As explained in part two of this series, OBS is a tool that makes it possible to create your ‘virtual camera’.
We can use this camera in conferencing tools like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google meet, Signal, and so on.
OBS is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, so it will probably work on your system as well.
In this part I’m going to explain how to get and install OBS, then we’re going to use it together with the chromakey screen.
I’ll focus on the virtual camera support, but the OBS suite can do a lot more.
It is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.
It allows you to apply filters, supports NFI (via a plug-in) and much more.
OBS can be found on the OBS project website.
Here you’ll find a support forum as well, there is an active community helping you out on problems you might face.
For now let’s download the software.
Select your operating system en press ‘Download Installer’.
When you’re using Linux, it’s a bit harder.
If your distribution does not offer OBS Studio as a package, you’ll have to build it yourself.
Luckily the build instructions are not that hard to follow.
On the Mac or on Windows, the process is straight-forward.
After downloading the installer, just run it, and follow the given steps.
As it gives you the question for what it should be optimised for, I did choose 'streaming'.
You are able to change this later on in the 'Profile menu', when you select 'New'.
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In the first part of the small series about videoconferencing, I talked about the hardware.
As promised, this time it’s all about the software, and you don’t have to spend any money on it!
All the software we’re going to use here is open source.
This means it’s free to download, install and use!
Best of all, you are able to contribute to the projects as well, perhaps you’re a gifted developer that can improve the program.
Then give your improvements back to the community!
For now, let’s have a look at the programs you might want to download.
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Since most of us are more or less forced to work from home, we’re using Zoom, Google meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack or other videoconferencing programs to keep in touch with each other.
Even though most programs allow you to blur your background or replace it with a nice image, it isn’t ideal and the quality isn’t that good.
On the other hand, you don’t want to be in a situation that you’re in the middle of an important meeting, and find out that you forgot to clean up that pile of laundry or other private goods that you rather don’t show to the outer world.
This is why I thought it would be nice to create a short series that helps you to professionalize your video conferencing setup.
The focus is to keep a tight budget, let’s say about 150 Euro of hardware.
We only will use open source programs to create your virtual environment you want to be in.
This isn’t only a thing that is just fun to do, but I’ll show other possibilities as well.
For example: You are able to place yourself in front of your PowerPoint presentation.
In the end, you’ll be able to create an end-result like this:
For this short demo I used free video footage available on videezy and vidveo.
If you want to use their free available products, remember to link to them and give the proper credits to them as well.
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