Comment by delta_p_delta_x
1 day ago
Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed from the HDMI-out in the camera? Most decent capture cards also expose themselves as cameras to almost all applications. This is my setup, and it works perfectly. Nikon D7500 as a webcam. More professional setups use Atomos monitors with built-in NVMe drives mounted directly to the camera.
I generally find the camera manufacturers' in-house programs absolutely terrible. Nikon's webcam utility is free[1], but has significant limitations over the capture card setup. Likewise for Sony. Both have considerable resolution and framerate limits, and I'd rather feed a 4K 60 FPS stream into my meeting program and let it handle the compression than have an XGA 1024×768 15 FPS output from the camera.
[1]: https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/548/Webca...
This is hugely dependent on whether the camera supports clean HDMI output - that is, without overlays. My Canon camera for example insists on showing a focus square over HDMI no matter what, and it is impossible to disable.
You can remove it by installing magic lantern. It lets me use my old 650D as a second camera.
Unfortunately there is no port of ML to my specific model. I did some porting work myself by running the camera firmware in QEMU, but to be able to run it on hardware I apparently needed some signing key that only the Magic Lantern lead dev has. By the time I was doing all of this he was busy with real world stuff so ultimately I just borrowed a friend's Nikon camera.
ML doesn't work on a lot of cameras - yet. It's quite far behind the last generation of SLRs and stays away from the flagship models.
The particular camera he's talking about, the G5 X Mark II, does support clean HDMI out. I used to use it as my webcam.
> Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed?
This is how I've used my Sony camera since COVID. It works great.
I wasn't sure at first if OP was trying to do something nonstandard, because you get video to your computer with a video cable. Plus a way for your computer to capture that, which for me is CamLink.
Honestly, I'm surprised there's a relevant manufacturer app at all. Not surprised that it costs money.
This is a bit like not having power in your home to charge your camera with and asking the manufacturer for a generator. They may have a solution, but the price will be bad.
OP wants to just use the USB cable, which makes sense for me.
USB 2.0, that bog standard version from 2000 that is assumed to be the lowest common denominator possible for any new hardware...
Edit: 4am math correction...
480Mbit/sec transfer; Uncompressed, that's ~333333 pixels per frame for 60FPS. Not even considering overhead, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class 1.1 support from 2005 includes Motion JPEG (low compression, all patents probably expired given it was developed in the 90s) and MPEG2 (also sufficiently old, to be unencumbered now).
However, if they'd use USB 3.0 ~ 5gbps, ideally over a USB-C port, the connection would be more modern, and easily able to handle even 4K video with now free from patents and well supported compression algorithms.
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Why should the manufacturer raise the price of the camera for you and me just to implement something extra OP wants that they can already do through HDMI?
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OP expects the camera comes with some decent convenience at that price.
OP is using a camera as a webcam that's not sold as a webcam. That's fine, I do the same with mine, but it's also fine of the manufacturer to allow for that by simply providing A/V interfaces instead of trying to account for every use case.
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Convenience is always extra
Exactly. But why does he need to buy a USB capture card and HDMI cable? He can just hire someone to come and record the videos for him. They'll also do the post processing.
Why does he even even record the videos himself? He can just hire actors to do what he wants, probably a lot better.
And what's the whole thing with buying a camera? He should just buy a studio and hire a crew to manage all that stuff.
Buying usb capture cards is a standard accessory for content creators. It's not a big deal.
Not a big deal at all.
The outrage in this thread is incredible. Buying a couple A/V adapters to adapt a non-webcam camera into a webcam is somehow seen as a terrible burden.
If someone doesn't want to do that, perhaps they should buy...a webcam. No adapters needed.
A camera comes with more power at the cost of simplicity for this use case.
This is what's called a slippery slope.
A capture card and HDMI cable together cost less than $100. Hiring someone will be at least an order of magnitude more expensive—and more so the more people you hire.
Whoosh.
That was the entire point of the comment, to point out the slippery slope in the HDMI/cable card argument in the first place.
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Would this approach also give you control of camera settings? I think the OP's situation, he wanted that.
You don't even need OBS for this - capture cards show up as digital cameras in macOS
You do, capture cards introduce latency something around 30-50ms (at least the cheaper ones) and if you are using non built in mic you need to resync everything up.
Indeed.
How easy and slick this setup will be depends on the camera.
For example, my camera can't operate and charge over USB at the same time, so you need a supplemental power supply. And it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video. And videos can only be so long.
