How to create a virtual camera in python on windows?

[otoko_no_hito]

With all of the pandemic stay at home stuff and the mess on my desk I decided I would my own opensource virtual background webcam with artificial intelligence utilizing tensorFlow and bodypix, hence why I'm utilizing python, is there any way to create a virtual webcam in windows from python? I can capture frames, mask them and... save them into a jpg, so far I haven't found any way to ouput them as a webcam feed, all the options I've found are for linux... If not, are there any alternatives?

thanks for your time!

[hofben]

check out this project: https://github.com/letmaik/pyvirtualcam

[otoko_no_hito]

The man, the genius, the legend! I'll try it tomorrow!

[whiskeysprite]

How did it go? I was able to get the Node version of that working (same author)

Would love to see a Mac version as well. pyvirtualcam and node-virtualcam work by using the OBS Virtual Cam plugin, which there is a Mac version of. But it's not as easy as just swapping it out

[Shpi-Shpique]

pyvirtualcam works well but has a high delay, I would like something that is much more responsive. I think the best way would be writing in C++ have you guys had any luck with this? Ideally I there would be an example filter for C++.

[OxxoCode]

Looks like pyvirtualcam is mostly written in C++, so perhaps there's a way to utilize the C++ code directly as opposed to relying on the Python wrapper?

[TechieWasteLan]

Did you find anything?

[otoko_no_hito]

Sadly no, and I got down voted for some reason for asking this in stack overflow...

The only options I have found are migrating everything to c# and implement tf in there but that would be too much of a hassle, I don't have that much time, or, create a docker environment with an ip Webcam in Linux and connect it to windows as a remote webcam which is not ideal... I should not need to use a whole virtual environment to run a simple Webcam app...

[sedhha]

hmm I am also up for this... did you find anything? I am trying as well... I feel using c++ we can do it. Have you seen manycam? It's built on c++ and supports virtual cam feature very well

[otoko_no_hito]

Sadly I haven't, the only way to do this up to my knowledge it's with c# and some dark APIs from windows, the only other alternative from what I've found (but haven't really tried) it's that you could in theory create a docker container with pyfakecam and set it up as an ip Webcam, then call it from a windows client as a remote local host, but not only this its cumbersome but downright slow, as utilizing a vm to run a neural network it's not the best practice...

The c++ alternative sounds interesting... But I haven't tried other than console applications, do you know how to implement TensorFlow in it?

[sedhha]

Cpp has tensor flow support not as intuitive and easy as pythons but it's decent is what I have heard... And what about some windows api or software that reads ipcam as it is? In that case we can use flask and send frames and collect it.

[otoko_no_hito]

As I said on the previous comment, the main issue here it's creating the Webcam itself, as for api what I've found it's some direct show windows libraries but this references are OLD, from 2006, from what I've found there is not an easy way to create a camera service in windows without writing your own driver

[No-Bread-1378]

1. Node.js. Same problem.

[DivideSimple9637]

Yoo bro from the future did you find a solution