Webcam buffer

doomkittenplays

New Member
What's the likelihood of implementing the ability to decrease the webcam buffer into the negative range?

I found one old topic about this and was curious if it's gone anywhere since then, and if not in OBS, then possibly in MP?
 

Jack0r

The Helping Squad
Well, if you help us invent a time-machine, this would be easy to do.
But in general its a very complicated thing. For a webcam "buffer" in the negative range you would have to buffer everything else instead. The complete video and audio input of your current scene needs to be buffered (apart of the webcam) and this before its encoded which means it would take an awful amount of disk space for just a few seconds, not talking about the speed problems.
 

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
I don't think you understand what a buffer is. A buffer is basically a chunk of memory where you can put data while it's waiting to be added to the OBS frame.

Think of it like this: let's say you and your friend are peeling and slicing potatoes. You peel, they slice. You are peeling away, and you put all the peeled potatoes into a bowl. Your friend grabs peeled potatoes from the bowl to slice them. The bowl is a buffer: it's a place for potatoes to wait until they are taken by someone else.

In the same way, the webcam buffer is a place for frames from the webcam to go before OBS grabs them to add to each frame that gets streamed out. If you have a bigger buffer, then OBS will wait for the buffer to fill before taking frames off, starting with the oldest one. So by increasing the buffer, you increase the amount of time before OBS starts grabbing frames, which is what causes a delay. OBS uses a buffer for some devices out of necessity due to the way the devices work, and the ability for a buffer to delay a webcam is honestly kind of coincidental.

Thus, it doesn't make sense to ask for a "negative buffer" -- that would be like asking for a potato bowl with negative space for potatoes. You would have to do what Jack0r said: delay everything else. And that isn't really very practical.
 

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
The reason you can do that with the mic is because there is already a buffer for the mic, too, but it works differently from the webcam buffer. Basically, with the mic buffer, you can shorten it compared to the rest of the scene already to make it come out earlier. But the same can't be done with the webcam since they both work very differently internally to OBS. Also, video buffers are much, much larger than audio buffers, so they are more demanding.
 
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