🎥 NVIDIA Broadcast for Linux

The open-source one — built from scratch. GPU background blur & replacement with film-quality edges (real alpha matting, not a cheap cut-out), an AI Studio Light that fixes bad room lighting, and RTX-Voice-style mic denoise — served to Zoom, Meet, OBS, Discord and anything else as a normal webcam + microphone.

Install · Features · How it looks real · Usage · Requirements · Roadmap

nvidia_broadcast_demo.mp4

NVBroadcast running live on Linux — background modes, the Studio backdrop, and Studio Light. Real-time on an RTX card.

⚡ Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kaiserkonok/nvidia_broadcast_linux/master/install.sh | bash

One command. It installs everything, adds NVBroadcast to your app menu, and sets up the virtual camera. Launch it, pick a background, and select “Broadcast Virtual Camera” in your video app.

nvbroadcast            # launch    (or open “NVBroadcast” from your apps)
nvbroadcast update     # fast git-pull update, no re-download
nvbroadcast uninstall  # clean removal

✨ Features

	Feature	What it does
🪄	Blur · Replace · Color	Switch background live — blur, any image, or a solid color. No restart.
🎬	Studio backdrop	A procedural dark, shadowed studio: a soft pool of light that follows you (tracked off the matte) fading into shadow — reads as a real backdrop, not a color swap.
🧠	Real edges, not a cut-out	Per-pixel alpha matting (RVM / BiRefNet) keeps individual hairs and soft motion, and decontaminates background color spill so you don't look pasted on.
💡	Studio Light	AI auto-relight fixes bad room lighting on your face — auto-exposure, white-balance and contrast — in every mode, even with no background change.
🎨	Scene light matching	On replaced backgrounds, the subject adopts the scene's white balance & exposure + light-wrap, so you look lit by the scene, not glued onto it.
🎯	Auto-Frame	Smoothly pans & zooms to keep you centered — driven off the matte, no extra model.
🎞️	Camera-match finishing	Lens depth-of-field, matched sensor grain, and vignette so subject + background read as one camera.
🎙️	Mic noise removal	RTX-Voice-style denoise (DeepFilterNet) as a virtual mic — kills keyboard, fan & room noise, keeps your voice natural.
🏆	Fast / Best / Ultra	Quality tiers: MobileNetV3 · RVM ResNet-50 (real-time) · BiRefNet (SOTA masks).
🖥️	Native desktop app	Live preview, system-tray icon (closes to tray), remembers your settings.
🔌	Works everywhere	Appears as a normal V4L2 webcam and virtual mic in OBS, Zoom, Meet, Discord, browsers…
🛠️	Self-configuring	Sets up the v4l2loopback virtual camera for you — graphical password prompt only when it truly needs one.

🆚 vs. NVIDIA Broadcast

	NVIDIA Broadcast	NVBroadcast (Linux)
Runs on Linux	❌ Windows only	✅
Background blur / replace	✅	✅ alpha matting
Soft hair-level edges	✅	✅
Auto face relight	❌	✅ Studio Light
Scene light / color match	❌	✅
Auto-Frame	✅	✅
Mic noise removal	✅	✅ DeepFilterNet
Virtual cam in any app	✅	✅
Open source	❌	✅ GPL-3.0
Price	Free (RTX)	Free

🔬 How it looks real

Cheap “virtual backgrounds” use a binary person/background mask → hard, jagged edges and chewed-off hair. NVBroadcast uses video matting:

1. Alpha, not a mask — each pixel gets an opacity 0.0–1.0, so hair strands and soft edges blend naturally.
2. Foreground decontamination — the model estimates your true foreground color separately, removing the background halo around your edges.
3. Temporal stability — a recurrent model keeps the matte steady frame-to-frame instead of shimmering.
4. Realism finishing — scene color/exposure match, light-wrap, feathering, lens defocus, matched grain — the details that sell it as one camera.

Powered by Robust Video Matting and BiRefNet, composited on the GPU.

💡 Studio Light was born from this pipeline: the same GPU grading that matches your subject to a scene turns out to rescue a dark, badly-lit room — so it's now a one-click toggle that works in every mode, background or not.

🖥️ Usage

Open NVBroadcast from your app menu (or run nvbroadcast):

• Start / Stop Camera — your webcam is used only while active.
• Background — Off · Blur (with strength) · Color · Image.
• Enhance — Photoreal edges · Studio Light (+ intensity) · Auto-Frame · Vignette.
• Quality — Fast · Best · Ultra.
• Remove background noise — flip it on, then pick “NVBroadcast Microphone” in your call app.
• Close the window to tuck it into the tray; Quit from the tray to exit.

Then in OBS / Zoom / Meet / Discord, choose “Broadcast Virtual Camera.” In OBS: Sources → Video Capture Device (V4L2) → Broadcast Virtual Camera (start NVBroadcast before OBS).

📦 Requirements

	Minimum	Recommended
GPU	NVIDIA RTX, ~4 GB VRAM	RTX with 6–8 GB VRAM (for Ultra)
Driver	CUDA 12.8-capable (recent NVIDIA driver)	—
RAM	8 GB	16 GB
Webcam	any UVC / MJPG webcam	1080p
Disk	~3.5 GB (PyTorch + CUDA runtime)	+0.9 GB if you use Ultra
OS	Linux, apt-based (Debian/Ubuntu) for the 1-command installer	Ubuntu 24.04 / GNOME (tested)

The video pipeline is GPU-resident (matting + compositing in CUDA fp16); mic denoise runs on CPU via PipeWire. Non-apt distros: install v4l2loopback-dkms, v4l-utils, python3-venv and run scripts/run_app.sh.

🗺️ Roadmap

• Real-time background matting (blur / image / color)
• Native desktop app + system tray + saved settings
• One-command install / update / uninstall
• Realism pass — scene color/exposure match, light-wrap, edge feathering
• Studio Light — AI subject relight in every mode
• Auto-Frame — smooth pan/zoom keeps you centered
• Fast / Best / Ultra matting tiers (MobileNetV3 · RVM ResNet-50 · BiRefNet)
• Camera-match finishing — depth-of-field, matched grain, vignette
• Mic denoise — RTX-Voice-style noise removal (DeepFilterNet) → virtual mic
• Eye contact / gaze correction (with a trained redirection model)
• Low-light enhancement & webcam denoise (always-visible, halo-free)
• Room echo removal (audio dereverb)

🙏 Credits & License

• Matting: Robust Video Matting (Peter Lin et al.) · BiRefNet (Zheng Peng et al.)
• Denoise: DeepFilterNet
• Plumbing: v4l2loopback · pyvirtualcam · PipeWire

Licensed under GPL-3.0 (the vendored matting model is GPL-3.0). See LICENSE.

⭐ If NVBroadcast makes your calls look better, drop a star — it genuinely helps.

_{Built from scratch for Linux. Not affiliated with NVIDIA.}