During a boring office video conference today, I wondered if it was possible to use a looped background video showing behind the person on camera (i.e. during a live video conference, not adding special effects after). Does anyone know? What about just using a digital background photo during a live video conference?

 

check out ManyCam, I believe it can do exactly that

it'll let you take a still image of what's behind you (without you in the picture obviously), and then it'll use that image as basically a green screen and you can place either a picture or video in it, and then once you move into camera view it'll still show you in front of the image in the background, the same way a green screen setup will. the quality may not be as good as an expensive green screen setup, but it works

 

Thanks! I downloaded it and it works as you described. What about adding a moving video as a background? It lacks that feature. Do you know of any software that does such? I've found lots of free background videos on the net, but I'm guessing those are for use in post production editing. The roiling volcano image on ManyCam would make a nice time lapse video background. I don't write code, but could probably figure out how to change the video format of a suitable clip for use in a background video. Is this even possible?