by 
GNOME developer Georges Stavracas has merged today the PipeWire Camera support into the master branch of the popular OBS Studio open-source screencasting and streaming app.
While it’s not ready for prime time due to the lack of real consumers, this change to OBS Studio, which combines the PipeWire media framework and Camera portal, promises to be the future of cameras on the Linux desktop, according to developer Georges Stavracas.
Since PipeWire Camera support is now merged into OBS Studio master, we should be able to see it in an upcoming release of the popular application in the form of a new “Camera (PipeWire)” source, allowing us to stream from our webcams directly into OBS Studio.
However, this feature may be marked as experimental in a future OBS Studio release as the devs still need to work on some aspects, such as support for camera resolutions and framerates. Some bugs also need to be addressed, such as the fact that sometimes the selected camera isn’t started automatically.
Georges Stavracas also noted the fact that the new PipeWire-based Camera source supports YUY2 cameras, which means that many standard webcams out there should work without issues. The developer is currently working on adding support for MJPEG and H.264 streams as well, while NV12 support has been merged as well today.
More details about this change can be found in this OBS Studio GitHub merge. There, you’ll find instructions on how to enable the new “Camera (PipeWire)” source if you plan on test-driving it, but keep in mind that you’ll have to clone the latest master branch and compile it from sources.
This might be implemented in OBS Studio 31 or whatever the next major release will be versioned. The latest OBS Studio release is OBS Studio 30, which brought support for Intel QSV (Quick Sync Video) H.264, HEVC, and AV1 on Linux.
Last updated 4 months ago
