OBS to VLC (DirectShow Output or similar)

[Refried]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this has been requested already. But, using vlc to stream or in capture mode, there is an option under Capturemode: Directshow to select a video device. I would like OBS to be the video device. I.e. act like a webcam itself, and anything that is either being previewed or streamed with OBS can be captured using vlc under Capture Device.

If there is already a plugin like this, please point me to it.

Thanks.

 

[broo0ose]

I was looking for this as well. It would be a killer feature.

I'd like to use OBS as a studio for Google Hangouts, so I could just select OBS as a webcam device from within Hangouts and then direct my output showing videos etc. from OBS.

 

[Refried]

Yes. It's a major feature in most of the other broadcasting software, not sure why it isn't high priority. I suppose more "important" features are being focused on rather than a major element that could be integrated into OBS. My guess is they're just trying to figure out how to make the program go pay-to-use. But, there is no way I'd pay for it without such a feature...

 

[Jack0r]

First of all, this has been requested a few times, you can probably count the forum topics on one hand though.
Second, there is no plan to make anyone pay-to-use OBS, there never was and thanks to the awesome Jim, probably never will be. It is an open source project and you are free to write code for it and add the DirectShow Driver yourself. Or pay a coder you know to write it.
Third, we replied to several of the above mentioned Topics explaining that it is a pain in the butt to write a DirectShow driver. If I remember correct, Jim added that he could think about writing one in the future. After OBS, or now OBS-Studio, is more finished and polished. It is simply a less important feature for the things OBS wants to do. RTMP streaming and recording to disk.
Using OBS as a webcam input in skype, some live chat website, or whatever else you could do with that, was never a priority.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-skype-camera-source.10062/
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/virtual-camera-output.5453/
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/output-to-virtual-webcam-device.4010/
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/request-virtual-camera-output.358/

 

[Refried]

Yes. And you replied to those in your over familiar arrogant and anti-supportive tone. I get it. But, you're not Jim, and though you may have a heavy influence by being able to whisper in his ear, with enough people wanting this feature he may just realize it is worth his time, unlike you, which is why I made this post back then to begin with.
And you notice how you never highlight these "priorities" you speak of? Maybe you should look into that, because I've been using OBS since Alpha, and outside of stability, it's pretty much remained what was expected. And if I recall, it was the communities and users idea to add the ability for animated images to be supported, etc. So, all in all, this feature may just be worth a shot, no?

You're a mod, great, congratulations, but don't make it your world and try to have an open mind. Or... just keep locking threads for living it's up to you.

 

[Lain]

Hey, listen I realize that you're frustrated that I haven't implemented things you need yet, but jack0r didn't mean any harm. He understandably got frustrated with your prior response, where you had speculated that "they're (probably) just trying to figure out how to make the program go pay-to-use" (and no, we are not and will not, besides it would be fairly pointless being a GPL licensed program). The mods here have to deal with these sort of responses all the time and they can get frustrated too, we're just people like anyone else. But generally we have no problems with people expressing that frustration when the things they need aren't in yet, it's perfectly normal.

I'm guessing you don't follow the twitter, our bug tracker, or the main git repository, hence you do not know what we're up to. Perhaps I should communicate it on the forums as well just to keep people up to date who don't know how to track the project's activity. So the fact that you don't know what's going on with the project is probably just my fault more than anything, I really should have a thread on it or something on the forums for everyone to see, although I haven't really had much time at all for the forums lately.

So just to clear things up and let you know what's going on, right now, the focus has been getting it up to feature parity with the classic obs, I'd like to replace it completely with obs studio for a number of reasons (performance, features, extensibility, major design improvements). You can always browse our repository to see what we're working on or what's actively being changed/added. For 0.14.0 I added nvenc, alt-cropping, deinterlacing, another awesome contributor just finished quicksync. A tremendous amount of bug fixes and minor features. 0.14.0 is going to be out in a few days at most now.

If you're wondering why it takes a significant amount of time, it's because I am currently the only person actively working on it full time. Sometimes I get contributions like quicksync, but it hasn't been happening much lately so I've just been working on what I can.

Feature parity is number one priority because I'd like to get the original version of obs deprecated. Remaining features are: image slide show, network interface selection. There's also the front-end api, which will enable more plugins like the scene switcher and things like that. All those items are fairly trivial (thank god), and after that feature parity is pretty much complete. Expect to see those all hopefully completed by 0.15.0 or 0.16.0.

After feature parity, we're going to relaunch the site and I'm going to be focusing entirely on new features, and like I said it will include directshow output. It's been requested a fair number of times so it'll probably be one of the first ones I do just to get out of the way.

Sorry to make you guys wait on it, it's just been unavoidably slow because I can only do so much at once.

The repository: https://github.com/jp9000/obs-studio
Bug/feature tracker: https://obsproject.com/mantis
Twitter: https://twitter.com/obsproject -- @obsproject