Virtual webcam that takes real webcam footage and replaces the background in order to have Virtual Backgrounds in MS Teams for Linux
The Need
It’s been good long while since Microsoft first released a Teams version for Linux and yet, one of Teams’ coolest features doesn’t exist in said Linux version: removable backgrounds. As someone who uses Linux for their daily driver, this annoys me.
Well, I’m an engineer, so of course, I found a solution.
Using OpenCV and a v4l2loopback device (basically a virtual webcam you can write data to), I threw together a Python application that takes your normal webcam input, removes and replaces the background, and outputs that to the created video device. Problem solved 🙂
How to Use
Take a video camera feed, process it to remove the background, apply a new one, and send it back as a