In Third Person

Snap Camera is a application that allows users to apply Snapchat filters to their non-mobile cameras, such as webcams. You can take pictures and record videos within the app itself, or use it within video applications such as OBS. Though the app has been available for some time, I’ve only recently gotten around to it. Will I be applying filters to my face in future streams?

Setting up the app is a straightforward process. Download the software and open it once the install is completed. Set your camera within Snap Camera, then set Snap Camera as your camera in OBS.

Within the Snap Camera interface, you can choose from an assortment of filters to apply to your face and body. Some of them are rather intense, as they map full on masks or other elements to the background. Others simply add a filter to the screen. If you’ve ever used the filters in Snapchat before, you’ll be impressed to see that they largely work as intended. Of course, effects will break if you push it hard enough, but they maintain their desired look pretty well.

For me, I messed around with the anime filter the most. Besides being super trendy right now, I really like how the effect looks. I thought I looked great as long as I didn’t smile or tilt my head up. Doing so actually changed the hair style on my head. Odd.

The effects that it opens up are really neat. They can be turned on-and off with the press of a hot key. However, its limitations prevent me from implementing the effect permanently into my stream.

Despite being set to 6o FPS in the Snap Camera app, OBS doesn’t read the camera in a frame rate higher than 30. Though I can’t validate it, the camera actually looks like it’s running less than 30 most of the time.

It’s also not set up in such a way that I can have my camera run at 60 FPS by default and then drop to 30 when I use the Snap Camera. Your camera can’t be mapped to two different applications at once, meaning that using the effects will tie you to using Snap Camera as your main camera. If you want the best of both worlds, you need to set up two separate webcams that can be toggled between.

The other major shortcoming of the app is one that won’t affect most, but is critical to me. There’s no way to programmatically toggle the effect with Twitch channel points. LioranBoard doesn’t have the ability to convert Channel Points into hot key presses, which then forces me to manually control it every time. It would be more fun if you could control it for me!

I may not use it for the stream, but it could work wonders for you. Being able to generate screenshots or short videos with the effects on could be useful elsewhere, such as social media or YouTube. Try it out and see where it could work for you!