Jonathan Bossenger

OBS Studio 26.1.0 for Linux – Now with Virtual Camera Support.

Some time ago I discovered OBS Studio as a solution for recording internal screencasts for tutorials and workshop videos. As a Linux user, I was pleased to find that it was both open-source, and therefore available for Linux. It lags a bit when it comes to releasing new features vs the Windows version, but it’s perfect for what I need.

Recently I was trying to see if the Linux version supported the Virtual Camera option that the Windows version did, and at the time it sadly did not. Thanks to an in-depth tutorial by J. B. Rainsberger, I was able to configure a working virtual camera, but for some reason, I could never get it to work right every single time, and had to reinstall things every time I wanted to use it.

Fortunately, since the latest release, OBS Studio for Linux now includes support for a Virtual Camera.

All I needed to do to enable it, was to install v4l2loopback-dkms using this command:

sudo apt install -y v4l2loopback-dkms

I initially couldn’t find where to enable the Virtual Camera, until I saw the button under my Stream/Recording Controls.

After clicking “Start Virtual Camera” I fired up my Zoom application, and lo and behold, there it is as an option for my camera feed.

I’m pretty happy about this, I use OBS quite a bit for recording walk-through videos for the development and support teams at Castos, so this is going to save me a lot of time and stress.

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6 responses to “OBS Studio 26.1.0 for Linux – Now with Virtual Camera Support.”

  1. Timothy (TRiG) Avatar
    Timothy (TRiG)

    Thanks for this.

    This gives me a “Start virtual camera” button. When I click it I am prompted to enter my password. And that’s it. Nothing changes. I still have a “Start virtual camera” button, no stop button. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

    Reply
    1. Jonathan Avatar
      Jonathan

      Sorry Timothy, I honestly don’t know, my setup just worked!

      Reply
    2. eg Avatar
      eg

      Does the user whose password you enter have root privileges?

      Reply
    3. Dylan Eastridge Avatar
      Dylan Eastridge

      try these commands from the OBS website

      Virtual Camera

      Starting with OBS 26.1.0, Virtual Camera support is integrated. Here’s how to install and configure v4l2loopback:

      sudo snap connect obs-studio:kernel-module-observe
      sudo apt -y install v4l2loopback-dkms v4l2loopback-utils
      echo “options v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=13 card_label=’OBS Virtual Camera’ exclusive_caps=1” | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/v4l2loopback.conf
      echo “v4l2loopback” | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/v4l2loopback.conf
      sudo modprobe -r v4l2loopback
      sudo modprobe v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=13 card_label=’OBS Virtual Camera’ exclusive_caps=1

      Reply
      1. linker3000 Avatar
        linker3000

        Be aware that in this post the single and double quotes have been ‘prettified’ so if you copy/paste the lines from here, before you hit enter, edit the command line and delete all quotes then put them back in using your keyboard. If you don’t do this, your virtual camera will be called just ‘OBS

        Reply
        1. Jonathan Avatar
          Jonathan

          Are you referring to this post, or a post I linked to? I’m not using any single or double quotes in my post.

          Reply

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