Sony cameras can now be used as webcams for Mac | Hacker News Reader

Sony cameras can now be used as webcams for Mac

support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp

106 pointsasimpletune114 comments

Mac support is implemented using a CoreMediaIO plugin, hinting that they are not updating the camera firmware to speak USB webcam, which prevents driverless use of the device:

    /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/ImagingEdgeWebcam.plugin

Could someone with a Sony camera please verify on macOS 10.15 (with ASR enabled) whether this webcam support is usable from within Apple's desktop FaceTime app? What protocol version and speed of USB does it negotiate with the computer, assuming you're using a modern USB cable and not the one it shipped with?

That plugin contains `LjAdapter`, the same name used on both Mac and Win, and specifically `Lja_PTP_USB.dylib/dll` — hinting that they've written a convertor that takes in USB Picture-to-Picture protocol and writes out USB Web Camera protocol.

I get the distinct impression that this is a list of USB device IDs. Those of you who know how to spoof USB manufacturer and device IDs may want to try spoofing any random off-the-shelf USB PTP webcam with one of these and see if you can use this library to speak to it.

    [Dev:%lx]
    0x0CCC, 0x0C43, 0x0D2B, 0x0D18, 0x0D1C, 0xD9F, 0x0DA3

I tried it and I haven’t been able to use it for literally anything.

Thank you for confirming that.

I just tried it as well and haven't had luck. Tried doing this:

- installing the linked 'imaging edge webcam' software.

- restarting

- hooking up my sony camera (it's compatible per the list) over usb

- opening Quicktime Player, going to "new movie recording", selecting "Sony Camera (Imaging Edge)"

- Instead see a logo for the software (instead of the camera output) but no connection. Tried futzing with opening camera in Movie mode, AUTO, with/without SD card, etc.

Dear Sony, if you're reading this please take your time and do the approach the parent commenter suggested of updating the camera firmware so it can act as a true USB webcam. I expect the experience to be more along the lines of:

- Plug in USB

- See mode selection screen on camera (you already have this).

- Select 'Webcam'

- Things just work.

The CoreMediaIO DAL plugin path is very fraught because of GateKeeper/SIP mechanism all trying to stop 3rd party code from being loaded into apps.

The macOS kernel does have, in theory, the possibility to create a .kext that emulates a UVC USB device, so in theory all one had to do was to write a .kext that captures the DSLR/DSLM camera in kernel land, and brings up a virtual USB device that is then recognized by the standard UVC driver (eg. same as any other webcam).

Of course, that doesn't provide any camera settings controls, and the practical side of it is quite complicated, with sparse documentation and difficult development processes, it being a kext. Hence, nobody's done it, yet.

It's not clear to me if plugging the camera via USB would provide enough power to the camera without using batteries. Is that the case?

Unsure, I've assumed it provides enough power. There's reviews of some sony cameras using an external usb battery for video recording.

If you copy the FaceTime app and save it with a different name ("FaceTime copy") you can run that and it will let you pick any webcam, even virtual ones.

If you do this you need to remake the copy whenever the OS update or else Spotlight will crash whenever your phone rings. (took me awhile to figure that one out)

I don't know whether or not this will get the Sony driver working. Obviously it would be better if it just worked like any other USB webcam.

> If you do this you need to remake the copy whenever the OS update or else Spotlight will crash whenever your phone rings. (took me awhile to figure that one out)

Wow, that's some Windows-level bugginess right there

That’s a bug worth reporting - it shouldn’t crash, and it’s trivial to accidentally duplicate an app!

Hm, I would report it but I’d be afraid they’d “fix” the copied app workaround as well.

I suspect it crashes because Handoff tries to start the last FaceTime binary I used, but some kind of signature has changed so it kills it immediately.

I’m not sure why it’s spotlight that crashes except that maybe its index is used to launch the last FaceTime I used?

What happens if you disable handoff for calls?

it probably works just fine, it's 100% triggered by handoff.

FaceTime, Safari, and on Big Sur, apparently even QuickTime Player can no longer use 3rd party CoreMediaIO DAL plugins due to codesigning/sandboxing/SIP issuess.

The short of it is that generally within the SIP (system integrity protection) domain, no 3rd party code is allowed to be loaded.

