Webcam driver that uses an image or video file as the video source

Question

Does anyone know of software that is recognized as a webcam/video device in Windows and lets you pick an image (JPEG, etc) or video (MPEG/AVI) as the video source?

Idea being that you could do something like a Skype call and instead of having your webcam video you could broadcast an image or prerecorded video instead.

Answer 1

SplitCamera should work for what you need - Free alternative of ManyCam.

Answer 2

Came across this and thought I would contribute the solution that suited my needs.

Open Broadcaster Studio allows you to stream and record many sources layed out in a virtual canvas: you can define sources such as :

• Images, Video, Your Live Desktop, your microphone, Audio Files, your speaker output, ...

Additionally you will Require a plugin To be able to create a Virtual WebCam:

• OBS-VirtualCam provides a directshow Output as a virtual webcam of the virtual canvas which you have defined from the selected sources.
  • The plugin works on Windows.
  • I am not sure if it is linux compatible but the project code is available on Github, perhaps with some tweaking can be made compatible.

Once installed, setup and running: select the OBS-camera source from the webcams available from within the software of your choice.

Cheers!