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Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

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Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd like the audio input to be able to pick up desktop sounds on MacOS the way it works on Windows. Even paid apps like Wirecast are having a hard time figuring out a workaround for that. I ended up using Loopback from Rogue Amoeba ($99), and it does the job absolutely beautifully. You configure your Mac's audio output to point to Loopback (which shows up as an audio output device), and then you use your broadcasti…

Blackhole[1] is a better, newer and free solution for these kinds of internal OSX audio routing issues. [1] https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole

> Blackhole[1] is a better

I took a quick look at the issues list & features request, and I'm going to disagree with you there. For example, you can't route the output to different monitor devices and change their volumes. (I often use my headphones as a mixing monitor.) It looks like a neat free alternative, though.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#52

On the Mac, Telestream Wirecast ($599) [1] does this. Not saying Wirecast is better or worse than OBS - although for me, on the Mac platform, Wirecast was way better. I can capture a desktop or app window, overlay my webcam on top of it in the bottom corner, use chroma key to remove my background, and then I float on top of apps. That video feed can be outputted as a webcam stream that works with GoToWebinar, Skype,…

OBS can do all of that except nativley output a virtual camera. I use windows and the virtual cam plugin works well for that, though it doesnt do the audio. I think you can set it up externally to obs using a virtual audio cable driver but I haven't really needed it.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#54
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300 just buys you a half day of developer time, I suspect the sponsor wants a proper professional job done that works with and is tested with a range of hardware.

With 300 for a half-day, it would be 600 for a full day and 12000 for 20 days of work. In most parts of the world, that's an extremely high level salary and could easily fund most peoples month, granted they live outside of Silicon Valley. I'm sure many people would be more than happy to receive 300 or much less for half a day of work.

The going rate for a developer is about £300-600 a day in North Europe for relatively common skillsets such as C#. It isn't just silicon valley.

The $10,000 bounty is about right for this sort of work. In fact it might be a little low, but I have no idea how OBS works internally so I could be completely wrong.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#55
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300 just buys you a half day of developer time, I suspect the sponsor wants a proper professional job done that works with and is tested with a range of hardware.

On my own open-source projects, there are hundreds or thousands of issues I'd solve in half a day if I got $300/ea. That'd keep me fully employed for months or years! And I actually have the users that would donate 6 figures / year cumulatively to make that a reality. But orchestrating the money would be a nightmare without a service that is simple to use from the users' perspective. BountySource is alright, but I'm…

Kickstarter is more suitable for larger projects.Github could work with a little bit creativity on top, however that's the place for technical people. A platform,where a feature could be requested and payouts are as simple as one click would be fantastic. I think the platform part would be the easiest to implement.To ensure the whole thing works well for devs and clients well+ doesn't attract bad actors,etc. would be more difficult to get right.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 300 for a half-day, it would be 600 for a full day and 12000 for 20 days of work. In most parts of the world, that's an extremely high level salary and could easily fund most peoples month, granted they live outside of Silicon Valley. I'm sure many people would be more than happy to receive 300 or much less for half a day of work.

The going rate for a developer is about £300-600 a day in North Europe for relatively common skillsets such as C#. It isn't just silicon valley. The $10,000 bounty is about right for this sort of work. In fact it might be a little low, but I have no idea how OBS works internally so I could be completely wrong.

India, Pakistan, Veitnam.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#57
post #25

This makes me think. Is there a service that handles crowd-sourcing and processing payments a bit like Kickstarter but on a smaller scale? Say, if someone proposes a feature and the developer says "I'll do it for $300", users could donate until the goal is reached. With the promise of payment, the developer can go ahead and spend the time/effort, and everybody wins. But setting up a Kickstarter, IndieGogo, etc is too…

I think bounties create an unhealthy incentive structure. The kind of thinking you expressed in your post that payments shouldn't be seen as "charity" leads to people trying to not "waste" their bounties.

They'll add it to issues the maintainers won't do otherwise, which in turn leads maintainers to hold the code hostage, not doing something they'd have done had there been no bounty structure, hoping that someone posts a bounty for it. Of course a maintainer is one of the world experts in that codebase so knows really well which things can or have to be done. So that behaviour will lead to maintainers not addressing issues they know will annoy users. It leads to annoyance driven development.

Regular payments are far better IMO for projects long term because they allow maintainers to actually maintain the software instead of hunting for bug bounties. They give more security to maintainers (rent is pretty much a constant for example) and less overhad for users (unless they want to save money and use it most efficiently, but IMO that's not what donations should be about). That being said, bounties aren't bad overall, they are definitely great ideas if used here and there, but funding of open source projects shouldn't be bounty-driven.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#58
post #57
post #25

This makes me think. Is there a service that handles crowd-sourcing and processing payments a bit like Kickstarter but on a smaller scale? Say, if someone proposes a feature and the developer says "I'll do it for $300", users could donate until the goal is reached. With the promise of payment, the developer can go ahead and spend the time/effort, and everybody wins. But setting up a Kickstarter, IndieGogo, etc is too…

I think bounties create an unhealthy incentive structure. The kind of thinking you expressed in your post that payments shouldn't be seen as "charity" leads to people trying to not "waste" their bounties. They'll add it to issues the maintainers won't do otherwise, which in turn leads maintainers to hold the code hostage, not doing something they'd have done had there been no bounty structure, hoping that someone pos…

Agreed, if bounties conventionally worked like that I would feel incentivized to not contribute to OS projects unless there was a bounty. I dunno, maybe it'll still be a net benefit with an influx of bounty hunters. Hard to say really.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#59
post #25

This makes me think. Is there a service that handles crowd-sourcing and processing payments a bit like Kickstarter but on a smaller scale? Say, if someone proposes a feature and the developer says "I'll do it for $300", users could donate until the goal is reached. With the promise of payment, the developer can go ahead and spend the time/effort, and everybody wins. But setting up a Kickstarter, IndieGogo, etc is too…

Gitcoin does this.

It's a tool where users post bounties for features. Usually the owner of an open source project would set up a bounty and say "$xxx to fix this" and open source developers can apply to work on the problem, once its approved they get the funds.

But, if community members really value the project they can chip in more funding to the issue.

Currently the system is set up to use Ethereum and DAI (an ethereum USD stablecoin) to handle transactions, and Gitcoin's smart contract acts as the escrow account for the work.

Re: Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera / microphone support natively to OBS

#60
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think bounties create an unhealthy incentive structure. The kind of thinking you expressed in your post that payments shouldn't be seen as "charity" leads to people trying to not "waste" their bounties. They'll add it to issues the maintainers won't do otherwise, which in turn leads maintainers to hold the code hostage, not doing something they'd have done had there been no bounty structure, hoping that someone pos…

Agreed, if bounties conventionally worked like that I would feel incentivized to not contribute to OS projects unless there was a bounty. I dunno, maybe it'll still be a net benefit with an influx of bounty hunters. Hard to say really.

Well, if there was more market for bounties then surely you’d have no problem asking for a bounty in order to contribute that feature to the project?

I don’t see an issue with people saying “here’s my contrib if the community is willing to pay for it XX”.

One could even see maintainers becoming the budgeteers of aforementioned projects.

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