Syphon Virtual Webcam for MacOS 10.13 and Later (Shhhhhhh! Keep it quiet for now!!!)
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Dear Community,
In our ongoing effort to support remote performance, Mark has created a new application for macOS called Syphon Virtual Webcam. It receives a Syphon input and sends it to a a virtual webcam, allowing compatible applications can receive the syphon signal.
IMPORTANT NOTE: KEEP QUIET ABOUT THIS FOR A FEW DAYS!
Our beta testers tried this out and it seemed to work well for them, so I want to open testing up to a wider part of the Isadora community. I know this free app will help a lot of people in the world beyond Isadora users, but keep it "under wraps" for a few days so we can make sure it's working well and until I can post the source code on GitHub. (I realize this thread is public... but you know, don't go posting about this app right away. ;-) )
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or Later
RELEASE NOTES
We did not create the virtual webcam driver itself. Instead, our app relies on OBS (macOS) Virtual Camera created by John Boiles for OBS. You do not need to install OBS to use this plugin, and our app will guide you through the process of downloading and installing this driver.
Note that your operating system version and the application you wish to use with Syphon Virtual Camera will determine if it will work or not. Catalina imposes the harshest restrictions, but also certain applications impose their own restrictions which may prevent them from seeing the virtual webcam driver.
The steps to use this app are simple:
1) Open Syphon Virtual Webcam and run the OBS (macOS) Virtual Camera installer if needed.
2) Ensure your Syphon source is running.
3) Select your Syphon source using the popup menu in the main window of our app.
4) Start the app that will receive a signal from the virtual webcam
5) Choose "OBS Virtual Camera" as the webcam source
6) Click the "Mirror" checkbox if you need to flip the image horizontally.EFFICIENCY This app requires a) that we pull the GPU image back to the CPU and b) convert it to YUV. Both are expensive in terms of processing power. Both of the points could be improved, if it turns out to be something that people really find this app promising.
COMPATIBILITY You can see a list of compatible applications on the OBS (macOS) Virtual Camera GitHub. Please check this list so you won't spend time reporting a problem that is already a known issue.
COMPATIBILITY WITH ZOOM Notably, on Catalina and Mojave, Zoom will not see the virtual webcam driver unless you perform a command line procedure in Apple's Terminal program. If you follow the procedure below, you will remove the "code signing" information from Zoom, which allows the operating system to know if the app was modified by some malicious by a hacker, etc. You take this action completely at your own risk!!!
That said, here is the hack has been suggested widely over the web. It worked for us with Zoom on macOS Mojave an Catalina.
1) Open Apple's Terminal program. Enter the following line and hit return xcode-select --install
2) When that completes, enter the following line and hit return sudo codesign --remove-signature /Applications/zoom.us.app/
3) Enter your administrator password and hit return
4) Restart Zoom to see if the OBS Virtual Camera shows up as an input.If you feel like complaining to Apple that you have to take such a radical action just to get this virtual webcam working, you won't hear any complaints from us. ;-)
Best Wishes,
Mark -
Awesome. This will be very useful to many i'm sure.
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Dear All,
Has anyone beyond the original beta tester group put this to the test?
Best Wishes,
MarkMedia Artist & Creator of Isadora
Macintosh SE-30, 32 Mb RAM, MacOS 7.6, Dual Floppy Drives -
@mark i tried it out last night... mbp fan started spinning faster but all worked well
Izzy 4.0.2 | MBP (16-inch, 2023) M2 Max 96GB | macOS 13.2.1
Izzy 3.2.6 | MBP (16-inch, 2019) 2.3 GHz 8-Core i9 64GB AMD Radeon Pro 5600M 8 GB | macOS 10.15.7 -
@mr_j said:
mbp fan started spinning faster but all worked well
Yes, it's a little "hungry" at the moment and this could be improved. But I won't put in that effort until I determine if this app is of enough benefit to warrant that effort. Regardless, thanks for the positive feedback.
Best Wishes,
Mark -
i just used this to spice up a Jitsi meeting, it works really well (my fan was spinning superfast after a few minutes, but i expected that) this is going to be very useful for a bunch of projects in the new normal.
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Dear All,
So it turns out the OBS Virtual Camera plugin/driver is only compatible with MacOS 10.13 or later. So, you will not be able to use our app on earlier systems. Sorry for those this affects.
Best Wishes,
MarkMedia Artist & Creator of Isadora
Macintosh SE-30, 32 Mb RAM, MacOS 7.6, Dual Floppy Drives -
@mark worked ok for me on 10.12.6
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@mr_j said:
worked ok for me on 10.12.6
Really? Huh. OK. Then maybe that's the bottom limit. Thanks for the feedback.
Best Wishes,
Mark -
@mark worked nice on High Sierra in Izzy 2.6.1 and 3.0.7 streaming to zoom, this will be a very powerful plugin for the darker times of the live performers. Thank you for all the effort that you and the team are putting to keep the people connected to our artistic projects.
Saludos.
Ismael Gimate
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mac os 10.12.5 -isadora 3.0.7-works perfectly. with skype and with zoom. thanks!!!