So I've got a HDMI-to-USB converter, a special HDMI cable, a special power brick and adaptor, a special tripod so all those cables don't pull the whole setup over, and I've got to restart video recording every 30 minutes or so, and wipe the microsd card regularly.
Your camera's probably better suited to this than mine :)
I've been using a Sony mirrorless (anything above a5100 will work) for over 6 years now; it needed a "dummy battery", and an HDMI capture card (about $25 for noname brands, or $80+ for Elgato, BlackMagic etc). It auto-focuses, doesn't write to microsd, and works flawlessly.
Even if you aren't buying Elgato, you can use Elgato's compatibility page to know which cameras work well: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/cam-link-camera-check
A word of warning on capture cards: I first bought a no-name off Amazon, thinking to save money. The video quality was abysmal. Artifacts everywhere.
I returned it and got an Elgato, which has worked great from day one.
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Same setup here, down to the brand.
For those who don't know, the dummy battery is a power cable with a battery-shaped adapter that plugs in where the battery would go to provide continuous power.
What camera do you have? Why can't it autofocus when its not recording?
I believe you, but thats very silly.
I can force my (canon) camera to autofocus while not recording but usually you want to avoid that. It really hits the battery because the lens is permanentely adjusting.
Most mirrorless cameras a hybrids and you usually do not need this feature while takting stills.
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None of my stills cameras focused continuously out of the box, probably to save power (moving potentially heavy lens elements around requires energy). My Olympus mirrorless can be told to focus all the time, but it's not the default.
They -can-, they just don't, unless you specifically enable it for power reasons.
No offense, but this sounds like a terrible camera for your use case. It sounds like you know that.
My Sony that I've been using as a webcam since COVID can do that, and it was 6 years old when I bought it. Upgrade when you can!
To be fair, I also have the dummy battery + HDMI capture + desktop clamp mount + live view faff for my D7500, but once you set it up it's just... there. I don't need to fiddle with it much further. It's a bit of a cable mess but I intend to upgrade to the Z6iii together with an upgrade to a desktop (so I can have a PCIe capture card), which will cut down the number of dongles all over.
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This is exactly what I do. I'm also confused by this article...
It's rage bait. People hate subscriptions, understandably so, and people without A/V experience might expect a camera not sold as a webcam to easily double as a webcam since they both can capture video.
It's just a really poor reason to be outraged at Canon (or Sony or any of the other companies whose non-webcam cameras don't seamlessly turn into webcams without some standard A/V adapters).
Canon's webcam software was until recently free. It was the sole reason I bought a Cabin camera. This is a rug pull.
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> a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable
Are there any USB-connectable capture devices that can process 4K?
Everything I see tries really hard to hide the fact that while they can input 4K, they can only produce 1920x1080.
Elgato Cam Link 4K
Oh, good to know! I didn't manage to find this one. But this one is $100 in the US, and $120 in some other places. Which is quite a bit of additional money to pay on top of your camera, which already has USB and should just provide a video stream there…
(this dongle is also USB-A, unfortunately)
I’ve been using this with a Fuji XT4 for last 2 years as webcam, working great. Though for stuff like google meet, I usually set it to 1080p 60fps since that’s the max res most meeting software will accept anyways, and frame rate is more important for live meeting than res.
Sure. I can do anything. It's the principle of the thing.
The principle is to use the right tool for the job.
USB can do just about anything. Video out is one possibility. But HDMI can already do that.
It doesn't make sense to expect the manufacturer to provide a free app to make USB do something you can already do over HDMI, and for which HDMI is intended.
This article is rage bait where there's no real cause for outrage. But it's adjacent enough to "right to repair" and "subscription fatigue" that it sounds outrageous.
The right too for the job most certainly is not HDMI.
The video feed should (depending on usecase, sure) be compressed on the device and sent over USB.
Sending uncompressed video just to be badly compressed in a capture device is most definitely not the right tool for the job.
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At least with my camera the feed is low resolution and has the on screen overlays on it.
I mean why invest $70 (and a lot of ressources) in hardware when, in theory, you have everything you need, the software is just locked behind a paywall?
But you generally don't have everything you need. As I've mentioned most cameras' USB webcam output (if at all present) is quite bad, even via the official programs or gphoto. The 'correct' way to access video output is through their, well, video-out port (usually HDMI), which almost necessitates a capture card or monitor.
Evidently these cameras are capable of exporting high quality video via USB, if you pay 5 bucks a month. This doesn't sound like a hardware problem. It also has a control channel, unlike HDMI.
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