Face Cam blue screen/green screen for Discord?

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Level 2

151 points

Face Cam blue screen/green screen for Discord?

Hello,

(My question today isn't specially about Final Cut, but after searching the other communities sections I thought maybe here would be the best chance to find an answer.)

I need to get rid of my face cam's background for use in Discord video calls.

As far as I can tell the only way of accomplishing this is to get a blue screen, and then to use an app that can edit the video feed and out put it as a virtual camera (so that I can select the already edited video feed as a camera in Discord).

I've only been able to find one app/plugin that does this, and that's OBS virtual camera. The issue with that is that it's only available for Windows!

Does anyone know an app/plugin for Mac that can do this?

Is there another way of getting rid of a face cam's background for Discord?

Thank you.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jul 21, 2021 11:37 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

fox_m

Level 6

13,244 points

Jul 21, 2021 8:09 PM in response to coxorange

Apparently OBS does have Chroma Key available on Macs, but the back end of the features are based on XCode and so need a slightly different approach to access. This video has Mac specific OBS/Chroma Key information, just skip the first 30 seconds of the video - they're selling stuff...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz6kFuzCo7Q

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Answer 2

Jul 22, 2021 3:58 AM in response to coxorange

FWIW: I started OBS, clicked on "Start Virtual Camera" and I was immediately able to:

a) Record directly to FCP - "OBS Virtual Cam" appears as a choice in the Import Window, just like the built-in camera

b) Use the OBS Virtual Cam as a source in Zoom

I applied the Chroma Key filter in OBS, and it just worked.

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Answer 3

Jul 21, 2021 1:18 PM in response to coxorange

OBS works on the mac.

Zoom calls work well with a greenscreen but I don’t know if it can work as a virtual camera (I think it might).

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Answer 4

terryb

Level 4

3,358 points

Jul 21, 2021 12:53 PM in response to coxorange

Have you considered iMovie? Use the green-screen effect in iMovie on Mac:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210891

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Answer 5

coxorange Author

Level 2

151 points

Jul 21, 2021 5:19 PM in response to terryb

Thank you.

What I need is for the background of my face cam to be replaced live during video calls.

As far as I am aware iMovie can only key out the background of pre-recorded clips, not live for use during a video call session.

Or has this changed?

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Answer 6

coxorange Author

Level 2

151 points

Jul 21, 2021 5:21 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks for your answer.

While OBS does work for Mac (I use it almost daily), the website for the "OBS Virtualcam" plugin says that it (the plugin) only supports windows: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-virtualcam.949/

Is this information incorrect? I've never installed OBS plugins before.

How well would this work while also streaming a different scene in OBS?

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Answer 7

terryb

Level 4

3,358 points

Jul 21, 2021 7:39 PM in response to coxorange

@coxorange Sorry, I misunderstood and thought you wanted to record a Discord call and then edit the resulting video.

Does Mac OBS also have a chroma key filter? I've never used it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEJpYiJY00U

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Answer 8

coxorange Author

Level 2

151 points

Jul 31, 2021 2:30 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I noticed that my OBS version was a bit older so I didn’t have the "Start Virtual Camera" button, but I’ve updated now and it seems to work fine (except that Discord isn’t recognising the virtual camera, but I’ve already found a forum post discussing this)!

However now a different issue presents itself:

I need to use OBS's "virtual camera" function for a video call (via Discord), while also using OBS to livestream a different scene (via twitch) at the same time (from the same computer).

Does this mean I need to run two instances of OBS at the same time (one for the face-cam-only scene to be used as the virtual camera, and one for the livestream scene)? Would I need two separate installs of OBS to be able to run it twice? (if this possible on Mac)

Or is there a better way of solving this?

Many thanks.

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