| Is the project linked here what you use to add OBS output to
| a video call or is there another way?
|
| What would I do if I want the enhanced stream to be piped to
| screen share instead of webcam? Most video chat solutions
| will show webcam and shared screen differently
| rzzzt wrote:
| VirtualCam was already a thing, but only for Windows (not
| sure what is the backstory behind the more recent version
| being maintained by someone else; I think I'm using
| catxfish's version):
| https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-virtualcam.539/
|
| OBS has full desktop as well as window capturing
| capabilities, so if you only want to show the contents of a
| single window, you would add a "window capture" item to
| your scene: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-
| studio/wiki/Sources-Guide#...
|
| ...then select "VirtualCam" from the Tools menu, and click
| "Start" to start sending images to the selected virtual
| camera. These virtual devices appear in eg. Zoom, so if you
| select it and enable video within the app, others will see
| 5 faces and Visual Studio Code having a conversation.
|
| (Of course you can add more sources to the scene, aligning
| them appropriately, so you can have your face in the corner
| alongside the captured window.)
| mdszy wrote:
| OBS is primarily for _streaming_.
|
| It also has a lot of advanced features beyond simple recording
| of a video source or your screen.
|
| ALSO the name is literally "open broadcaster studio"
|
| Maybe take two seconds to investigate what you're talking about
| before making comments like this. Sheesh.
| marcinzm wrote:
| OBS let's you edit video on the fly and the pipe the output
| somewhere else. For example, you can take the video of you
| playing a game, add a video of your face from your webcam to
| the corner, add text overlays of your channel name and then
| send the result to twitch.
| wilsjacob wrote:
| OBS and SLOBS are internal capture++. They allow for more
| complex multi-scene/input (mic and video) setups and allow you
| to setup configured "scenes" that are comprised of multiple
| things. Think of them as the difference between either having a
| stream or a recording that is just you or your screen versus
| having a professional style multi-input shoot like a news
| channel with tickers and graphics included.
| sosborn wrote:
| OBS is essentially a live video production studio. Multiple
| scenes, multiple sources, title cards, etc. can all be
| controlled with OBS on the fly as you stream.
| EricE wrote:
| "OBS is essentially a live video production studio. Multiple
| scenes, multiple sources, title cards, etc. can all be
| controlled with OBS on the fly as you stream."
|
| This. And you can have multiple layouts (scenes) and quickly
| switch between them. It's a video switcher on steroids.
| greggyb wrote:
| It's not about recording so much as managing a broadcast. You
| can configure many inputs which include external video (e.g. a
| webcam), media on the machine (recorded video or images), and
| screens on the device, and outputting this as a unified stream.
| This stream may be passed on as a virtual video device, which
| other programs can use, or to a stream host (e.g. Twitch), or
| be recorded.
|
| These various inputs can be arranged into "scenes" for easy
| management and switching among them.
|
| If all you need to do is record the raw video from a video
| device, you don't need OBS.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Game streaming (like Twitch) is an extremely common use case
| for OBS, and it's a great demonstration of what's possible. A
| lot of streamers will broadcast a composite of their screen,
| their webcam (often with green-screen masking), a feed of
| their chat, and various other graphics. All of this is pretty
| straightforward to do with OBS, and would be a significant
| effort to build otherwise.
| colecut wrote:
| OBS does much more than let you record with your webcam.. You
| can import a Window capture device, or a Display capture
| device, or set up a combination of different windows (Display
| capture with Webcam capture overlaid in the corner for example,
| like most modern tutorials)
|
| OBS is feature rich, the native video recorder is no
| comparison.
| some-guy wrote:
| Slight tangent, does anyone know of any virtual "audio" device
| (in Mac OS or Windows) that you can attach VSTs / AUs to? I know
| that technically Zoom allows you to share computer audio but a
| controlled audio device would allow more granular control of the
| input.
| philsnow wrote:
| One of these (probably Loopback?) should work
| https://rogueamoeba.com/
|
| I don't know of free, good alternatives.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| Free: iShowU Audio, Soundflower
|
| Paid: Loopback, Audio Hijack, Sound Siphon
| savoyard wrote:
| BlackHole [1] is a modern alternative to Soundflower.
|
| [1] https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole
| jack_maris wrote:
| Seconding blackhole, in my experience it works as well as
| Soundflower worked 5 years ago
| omnimus wrote:
| Unfortuntely i think you need to use both Audio Hijack and
| Loopback together. It's a combo from same developer.
|
| It's quality software but a bit unintuitive how to set this up.
| First you create virtual audio source in loopback then with
| audio hijack you can route adjusted audio to this source you
| can't route to normal outputs. Also you need to have hijack
| turned on "record" for the effects to work.
|
| But after that it works pretty well and you can add pretty cool
| things like... you can record both raw input and procesed input
| and route to your destination at the same time. Or you can mix
| in other apps like music into recording/routing.
|
| Sidenote I've also tried BlackHole and unfortunately didn't
| have too much luck with it. It somehow worked as Loopback
| alternative but i think Loopback / Hijack share same audio
| drivers/code so integration seems smoother.
| adamzegelin wrote:
| Soundflower + AULab (download from
| https://developer.apple.com/download/more/), both free.
|
| Alt AULab link, without the requirement of an Apple ID to
| download: https://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| Maybe Soundflower?
| https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/soundflower/
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