3rd party apps can generally be made to work by removing codesigning, but Apple's stuff is generally very intertwined with services not contained in the app-bundle, making this kind of surgery a lot more difficult. I have personally not been able to get this to work for FaceTime on 10.14 despite best efforts.

An interesting thing Sony seems to do here that others haven't is that they bypass the PTPCamera agent that normally comes on, presumably to directly drive the camera through their own lower level PTP library Lja_PTP_USB.dylib.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of https://ptpwebcam.org, which works much the same for Sony/Nikon/Canon cameras

I have just bought a Sony ZV-1 to help on my screencasts. I liked a lot the simplicity of the "Use as Webcam" feature [0].

Very disappointed I was when I found that it doesn't work with ScreenFlow (the main software I use to record my screen) and it only does work with OBS. So seems I'll be switching to OBS then .

It's kind of wild to me how there's such a product vacuum for this stuff.

I've dug around and the only real option is an HDMI capture card paired with a decent camera (I read this Sony software option is lower quality, but at least it's progress).

LG camera setups target businesses and are generally overpriced crap (I have one - the LG meetup) with proprietary connections and mediocre cameras, and crappy mics/software.

The Facebook Portal is a magnitude better and 10% of the price, but it's FB - they do support zoom now though so that's a decent option.

Computer webcams top out at not very good logitech USB devices.

You'd think there would be a high-end market targeting streamers with computer cameras focused just on that in-between the mirrorless/DSLRs for photography.

I'd love to see better products in this space:

- High quality camera for videochat that can be connected to a computer.

- High quality camera/mic that can be attached to a TV.

- Dumb TV, high quality panel, that starts up fast, has a lot of ports, no internet connection, with a remote designed by someone who thought for 5min about what buttons are required this century.

A dumb TV with a high quality camera mic setup might be interesting - plug in a mac mini and be good to go.

This might be for different uses, but I'd rather Apple bring their iPhone front camera to the MacBooks. It's crazy that MacBook cameras still top out at 720p.

That still misses the point. People want the look of a larger sensor that the tiny ones in a phone's camera. Shallow depth of field, different lenses, filters, etc that a fixed lens fixed aperture lens on a small sensor does not allow.

I'd cite portrait mode as counter-example. The optics are irrelevant if the software can emulate the look. And thus far, from what I understand, portrait mode systems have not had to use the depth sensors/lidar that's available!!! I would be very wary of assuming the larger format optics are necessary or helpful!

The look can be done. There are some advantages retained by the larger sensor but it's a category that will shrink.

This post is obviously wrong, in that you cannot hack the same quality out of a smaller cheaper lighter sensor. There's a lot that will remain out of reach. Yet still, there's a lot that can be done to bring the appeal of one to the other.

I think the post is half right. Right now the macbook webcams get zero help from any computational photography unless your video call software has something like that (e.g. Zoom's background blur). Apple could do a lot more with both the physically design as well as with drivers, which they aren't doing today.

I don't think they can, is the thing. My iPhone is at least three times as thick as the screen of my MacBook, and I'd be surprised if they aren't using at least some of that depth on the front camera.

What I would like to see is official support for using the back iPhone cameras as a webcam, but I don't expect to: it looks like Apple wants to remove the last port on the phones, no matter how dumb an idea that might be, and then they'd have to deprecate this feature, which would draw attention to the loss of functionality such a silly move would entail.

I really hope I'm wrong about this implication of the new MacSafe, the idea of owning a phone with no wired connection just makes me nervous. But it would be in character for the company.

The port is definitely going, but maybe they'll put a magnet in the MBP lid so you can snap your iPhone onto the lid with the camera facing you over the top?

Not really their style though.

Not official, and no personal experience with it, but it sounds like this is what you want:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/epoccam-webcam-for-mac-and-pc/...

> Just download drivers to your PC/Mac and you're ready to go! Connection is fully automatic, no need for manual setup. You can connect wirelessly over WiFi network or with with a USB-cable.

I use this. It kinda sucks, and the battery goes way too quickly.

I agree it kinda sucks. I found it (and alternatives) to be flaky, and had an audio delay when I had them running. Plus the setup experience each time you want to use it (put iPhone in tripod, position in correctly [because you moved the tripod], plug it in, launch app, check focus etc..) is enough of a pain that a dedicated webcam is just way better even if the picture quality is lower.

