Trouble with OBS studio in Ubuntu 20.04

When I use OBS studio in Ubuntu there is no video shown in the Preview section - it is just black. This is not the case in Windows, so I was wanting to uninstall it then reinstall it to see if that would fix it. However, I am not able to uninstall OBS studio.

$ sudo apt remove obs-studio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package 'obs-studio' is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Then I was thinking perhaps if I just install it without uninstalling first that would take care of the problem. Nope. Any help?

$ sudo apt install obs-studio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies: obs-studio : Depends: libfdk-aac1 (>= 0.1.4) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
3

3 Answers

You have to try fully featured Snap version of OBS Studio.

sudo apt-get remove obs-studio
snap install obs-studio
1

I had the exact same problem. Moreover, my virtual camera wasn't working.

I installed OBS from the ubuntu software store and I believe that's the root of the problem. I couldn't uninstall it but still I installed OBS (again) via the terminal. After installing via terminal by following the instructions on the OBS website, it's working perfectly.

Now, to distinguish between the ubuntu store obs and terminal-installed obs, simply press the super key and search for obs. Right-click on it and choose add to favourites, hence it'll be visible on your desktop taskbar.

Side note: If anyone doesn't have a fully functioning virtual camera, run this command:

sudo apt install v4l2loopback-dkms

I had a similar issue when trying to remove OBS (installed from ubuntu software) using terminal. The fix for me was to find the obs in the ubuntu software under photo and video section (not under installed programs section) and press the remove button; that got rid of it.

On a side note if you type sudo apt-get remove in terminal and then spam TAB button you should get a list of all the tings you can remove so check if there is something that seems like obs (since it might be named differently than obs-studio that you used before eg. just obs, studio-obs or something like that)

Then install the one provided on the official obs website

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