Syphon Virtual Webcam - Questions & Assistance

GertjanB

I only use chrome for video group calls because the website of my school works best on chrome.
I never use it for other things so It is possible this is the problem. I'll do the next online rehearsal in an other browser and let you know if that was the problem.

Woland

@gertjanb said:

It happens only after a while, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes more than an hour so its hard to pinpoint the exact problem.

I've had this exact experience on my 2013 Mac Pro trashcan on multiple versions of macOS. I can't seem to nail it down though.'

If I try to force quit Syphon Virtual Webcam when it's being flickery or frozen, then it freezes my whole screen but audio still comes through. Eventually it unfreezes with no other ill effects, but I can't reproduce it reliably.

GertjanB

@woland @Michel

I'm still testing and I'm not completely sure its a chrome thing.

If I'm using chrome without the virtual webcam I don't have any problems.(even now after half a day of video calls on chrome)

and last time I also had a problem via zoom (but I forgot to close down chrome so maybe its a combination thing)

triggwatson

I'm having issues getting the OBS Virtual Cam to display the feed coming from Syphon Virtual Cam. As you can see in the screenshot below, I've got the media displaying in Syphon Virtual Webcam. However, when I select "OBS Virtual Webcam" as a source in another application (in this case zoom), I get a blue OBS graphic. Has anyone else had this issue?

mark

@triggwatson said:

I'm having issues getting the OBS Virtual Cam to display the feed coming from Syphon Virtual Cam.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was able to reproduce this with the latest version of OBS.

You can read more (and find a workaround) in this forum post about this issue, which I've just posted because of your issue.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Weston

@gertjanb @Woland @Michel came here to say I've been experiencing this exact random graphics freezing problem on my 2017 macbook pro(mojave). While admittedly I did have chrome running in the background for other reasons, my freezes happened during an isadora -> syphon virtual webcam -> zoom workflow.

mark

@triggwatson said:

I'm having issues getting the OBS Virtual Cam to display the feed coming from Syphon Virtual Cam.

Here is an updated version of Syphon Virtual Webcam that works with both the old driver and the new driver included with OBS 26.1. Please give it a try and let me know if it solves your issue. (That is, using OBS's driver, not the workaround one I mentioned to you before.)

syphon-virtual-webcam-v0.9.6.zip

Best Wishes,
Mark

Kathmandale

@weston @GertjanB @Woland @Michel I've had a similar thing, not using chrome but as @Weston said it was in an Izzy - SVWC - Zoom workflow. It happened a couple of times a little while ago but hasn't happened for ages. I suspected it was more of a zoom issue and had been fixed with one of their updates, I didn't report it sorry as I couldn't pin down.

It was a very strange thing, the whole screen would freeze up and stay frozen for a little while as the fans went full throttle, audio would carry on as normal but the machine seemed otherwise unresponsive. After a short time the screen would un-freeze and then, certainly in zoom, seem to play back the missing minutes at a very fast speed until the video caught up with the sound. Full on VHS fast-forward. I thought it was more zoom related as I couldn't imagine that sort of behaviour happening locally. This was on my mac (as in my tag line).

It's not done it for a few months now despite having the same set up on numerous occasions. I had a feeling it might happen if I was turning on or off or switching the syphon feed, showing/hiding stages, changing back to non-virtual camera in zoom, something like that. The couple of times it did it I was always quite near an event and didn't have much time to troubleshoot so I've not actively tried to re-create the problem, but I can give it a go.

jfg

@mark

With a simple configuration (Syphon server>Syphon-Virtual-Webcam > Isadora Input) the new syphon-virtual-webcam works well for me in b29 and b41. In b38 I cannot see the picture in the Live Capture Settings window (Icon and Preview Window) but I get the picture in the Video Input and in the stage.

best

Jean-François

GertjanB

Good news,

I just had a full day of very long only meetings, in google meet (chrome) and zoom. (one time even 2 meetings at the same time meet & zoom)

I did all the meetings trough Isadora and syphon virtual webcam (also because I have made a handy tool with the buffer and a random value player so it looks like I'm present)

And I didn't have any crashes or freezes. (after now 10h).

mark

@jfg

Thanks for testing, but don't worry about b38. I tested in 3.0.7 and the latest beta (b44) and Isadora accepts the virtual webcam fine.