If you have an old, jailbroken iPhone and an HDMI adaptor, and an Elgato Camlink, you can screen mirror the iPhone as a webcam using my app, CleanCam.

I hope it'll put some old phones back into good use.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24302918

I assume they could add a camera bump to laptops, similar to modern smartphones.

There was the Canon EOS solution they published the beta for earlier this year. I have an old Rebel T5 that I decided to try out, even though official support bottomed out at the T6.

No capture card required, just the EOS Webcam utility and a USB connection. It runs very slowly, though. The latency is bad and so is the frame rate, though the picture itself is great. I've heard that reported for many supported cameras and varying computer specs as well so I'm not sure how long that will continue...

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...

> This Software is for use in the U.S. and will not be supported outside that area

> Subscription to a third party service required.

What on earth reason could they have for this being US only. Absolutely ludicrous.

I used the beta utility without problems in Europe without any subscription. Plug and play!

I'm guessing that statement is there only for liability reasons.

Canon Canada just tells me to go to Canon USA and to use that software!

https://canon.ca/en/Features/EOS-Webcam-Utility

No subscription required for me. It installs the driver, restart your machine, then the camera is ready to use.

> What on earth reason could they have for this being US only

GDPR, for one.

eos-movrec project worked perfectly on my old T3i on Linux, and I guess it still does.

On Mac OS, I run Camera Live (which works off the EOS sdk), and then CamTwist. I use these with a Canon EOS M6 Mark II.

I have solid 720p video 30fps video, no problems.

You don't need a capture card unless you want better than 720p30fps. (Then again, I have no idea about the linux/windows situations)

Do you have an instruction set? I tried following most others I could find and they all tended to fail at some stage.

Mostly https://docs.crowdcast.io/en/articles/1935406-how-to-use-you...

But use Camera Live v11. (Newer versions hit some problems with Catalina)

And tweak CamTwist settings to do 720p 30fps. Browsers won't acknowledge CamTwist new/changed virtual cameras until you restart them.

> it's kind of wild to me how there's such a product vacuum for this stuff.

markets tend not to move, until provoked.

canon seems to be the company that broke the standstill here, from what i can see[1]. companies like Hero, Sony, & others responded. i might be wrong here. but this is definitely

agreed that the logitech webcams situation has gone on for too long. most phones have way better cameras. in fact, many Linux users & mac users have been using phones for webcams for a while now[2][3]. With great onboard hardware encoding & solid wifi, these can be even more appealing solutions to what other dedicated devices like photography cameras & webcams provide. Everyone else is, simply, less willing & able to be flexible.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/29/21241305/canon-cameras-ds...

[2] https://github.com/bluezio/ipwebcam-gst

[3] https://github.com/paolorotolo/droidcam

Totally agreed. My old NEX-5 doesn't work with this new Sony software, and I was thinking about getting a new interchangeable lens camera mostly for webcam use. I think the right prime lens with a huge aperture could go a long way to making me look more presentable in video calls. In this environment it's an investment in your appearance, similar to buying nice clothes, a gym membership, etc.

Unfortunately there's very little information out there about things that are relevant for this application like resolution of HDMI out, ability to disable onscreen displays, latency, autofocus performance during HDMI streaming, overheating during continuous use, speed/convenience of power-on sequence, etc.

Does anyone here have a setup with an interchangeable lens camera as webcam that they really like and recommend?

I do use a D800 with a 50/F1.4 lens for video conf calls.

A lot of the current generation DSLRs do provide XGA, 1024x768 sized preview images when tethered, as, surprise surprise, that is the resolution of their viewfinder/screen. Older cameras, like the D800, only do 640x480, though IMO that is still a vastly superior image for video conferencing.

I've put together what I've found out so far at https://github.com/dognotdog/ptpwebcam/blob/master/CAMERAS.m...

Sony ILSM cameras seem to all do 1024x, DSLRs mostly do 640x480 unless they're from the last 2 or so generation of cameras. I have most complete information for Nikon, as they actually publish specs for the cameras PTP interfaces, unlike Canon or Sony, which have to be reverse engineered.

I've got the A7 which is not supported by this. You can get one used for 200usd. I put on the Sony 35 or 50 F1.8. I've also got a 40usd LED panel for lighting and both camera and lights are on fixtures connected to my desk via camps, 20usd from Amazon.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the used camera market seems to have exploded. The current used price seems to be $600+.

