How to add Borders, Backgrounds, Effects, Camera angles, and dynamic content to Your Video Call Using OBS on Ubuntu 22.04

Source: srcco.de/posts/using-obs…

For the backgrounds to work you;ll need a solid color background. I ordered this green screen: amzn.to/2ZhoAkK.

I use Google meets, but this should work with any video conferencing software. (Google meets should be rolling out virtual backgrounds, and blurring in the coming months.) From: cloud.google.com/blog/pr…

Install OBS

sudo snap install obs-studio

Install V4L2

sudo apt install v4l2loopback-dkms

Create dummy video device, and make is persist across reboots.

create the config file:

nano -w /etc/modules-load.d/obscam.conf

Add the below contents:

v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=10 card_label="OBS Cam" exclusive_caps=1

Next time you reboot the module should be automatically loaded. Manually add the module with the currently running system:

sudo modprobe v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=10 card_label="OBS Cam" exclusive_caps=1

OBS Plugin obs-v4l2sink

NOTE: This step is no longer necessary in modern version of OBS. As it is now a base feature. You may need to restart OBS to see the new “Start Virtual Cam” button to appear.

You may have to install libobs, and libobs-dev

sudo apt install libobs libobs-dev

Download and Compile OBS plugin obs-v4l2sink

sudo apt install qtbase5-dev
git clone --recursive https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio.git
git clone https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-v4l2sink.git
cd obs-v4l2sink
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DLIBOBS_INCLUDE_DIR="../../obs-studio/libobs" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
make -j4
sudo make install

Now start OBS Studio and configure the V4L2 video output to /dev/video10 via the new menu item “Tools”->”V4L2 Video Output”:

Add a Chromakey filter.

Here is a good guide: gamingcareers.com/guides…

Add border, presets, LUTs, transitions, etc…

Add scenes like thank you, thumbs up, screen sharing, other camera angles etc…

Using Google Meet with the Virtual Camera

Start a Google Meet via meet.google.com/ and go to settings:

More Reading

Pretty cool virtual background way from scratch: elder.dev/posts/open-sou…

Another cool virtual background: github.com/floe/deepback…

I’m also testing Webcamoid: webcamoid.github.io/. (Seems to crash quite a bit.)