The files for the loopback device need to be built for the Linux kernel on your machine. The steps to download, build and install the loopback device and the plugin are embedded as gist at the end. Once installed, it is available in OBS under Tools. Thus, my output from OBS can be made accessed as a webcam in tools like Webex, Teams, Alfaview, Slack, Zoom and others.įor OBS to write to the virtual device, it needs to have the plugin obs-v4l2sink (V4L2 Video Output) installed. I am using a so-called virtual loopback device provided by v4l2loopback to make my output stream available as new input device. The latter, V4L2 - version 2 of V4L, is a set of drivers and utilities for video capturing and processing. It allows to combine multiple sources, add effects and either record or stream the result to various platforms and formats. The former is a powerful tool for video recording and live streaming.

The main ingredients to the virtual camera are OBS Studio (or just OBS) and Video4Linux (V4L / V4L2). So what is needed to create a virtual camera with OBS Studio and can you use a green screen for some beach feeling like shown? As usual, this is how I remember all the interesting stuff. It required to recompile some file and reminded me that I wanted to blog about it.

For some time now, I have been using OBS Studio ( Open Broadcaster Software) to create a virtual camera on my Linux system. Similar to many of you, part of my work and hobbies consists of video conferencing.

Obs for linux