I was really hoping Apple would make it possible to use an iPhone as a webcam on macOS as a first-class built in feature (reverse AirPlay?) by now.

I was experimenting today with using my iphone as a webcam. It seems to work best with camo, and the image was way better than the builtin webcam of my imac or any regular external webcam. But I found it surprising how niche this still is. There seem to be no standard mounts for sale for easily clipping an iphone on the top of a laptop or imac, and the software situation is unsatisfying.

I've used Camo since beta and it is very solid. Image quality is great and it just works. Agree with you about a way to mount the phone, however.

I thought the same and went looking recently, Black Magic gear looks well suited.

Camera:

- https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/blackmagicpocke...

- https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/blackmagicmicro...

Capture card:

- https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/atemmini

- https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link-4k

- Generic eBay capture card

Except that is a $1000+ setup.

Mirrorless without auto focus for webcam? Sony's RX100Mx should be fine.

Are you using this?

When I looked the black magic camera seemed to require a human running it to get things to work well.

There were no clear winners, but these were the options I looked at as best:

- LUMIX GH5, high quality but old, bad autofocus

- LUMIX G100, new and cheaper, bad autofocus

- Sony ZV1, new and great autofocus, no interchangeable lens

I ended up unable to decide between them.

I read about that too and they take canon lenses.

Then I realized... yikes! they cost more than many canon bodies!

The phones which everyone has in their pockets is only limited by software to not act as a proper webcam(UVC/As an HID Webcam) instead of hacks like using IPCam protocols like RTSP etc which also need additional software on both ends.

It's fascinating to watch the camera companies slowly catch up to where Elgato was years ago; their failure to "think beyond the box" may help explains why camera sales peaked around 2012 and have been falling ever since.

Don't get me wrong: I still have a standalone Fuji camera, but I'm unusually interested in photo aesthetics. For most people, ease of use and convenience wins, and that it took this long for Sony to release software to enable this pretty obvious functionality explains what's wrong with most of the big camera companies.

Camera companies are stuck in some sort of car company stagnation loop it feels like, limiting themselves as pro tools. The only one approaching innovations was samsung, and they peaced out years ago.

* No touch-id in the shutter button

* No cell phone connectivity / android app support to instantly share your photos to insta, fb, etc & to sync as you go.

* No ordering prints right in the camera

* No google pixel / iOS quality level HDR & night sight modes

* No GPS

* No braindead obvious webcam mode

* Most can't run off a usb cable indefinitely, unlike smartphones

* etc

This is slowly changing, at least with some of the high-end consumer/prosumer Sony cameras. I'd like to see some of the other features in your list added, but Sony's past slowness to add features doesn't inspire much hope that they will be added any time soon.

All of the recent (4+ years) cameras have a "share to mobile" feature, where the camera acts as an AP, and your phone connects to pull photos from it. You can either pick the photos to transfer on the camera or on the phone, and it works pretty well for posting to social media, or instantly sharing.

I've run the RX100M3/M5 and a7iii off of USB power forever (a full day's worth of being a webcam via HDMI capture). You can get a battery eliminator for the older a7 models -- while it does require additional hardware and hassle, they do work, and can run off of USB.

The a7iii _finally_ supports some level of geotagging by using the GPS in your phone, and using a BLE connection to get location. It's not as good as a built in GPS, but it's better than recording a track log and syncing later.

There's a lot of functionality, but all of it is clunky as hell. Connecting to the camera is a PITA, the apps on the camera (at least my a6300) are slow as molasses.

I updated the -- again, full featured, but clunky -- remote app earlier and had to enter my account information using the camera 4-way stick, one letter at a time, as if it's 1995.

Edit -- forgot the best part: during the update, the camera locked up displaying "Updating, do not turn off". Lovely. (I turned it off -- removed the battery --, it still works.)

EXACTLY. Many cameras have had PITA wifi sharing modes for over 10 years now, even eyefi existed for quite a while. It's just clunky as hell, slow and annoying that you might as well not use it. They're stuck in some stagnation loop.

> All of the recent (4+ years) cameras have a "share to mobile" feature, where the camera acts as an AP, and your phone connects to pull photos from it. You can either pick the photos to transfer on the camera or on the phone, and it works pretty well for posting to social media, or instantly sharing.

