Background Remover
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 loopback video device.
Buld the kernel module first with make (see dependency notes below!)
Run with sudo ./bgrm.sh <options>
Example:
make ALT_BUILD_DIR=/tmp/bgrm
sudo ./bgrm.sh -b ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/ni-skyline-wallpaper.png -H 720
Note, this will work anywhere WebCams are used.
Dependencies
Packages:
- make
- gcc
- Linux kernel headers
- python3.9
- pip
The application is python based, but uses the v4l2looopback kernel module.
There’s a makefile target to download and build that part. However, it must be built in a folder without spaces, so if you want to build it there, provide make a different directory to install to with make ALT_BUILD_DIR=<folder name>
