OBS Studio in Lubuntu VMPlayer: Window (Screen) Capture does not work

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PeterStu

New Member
Hello
I am trying to get OBS Studio to record a Window Capture source. The running apps/windows are listed correctly, however OBS Studio only shows a black preview screen instead of the selected window. Interestingly the Display Capture source works. I would very much appreciate help.

I am running OBS Studio 30.0.2 (snap install) on LUbuntu 24.04.1 within a VMWare Workstation 17 Player.
Thanks.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
PeterStu said:
(snap install)...within a VMWare Workstation 17 Player.
Click to expand...
One or the other of those might be the problem.

Snap is a container/sandbox. It's meant for security and (mostly) guaranteed compatibility. OBS needs direct access to a lot of system resources to work well, which doesn't quite work from an intentionally isolated sandbox. You can nickel-and-dime all of that access so that it does work, but then you've negated the security part and kept the inefficiency. A container/sandbox might be what's needed to make OBS work *at all* on some systems, but if you can possibly install it natively and have it work, do!

Virtual Machines do emulate a graphics card / GPU, but not very well, and with not very good features. Similar for other physical resources. Yes, things run in there, but you can't do as much as you can with a bare-metal install. If everything you need works, that's great - I used to use a bunch of VM's myself until the need went away - but some things can only be done directly on the real hardware.
Have you considered dual-booting?
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
I suspect is the Window in VMware Player and GPU rendering being your issue (but could easily be something else)
So, I'd start with doing full display capture (2nd or 3rd monitor, or whatever) instead of Window
And you may want/need to play with your VM GPU settings... if not gaming, probably turn off 3D (or test by turning on, etc)
And different hardware GPU, driver and Host OS settings all come into play (with OBS Studio normally trying to access Host GPU directly)
Then you have video rendering inside your Linux guest VM

For security/stability reasons, I get why you'd want to run OBS Studio inside a VM ... but doing so is NOT recommended... others have made it work, but expect to really dive deep on technical details, and even then will depend on your system specifics.
You can run OBS Studio in portable mode on Host OS (no admin permissions required), so install in own, restricted, profile if need be

If for whatever reason you really need OBS Studio working inside a VM... then expect to spend a decent amount of time working out an exact setup that will work
 
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