In the case of Nikon, the proprietary app for doing this was quite terrible, across all of their cameras that I tried it with. They released a firmware that opened up things up in the past year, though; better late than never. There have been brute-forced reverse-engineered alternative solutions but they have always been a pain to set up, use and maintain.

I suspect the other manufacturers' apps wouldn't be much better.

> No google pixel / iOS quality level HDR & night sight modes

Marc Levoy (the brains behind Google's amazing Computational Photography technology), said that he had gone to the Camera companies before and they rejected his proposals. Camera companies were too afraid that someone was going to take a photo, and it would end up looking bad, and result in people returning their camera.

Source: Somewhere in this excellent course shared by Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7HrM-fk_Rc&list=PL7ddpXYvFX...

I don't think it's ease of use or anything more complicated than your phone is closer.

It's kind of like when your remote control is in the other room.

> It's fascinating to watch the camera companies slowly catch up to where Elgato was years ago;

What's most amazing to me is how ineffective camera company's have been at getting a healthy ecosystem of tools/softwares growing. There was a brief bold attempt with the Samsung Galaxy Camera[1] to mate a decent camera with the Android OS & bring the well-known development environment, but it didn't take off. I still think this is the best chance camera folks have to be relevant, but there needs to be a bigger base of developer know-how incubated & grown. Starting expert communities is hard.

Meanwhile, it turns out Sony's modern cameras actually do run Android, they just don't expose it. There are some really neat apps, for time lapse, for uploading to photo services, for a bunch of random itch-scratch wants/needs built atop this. It's all unofficial apps. I don't think there's much work done with video & video streaming, which is where, I think a lot of the ubicomp/ubiquotous & pervasive computing currents wants & needs are. But this is, from what I can see, one of the most interesting & open places for playing with media, short of buying an Android phone & relying on it's sensors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Camera

[2] https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE

Serious question - do Mac users just not use HDMI to USB capture devices? I got mine for $10 off eBay [1] and it works great with my Sony camera (RX100 IV) with zero new drivers required on PC[2].

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDMI-to-USB-2-0-Video-Capture-Card-...

[2] It's limited to 1080p, which is more than I need from a webcam.

This is not only for Mac. Also, you really don't see a value in a camera supporting that without buying extra hardware, even if its cheap?

I see the value, but 1) this is a solution for a problem that's been cheaply solvable for years via brand-independent options, and 2) I find it kind of funny that people who strongly care about buying extra hardware/dongles would use Apple products...

My camera (the a6000) isn't supported by this software, so I've been very happy with my $12 hdmi capture card, weird proprietary HDMI cable and dummy battery.

micro-hdmi is about as proprietary as micro-usb

The dummy battery is what annoys me the most, since it means you have to swap out a battery every time you want to use the camera, vs just pull out 2 cables.

I hate having to press the ‘play’ button every time. Is there a solve for that?

Isn't there really bad lag inherent in that process though? (My only source is personal experience with a HDMI-to-USB3 capture device with ~200ms+ lag - about 6-7 years ago)

If you want a good quality camera for Zoom/Facetime/etc anything over ~32ms would be grating - especially if you're using an external microphone attached directly to the computer.

I got one of those capture devices and connected a Lumix G7. Plug and play in Linux. Now I'm using OBS with v4l2loopback to have greater control, crop, etc. Nobody cares or notices the nearly half second delay. And nobody notices the bokeh and nice colors either :(

If you have Windows (or linux), you can use DroidCam[1] to turn your Android (or iPhone) into a web cam. It can be over Wifi or USB. Very convenient. Also integrates with OBS for streaming etc.

[1]: https://www.dev47apps.com/

We should also look at addressing the issue of conferencing tools not actually being able to handle true high quality streams like you might get on Twitch or YouTube Live. My Canon EOS R and L lens may look great in 60fps through an HDMI capture card, but what point is there when it's still going to be a 24fps 360p[0] video stream on Zoom even if I choose the HD option? Sure, the pandemic is somewhat to blame[1], but I'm just using Zoom as an example.

Google Meet goes up to 720p maximum.[2]

Google Duo doesn't do 1080p unless you're on a Samsung S20. Not even Pixels suppoprt it.[3]

WhatsApp does great 1080p video calls on your phone (I think? I haven't verified this), but you can't make video calls on desktop clients.

