Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#31

Post by atoav » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

I wonder: does anyone know of a solution which does something similar in a more software agnostic way? I imagine a software that takes a webcam manipulates the image and emulates another webcam which one could select then in every software that supports webcams.

Does such a thing exist?

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#32

Post by gadders » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #16

I wonder what percentage of folks use video. Where I work almost nobody turns on their camera ;)

It was very common when I worked, but when they went to 60k+ people working over the work VPN it was discouraged.

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#33

Post by dangwu » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #30

Very nice! I am on a phone. Are all of these backgrounds static (not animated)?

Yeah, I’m really confused. The title says video backgrounds but they all seem to be static images.

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#34

Post by pentae » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

Pack it up everyone, the casting couch wins

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#35

Post by dbieber » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #31

I wonder: does anyone know of a solution which does something similar in a more software agnostic way? I imagine a software that takes a webcam manipulates the image and emulates another webcam which one could select then in every software that supports webcams. Does such a thing exist?

Yes, you can do this with OBS. The virtual webcam feature can be added as a plugin. And chroma-keying is a built-in feature. I use a Mac, and I've been toying with this a bit over the last weeks (e.g. https://davidbieber.com/snippets/2020-04-09-exploring-obs/)

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#36

Post by cbhl » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #31

I wonder: does anyone know of a solution which does something similar in a more software agnostic way? I imagine a software that takes a webcam manipulates the image and emulates another webcam which one could select then in every software that supports webcams. Does such a thing exist?

The tricky bit for OS X is that there isn't a virtual webcam driver for it. (Someone posted a proposed bounty last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22686333)

You can do this today on Windows and Linux, I believe.

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#37

Post by chadlavi » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

FYI none of those images show if you have adblockers on

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#38

Post by dr_kiszonka » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

dangwu wrote: post #33

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #30

Very nice! I am on a phone. Are all of these backgrounds static (not animated)?

Yeah, I’m really confused. The title says video backgrounds but they all seem to be static images.

Maybe OP meant to write "virtual video conferencing backgrounds."

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#39

Post by jamespullar » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

jameslk wrote: post #25

I'm afraid this will be quickly overrun by trolls. Hopefully you are prepared to moderate.

There's already enough questionable images up there that I don't feel comfortable sharing this with my company.

Re: Show HN: ZoomerBackgrounds – community-sourced virtual video backgrounds

#40

Post by smoyer » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

nrmitchi wrote: post #13

logane wrote: post #2

Hi HN, author here! As students facing online instruction, we built ZoomerBackgrounds to solve firsthand the everyday problems of having subpar backgrounds and spoke with several friends working in industry about their background needs. The result is a product we really think you're really going to love. We had a lot of fun making this over the weekend and hope you all enjoy :) For the tech stack we used react on the…

I see that you have an option to not include a watermark on downloaded images, but having watermarks turned on by default (especially since these look like user uploaded images which I'm assuming you don't actually own) is quite off-putting.

I was going to say that the watermark is too obtrusive ... I don't have a problem with you getting a bit of attention in exchange for the time it takes to curate the collection but it's too big and in a bad spot.