# Is it possible to change the OBS virtual camera offline image?



## astrovan14 (Oct 2, 2020)

With the OBS-VirtualCam plugin, the output of the virtual camera would be just plain gray when virtualcam was disabled, which was nice if you turned on your camera before you started virtualcam and didn't want to be distracting in your meeting, but now for obs 26, the virtual camera shows a logo when offline, which is non-ideal. Is there a way to change that?


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## R1CH (Oct 2, 2020)

You can replace the placeholder.png in C:\Program Files\obs-studio\data\obs-plugins\win-dshow but note it will revert after an update.


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## astrovan14 (Oct 3, 2020)

epic thanks.


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## kidjck (Oct 16, 2020)

I've literally the same question but on mac? I can't find a "placeholder.png" file on my hard disc. Is it named differently?


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## Honkis (Oct 30, 2020)

R1CH said:


> You can replace the placeholder.png in C:\Program Files\obs-studio\data\obs-plugins\win-dshow but note it will revert after an update.


When I did that OBS crashes every time I try and load it up. The crash log shows the file location as obs-virtualcam-module64.dll How can i fix this?


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## R1CH (Oct 30, 2020)

Make sure you're saving it in the same format (24 bit PNG, 1920x1080).


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## Lloyd Black (Nov 12, 2020)

The change may work with the "VirtualCam" plug-in (which I had been using) but OBS now has the new "OBS virtual camera" built-in. I changed the placeholder image for the plug-in but with the new feature it still shows the OBS placeholder and not the image I replaced it with. So, I'm guessing the new built-in one is totally different but uses the same placeholder image. I found out because the image I tried to replace it with matches "placeholder.png" but it's still showing the OBS image and not what I replaced it with. Is there a different image filename for the new "OBS Virtual Camera"? Any idea what it's called and where it's at?


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## Lloyd Black (Nov 12, 2020)

Lloyd Black said:


> The change may work with the "VirtualCam" plug-in (which I had been using) but OBS now has the new "OBS virtual camera" built-in. I changed the placeholder image for the plug-in but with the new feature it still shows the OBS placeholder and not the image I replaced it with. So, I'm guessing the new built-in one is totally different but uses the same placeholder image. I found out because the image I tried to replace it with matches "placeholder.png" but it's still showing the OBS image and not what I replaced it with. Is there a different image filename for the new "OBS Virtual Camera"? Any idea what it's called and where it's at?


Ok, I tried to edit my post, I just quoted, I found the solution to my own problem. Changing the placeholder.png does work with the new feature but in order for it to show up I needed to restart my system. It's amazing what problems get resolved by doing a simple restart. I feel like an idiot but I guess as long as I learn something it's not a total mistake.

By the way, originally, Zoom did try to block the OBS VirtualCam plug-in, at least that was my experience. However, I was able to get around that by doing a little registry hacking to change the name of what Zoom was looking for. They don't seem to be blocking the new feature yet as far as I know. Zoom meetings are just more fun using OBS.


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## brokenantler (Jan 21, 2021)

Just to follow up to those trying to do this on a mac, there's another placeholder image located here:
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin/Contents/Resources/placeholder.png

Easiest way here is from Finder, Choose Go> Go to Folder and paste the location. You will likely have to edit permissions of the image and or containing folder for write access, but this is the PNG that changes the default placeholder when OBS virtual cam isn't running.


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