Skype seems to be the only consumer-facing free cloud video conferencing tool that will do 1080p and look good, but I haven't tried in years -- the redesign and general clunkiness drove me (and everyone else, seemingly) away from it. I can't believe support for 1080p video calls in 2020 is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I stumbled upon TrueConf[4], and might give them a go with my setup to see if I can get an actual 2020-esque video call going between my family. TrueConf appears to be self-hosted, which I guess is why there's no restriction on quality (takes bandwidth and transcoding out of the picture for the service provider, so zero cost per call.) Although this may be great for me, it's certainly not for the average joe, so the aforementioned industry-wide issues still need to be addressed and quite frankly I find it embarrassing that we have such low quality video calls in 2020.

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/h88yrdu2gu9kh59/zoom.png?dl=0

[1] https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207347086-Group-HD

[2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/u74x9g89mtts6ho/meet.png?dl=0

[3] https://www.gsmarena.com/google_duo_will_be_integrated_into_...

[4] https://trueconf.com/

I think a self hosted Jitsi Meet can do 1080p, if configured right.

When they originally announced the Windows version there was a lot of fine print such as the resolution being horribly low. I don't see that listed this time at least on this page, so was wondering if that was resolved, or just more hidden now? I use the 4K Cam Usb stick and get full resolution and works great with Sony A7Riv though ideally of course always nicer to have one less thing to plugin but sounds like this isn't meant to come close to competing with those options but rather just better than nothing?

They just hid the resolution constraint disclaimer one click away at the end of the [usage instructino / "how to use" guide](https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/webcam/en/instructi...):

The resolution is 1,024 × 576 pixels.

Anyone know if an A7III can be used as a webcam on gnu/linux?

I documented the process for using a DSLR as a webcam in Linux, and it does look like the A7III _should_ be supported:

https://www.crackedthecode.co/how-to-use-your-dslr-as-a-webc...

Is there a way to use this with MacBook Pro without having to invest in an expensive HDMI capture card? The cheapest (reputable) HDMI cards I can find are around $100, many are much more expensive, and they often have features I don't need. I just want a straight HDMI to USB-C.

these cheapo hdmi capture cards work great: https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDMI-to-USB2-0-Video-Capture-Card-1...

Thanks — but I'd need a USB-A to USB-C adapter to use that. Is there one for USB-C?

At that price, it would be cheaper to just buy a $5 adapter and leave it on permanently

I just prefer to live adapter-free when possible. But I guess I may have to accept that I will have to use on here.

Do those work at 1080p 60 FPS? It claims to support 4K 30 at least.

Be careful as you read: that whole listing is dubious.

The listing is actually covering three completely different products: firstly, an HDMI-to-USB-2.0 capture card (HDMI female, USB-A male). And secondly and thirdly, red USB-C– and Lightning-to-HDMI cables (USB-C/Lightning male, HDMI male, plus USB-A male for a power source), which I will call broadcast cards for the rest of this comment, for want of a better name. Leastways, I’m pretty sure they’re broadcast cards, though the text doesn’t mention anything at all about them (except possibly for one line, discussed below), and the images and single line description in the “Item” dropdown are hardly conclusive.

The listing conveniently blurs the lines about what it’s talking about.

The capture card claims to support 4K 30fps input. Not output.

In the text, it says “Video Output Resolution: Max output can be 1080p (lightning cable)/ 4K (Type C cable)”. The mentions of Lightning and USB-C imply that this line is talking about the broadcast card… even though everything else in the listing is talking about the capture card (I think). I know the saying, “never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence”, but I can’t explain this with incompetence. I’ve got to attribute this to malice, >99% they’re flat-out lying to make the product sound better. Adding a USB-to-Lightning or USB-A–to–USB-C adapter can’t improve a product that’s limited to USB 2.0. There is certainly no 4K output on the capture card. So by this point, we know nothing about its output, save that they lied. 1080p seems the most likely reconstruction and reconciliation of the lie.

One of the images (probably talking about the capture card) says “1920x 1080@30Hz”, but frankly I don’t believe this represents reality—even if it is mostly true, it’s certainly lying by omission. USB 2.0 simply isn’t capable of channelling full-quality video at that level (1920×1080, 3×8-bit channels, 30fps), so the only way they could hit that frame rate is by compression, meaning lowering the quality of the signal markedly.