For the benefit of those new to Isadora: because Isadora accepts Syphon natively, there is no reason to use Syphon Virtual Webcam as an input to Isadora. You should just use the Syphon Receiver actor to receive the signal directly.

Best Wishes,
Mark

dbini

hello everyone, I've been pushing Syphon Virtual Webcam pretty hard today and had a couple of freezes. i'm running video out of Isadora thru SVW into OBS.Ninja in Chrome. twice today the image froze up at my end and the people on the other end of Ninja said that there was a message from SVW on their screen. I closed SVW and the whole computer froze up and needed hard rebooting. same thing both times (i didn't have time to wait to see if it would come back to life on its own)
its the latest version of SVW from the plugins page on my MacBook Pro running 10.13.6.

mark

@dbini said:

i'm running video out of Isadora thru SVW into OBS.Ninja in Chrome. twice today the image froze up at my end and the people on the other end of Ninja said that there was a message from SVW on their screen

OK. I've never worked with Ninja, so we can give this a try.

Importance Questions: Please Answer in your reply!

Do you have OBS v26.1 or later installed on your computer?

What was the resolution of the source image?

And what message did SVW display exactly? It doesn't display a message... the only thing it will do is to show the "test pattern" screen if the connection drops. Is that what they mean?

Best Wishes,
Mark

dbini

@mark

hi Mark,

i have OBS v23.1 installed, but probably installed v26 last Summer, and then uninstalled it and reverted to v23 when i discovered i couldn't use a Ninja link as a browser source. i usually use AppZapper to remove stuff, but it may have left something behind.

source image is 1280x800 to match the projectors we're using.

the Hungarian company said that they got a message onscreen saying something like Syphon Virtual Webcam has stopped working. it was a bit difficult to tell what was going on at the time because of the video freezing and me trying to work out what was going on. the message may have been generated by Ninja.

cheers,

john

mark

@dbini

i usually use AppZapper to remove stuff, but it may have left something behind.

It may not know about the location of the driver. It lives at

/Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/

in any case, the v0.9.6 version of Syphon Virtual Webcam works with both the old driver and the new one from OBS 26.1. But if you really want to downgrade, then

quit everything
go to /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/
delete obs-mac-virtualcam.plugin
and restart Syphon Virtual Webcam

In any case, thanks for the info. I'm a bit slammed at the moment, but I will see what I can find out as soon as I can.

Best Wishes,
Mark

dbini

@mark
i fixed another issue, which means i can use my iMac instead of my Macbook for this project - today, with the same setup on the iMac, SVW has been stable. thanks for the advice. i'll try it on my laptop at some point and report back.

RWillats

It's been a while since I've used Syphon, but I've used it successfully in the past. I just tried to get it up and going, but Zoom didn't recognize it. I followed the steps above to uninstall everything and started from scratch.

Now, when I try to open Syphon (to then re-install the OBS Virtual Cam), the icon appears on the dock, but the actual window doesn't appear. If I go to help>install OBS Virtual Camera Plugin it waits and then closes the Syphon app. I can't get any further. Any ideas?

Best,

Rory

MacBook Pro M1, 2020 Sonoma 14.5; Zoom 6.0.11

Woland

@rwillats

It might not be compatible with macOS Sonoma

RWillats

@woland I feared this might be the case

Woland

@rwillats said:

@woland I feared this might be the case

Microsoft: If someone makes a program for our OS, it should be able to run forever.

Apple: Let's break everything every single year. Lol