Comment by brushfoot
1 day ago
On these cameras, HDMI is the right tool for the job. USB video quality is often poor where it's supported, and HDMI is there for video output.
These cameras are not made to be webcams. OP is using theirs as one, and that's fine; I do too. But device-side compression for USB video out, a webcam app, etc. are webcam features. They come at a cost, and many camera buyers don't need them.
For those of us using these cameras in these nonstandard ways, we can reach for HDMI, which is the right tool for this particular job.
The camera already have high-quality compression since it needs that to store video. If maybe latency is poor or other reasons exist not to use that then fine. HDMI can be a workaround, it still is an insanely bad tool for the job.
It's a workaround for the camera not bundling all the features that it needs to be a webcam, absolutely.
The standalone cameras I've used haven't included free webcam functionality and I don't think that's outrageous, but apparently many people here who've been downvoting me disagree.
Personally, I think HDMI is great for A/V tasks that a camera doesn't support out of the box since it's a widely supported standard.