From my research, many report USB 2.0 HDMI capture cards having terrible image quality and not even hitting 30fps consistently. I have not actually purchased any myself to verify this one way or another, but I have found quite a few reports of these sorts of thing, some in reasonable technical depth, whereas I have not found a single technically-detailed review that looks favourably upon these units. So I say avoid USB 2.0 ones like the plague, because there’s simply not enough bandwidth for them to be good products. You’ll have better luck with USB 3.0 ones, and make sure that they explicitly say 1080p/60fps output. (There are 1080p/30fps USB 3.0 ones, but they seem to be commonly associated with complaints as well, so that I imagine they’ve been cutting corners severely; so even if 30fps is all you want, I suggest getting one that advertises 60fps output—that’s what I’ll be doing when I get one.)

Thanks for the detailed response. Like you, I was very suspicious of it mentioning USB 2.0 and 4K in the same description. Seems like these aren't worth the trouble, especially when considering 60 FPS to be a bare minimum.

I just got mine, it's great. 1080p30 is currently more than enough for web conferencing, which is what I need it for. Much better quality than the tethering feed that I assume this new Sony tool uses.

So it maxes out at 1080p30, right? That's still good to know, and it's a good point about it being good enough for web conferencing.

The device claims to do 1080p60 Motion-JPEG. I don't know if it actually works and there's no guarantee a similar looking device will be exactly the same. See also [1], their device falsely claimed to be USB3 and only did 1080p30. In practice, none of the tools I use let me specify the frame rate anyway.

  $ v4l2-ctl  -D -d /dev/video0 --list-formats-ext

   [0]: 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG, compressed)
    Size: Discrete 1920x1080
     Interval: Discrete 0.017s (60.000 fps)
     Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
     Interval: Discrete 0.040s (25.000 fps)
     Interval: Discrete 0.050s (20.000 fps)
     Interval: Discrete 0.100s (10.000 fps)

[1] http://ciko.io/posts/cheap_usb_hdmi/

RX100 VII on macOS 11 doesn't work with the recommended settings, quelle surprise from Sony software. The €9 capture card I read about here works perfectly and at higher res.

a5100 on macOS 10.14.6 does not work too. Skype and Photo Booth do not detect camera at all, Google Meet sees video source but it contains only test pattern. I also tried to make it work on Windows VM with USB passthrough but no luck and in the end, just like you, I went with cheap capture card and that works great.

Which capture card are you using? I couldn't find mentions to it in this thread.

Not sure it has a name, but it looks like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HDMI-to-USB-Video-Capture-Card-10... It's fantastic, works anytime with no issues.

I have a similar one [1] (they probably all use the same chip). Can't go wrong for the money. Just don't believe it's USB3 and can do 60fps output.

[1]: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HDMI-to-USB-3-0-Video-Capture-Car...

Oh neat! I was just posting here[0] about my kind of clunky setup to run a Sony mirrorless as a webcam.

I was teetering on the brink of buying a capture card, guess I'll delay that for awhile and kick the tires on the official app.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24743842

I wish ILCE-6000 was supported as well :-(

I have a Sony ZV-1. It took a bit to get it going but I'm now seeing the crispest image in OBS on a webcam that I have ever personally used. Coupled with the shallow depth of field with the ZV-1's fast(ish) lens it's a huge step up from my 2016 MBP 720p webcam.

So far I have tested the following: Skype: "No device found" (laptop closed) Zoom: Only FaceTime HD Camera detected Quicktime: Captures only the Imaging Edge Webcam logo screen OBS: Works great - added a "Sony Camera" perfectly first time

If anyone wants me to try something else, let me know.

Here's the compatibility list for the mac obs webcam plugin. I wonder if Sony's driver has the same issues.

https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam/wiki/Compat...

OBS is the only app I have been able to get working so far.

I will definitely to this soon though... but it would be good to do quick Zoom meetings without using OBS.

It is possible to use any camera that can display its FOV on a computer screen as we webcam with OBS and OBS-VirtualCam.

I've been using a Sony a6300 as a webcam for a few months now and it works great without any hardware beyond the USB cable between camera and computer.

This was stated in one of the pages:

The resolution is 1,024 × 576 pixels.

Which is not that impressive to say the least.

