Hi Aaron, thanks for responding. What I am trying to do is use OBS for green screen and recording anything that would include just me talking on camera. What I am using Boomcaster for is if I needed to bring in one or multiple guests, similar to Zoom.
Okay I guess. If I understand correctly, I solved that problem with two copies of OBS on the same machine:
- One (Master) directly feeds the meeting via the Virtual Camera. The feel there is very much like a live stream, except that it's not actually recording or streaming anywhere, except the VCam that the meeting picks up directly.
- The other (Slave) window-captures the meeting, and has another scene for the Master's VCam. This one produces the local display and the recording, and could stream as well if I wanted to but I haven't found a good reason.
The Slave is entirely automated to follow the Master, using the
Advanced Scene Switcher plugin, so that the operator's workload is not much different from a normal stream to feed the meeting. The Master's scenes have a naming convention so that its copy of Adv. SS can do some text filtering on the current one and send the appropriate WebSocket message to its counterpart in the Slave, which switches that scene to match.
The Master copy of Adv. SS also sends commands to control a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that handles all of the audio. OBS is picture-only in this rig, except as absolutely necessary to play videos in the Master (which goes immediately to the DAW, which *then* feeds the meeting and everything else) and record in the Slave (which comes completely finished from the DAW).
(at the moment, those control commands actually come from manipulating a 20kHz sine that is generated in the DAW and returned back to the DAW, since OSC support - Open Sound Control - in Adv. SS is still in early development)
Any meeting should work, as long as it takes a camera and a mic, and feeds a display and speakers. All except the display are virtualized, but it doesn't know that or care. Specifically, I'm using
Jitsi, which is a free open-source one that has its client in a web browser. No software to install, at least not on a desktop: phones and tablets still need an app. The open-source part actually refers to the server, which you can install on your own machine, and be entirely self-contained. I haven't done that part; the community server seems to be fine for us:
https://meet.jit.si/<YourNameHere>
Either way, whether you install it on your machine or use the community one, the server creates a named meeting automatically on the first request, and deletes it when the last person leaves. Anyone who requests the same name at the same time is connected. You can set it up for a password if you want, but we've never had a problem with just our unique name. No accounts, no limits. Open-source.
For the first one I did, I had it record to Dropbox, but found it was much easier to have a second copy of OBS to window-capture and record locally myself.
This rig is not started manually, but by a script that configures everything the same way, *then* starts both copies of OBS with the
--multi flag so they don't complain about each other, waits for the user to say it's done, and then tears it all back down again leaving the system exactly as it was before. Just run the script, wait for the "Done" button to appear, and run the meeting. Then click the "Done" button, and wait for the script to exit.
