Looking for camera apps for face filters

richmond
edited August 2022 in Q&A

Some of our end users ask us for face filters, but we don’t have the bandwidth to add that feature right now.

Does anyone know of some good third-party camera apps that I can suggest in the meantime? Something that's like the potato filter on zoom.

Best Answer

  • chad
    chad Community Manager, Moderator, Dailynista admin
    Answer ✓

    It might not be as hard as you think to add them in your app, at least with a Daily call object app (i.e. not using Prebuilt). It works like this:

    1. Find a provider with effects you like, such as DeepAR or Banuba.
    2. Use their sample project, which will typically render the augmented video to a <canvas> element somewhere on the page. (You can often improve performance by keeping that canvas element offscreen, but that's a topic for later.)
    3. Use the captureStream() function to get a video from the canvas element. (This is kind of like pointing your phone camera at the TV to record something, but better. I guess it's more like doing a screen recording of a YouTube video.) That function gives you a MediaStreamTrack object, so you...
    4. Pass the mediaStreamTrack object to Daily to use as your webcam. That's documented here, using setInputDevicesAsync().

    Sadly, this doesn't work with Daily Prebuilt, because Prebuilt renders inside an iframe, and browser security prevents you from doing all this canvas stuff in your own page and then passing the track into the Daily iframe. But if you're building your own UI with React or whatever, the process is actually pretty straightforward!

Answers

  • Tasha
    Tasha Community Manager, Dailynista admin

    I use snapcam and it’s cool. Also IVCam (for phone filters).

    Just make sure your end users know how to disable face filters too. No one wants to be stuck as a potato.

  • chad
    chad Community Manager, Moderator, Dailynista admin

    @jack, this seems relevant to your interests. :)