Can Zoom &c even push higher resolutions?

Serious question, I have no idea.

Yes you can do 720p

I heard about this last week and tried it with my Sony α6100 on Windows.

All of these sorts operate over PTP, roughly saying: “camera, please take a photo of what you see (but don’t save it to the SD card)” followed by “camera, please hand me that temporary file you just created”—30 times a second, and then serves the JPEGs in succession as an MJPEG. I know this is how it works because I was figuring out how this stuff worked a month or two back (Wireshark and all) with a view to creating a way of using it as a webcam.

My camera only captures at 1024×576 this way. This is disappointing. I suspect that this resolution may have been chosen so that it could still serve 30fps over USB 2 (480Mbps, and 1024 width × 576 height × 24 bits × 30 frames = 405Mbps, though in practice JPEG compression is used so it’ll never be anywhere near this). I’m not sure how fast it actually does transfer over USB, but the one time I imported my photos to my computer over USB, it was vastly slower than just taking the SD card out and putting it in the Surface Book’s reader, which let me copy multi-gigabyte video files off at 2Gbps. (I’m still marvelling at that speed every time I do it.)

Despite that low resolution, it will still look better than almost all laptop webcams at 1280×720 or even those at 1920×1080, because of superior optics.

Another thing to be aware of is much higher latency—I observed a delay of 150–200ms, which is extremely not great.

So my conclusion all up is that, at least for the α6100, this is not suitable for serious use. I guided someone last week to using https://ptpwebcam.org/ on their Mac last week (having come across it in my earlier research), and he reported getting a much better resolution with his Nikon camera than with his Sony camera. Not sure about latency, I didn’t ask.

The alternative in all this is HDMI capture cards. Unfortunately, decent ones are moderately expensive—but then, you bought a DSLR or mirrorless camera, so you’re clearly not afraid of spending money, even if it is a pity that you have to spend more when USB really should be quite capable. I haven’t acquired one yet (I’m in India at present, and the options available are extremely limited, though curiously far wider today than they were two months ago, when there basically weren’t any below US$200), but from my research I say this: do not get one of the cheapest ones that advertise USB 2.0 operation, 1080p and maybe mention 30fps. It’s genuinely impossible for them to actually achieve this as they should: 1080p of 24-bit colour at 30fps is 1400Mbps, which is treble the theoretical limit of USB 2.0, and I’m not sure what the practical speed limit of USB 2.0 is, but it’s typically quite a bit lower than that. So in short they must be lying and sacrificing image quality and/or frame rate. Reviews of such capture cards are pretty consistently a mixed bunch with some saying “sure, it works fine” and others saying “no, this is terrible and unusable, don’t buy it, it was a waste of money”, sometimes with proper technical detail of where it fell short. Instead, seek as a minimum one that advertises USB 3.0, 1080p and 30fps (and make sure it actually says all three of these things, it’s muddy ground where there seem to be some that don’t say or consistently achieve 30fps). There are still various options a lot cheaper than popular known-reliable units like the Elgato Cam Link.

I’m not sure what latency is like if you use an HDMI capture card, but I’m guessing it’ll still be enough (2–4 frames at 30fps) that you might want to fiddle with latency compensation if you’re using something like OBS Studio, to align your audio and video sources.

*Some Sony cameras

Anyone know whether the original RX100 is supported? It doesn't look like it from the list.

>rx100m3 i have a m2

No dice it seems

Seems like a very limited selection of A-mounts, sadly

The A mount is practically dead, it's been surpassed by the full frame E-mount. Only somewhat recent Sony cameras are supported by the webcam driver, and there simply aren't many recent A-mount cameras.

It's sad that the a6000 isn't there.

Just go the usb-capture-card route. Way better quality anyway for 10-15 €/$

Android & iOS also need this sorely!

I've plugged lots of webcams into a mac and they just work. I think apple must use a standard protocol.

chances are they work on mac, they'll work on linux too.

This is a software for DSLR's/mirrorless and other 'Full-fledged' cameras, not webcams. Macbooks do not have an hdmi in, and passing video through usb wasn't a standard for those cameras until lately (and still isn't). So macbook or windows didn't matter in this case.

It's a custom driver for Mac, so it will not just work without additional driver support of some sort. There is a standard USB webcam protocol, which the cameras' firmware does not implement, in favor of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24793187

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