Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
tratt.net
tratt.net
We had to ask one employee to go back to his reliable built-in webcam because every other meeting started with 2 minutes of him getting his camera turned on, messing with audio inputs, getting his microphone boom in place, and fighting other quirks. He also had a tendency to drop out of long meetings when his camera overheated, at which point it was another 1-2 minutes of messing around with the camera setup.
If you're going to do this, it must be reliable and ready to go before meetings. Don't be the person fighting with expensive equipment all the time just to get a marginally better image for your highly compressed Zoom video stream. This isn't a Twitch stream. We just want to talk and get down to business.
Heck, I've had to fight to just get the onboard to function, particularly so in MS Teams.
Overall it just wasn't worth the effort, especially once I realized nobody cared or even really noticed. Now, absolutely, many projects are worth doing for their own sake and for your own satisfaction :). But while accomplishing it brought that satisfaction, continued use on daily bases just wasn't worth it.
So I looked for a nice webcam with narrowest possible FOV (which is the opposite from what manufacturers are going for, unfortunately), put it on a tripod with ring light, and I get results that are externally undistinguishable (if not better), but FAR superior reliability.
----
Note also that photographer in me wanted to do a Portrait shot with zoom in my face. Interestingly, overwhelming feedback once I actually asked real people, is that they PREFERRED a wide shot with my office visible. Made it more human and less stark/intimidating, apparently. So as ever, don't make assumptions of your user base! :)
Edited to add: Meant Narrow DOF when writing this, but both are true if you sit close to it!
If you expect someone to sit for 8 hours a day give them a good chair lest they start having back issues after two months of employment.
My other thought is that the suggested lens can stop down to f1.8, which would give a nice narrow depth of field (DOF) and add a pleasant background blur, but it would also be harder to stay in focus during a call. If the person on camera moves forward or backward very much at all when the lens is at f1.8, they would be pretty blurry. So perhaps they could get away with a lens that just stops down to f2.8 or so, albeit with worse low-light performance (smaller aperture, less light coming through).
But take these comments with a grain of salt. It sounds like you have a setup that works well for you.
In any case I find if you sit close to your camera, 35mm is a good FOV that will fit in your head and shoulders. The background blur for f/1.8 works well if you enable Servo Autofocus with Face Detect. It will momentarily get confused if you step out of the frame and back in again, but it can track a face pretty well after that.
On full frame I used 85mm 1.8 to get a a good FOV / DOF / proportions.
But it sat on a tripod 1.5 meters behind my computer and made the room a nightmare to navigate :D
35mm on FF would indeed be mildly wide (just on wide side of "normal" 50mm lens)
That said, even the greatest autofocus isn't going to be able to keep up with a person who moves around a lot at f/1.8 - so it's reasonable to stop down a bit if that's the case for your subject.
The mirrorless EOS camera's (R series) have autofocus with face tracking which works quite well. At f1.8 you get 8cm depth of field at 1m distance so you'd have to stop down the aperture to about f4 if you want your whole head to appear sharp on video.
I ended up getting Logitech Brio. It's expensive for a webcam, and honestly I'm a bit peeved - I don't feel I am getting my money's worth in terms of image quality. The software is also absolutely atrocious, so I don't really use it. But it is the best compromise of image quality and FOV that I could find.
(if your question was about DOF / bokeh/ blur, no webcam will do that and so far I haven't liked any software options. I just put a black collapsible photography background behind me so nothing but me is in the photo to begin with :)
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/video-collaboration/software/...
I'm using it on my home computer and my work laptop, but don't want to install the software on the work laptop. So I must live with the extremely wide FOV there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/logitech/comments/nw17w1/brio_cam_w...
I was underwhelmed with the Brio but I eventually got used to it. It’s not the upgrade to the 920s I had imagined it to be but it’s good enough to keep.
And yes, I used Logitune to tune as much as I could. It was horrendous out of box.
Perhaps we've overestimated the need-gap[1] for good quality webcams? Most people seem to be just fine with mediocre webcams for that video call in which their video is anyways going to be compressed and resized to small window if there are multiple participants.
That doesn't mean I didn't waste my time in trying to build a better webcam like others here, I tried to convert a old point-and-shoot into a webcam using CHDK firmware but I couldn't find a way to get the video stream.
[1] 'Make entry level webcam better' - https://needgap.com/problems/185-make-entry-level-webcam-bet... (Disclosure: I run this problem validation forum)
Additionally, for most cameras, the input feed used by the software goes through the camera's image processing stack as if they were using the real-time "Live View" feature (i.e. showing you the image you're going to take post-processing, i.e. real-time image processing). This often heats the camera up and causes it to shut down due to thermal overload. If you use a capture card, it captures whatever's on the screen without hitting the image processing stack, which is much less resource-intensive.
The first person I interviewed with this setup had the same problem. He looked great, but the software processing the input from his camera made him lag horribly.
I have a Canon M200 mirrorless SLR with an Elgato HDMI Capture card and have used it for all-day online meetings (even through OBS!) with no issues at all. Startup takes me, like, 30 seconds: turn key and fill lights on, turn camera on, press hotkey to start OBS, Krisp and Zoom, turn on video.
These pathways are the same. You're decidedly not getting raw video out of (most) consumer cameras via HDMI.
No, he was using an HDMI capture card and trying to do things with OBS.
> Startup takes me, like, 30 seconds: turn key and fill lights on, turn camera on, press hotkey to start OBS, Krisp and Zoom, turn on video.
Which is all great and fine if you've got it perfected and you're the type of person to handle all of this before the meeting starts.
But when someone shows up late to a meeting or forgets to prepare, it's far easier for everyone involve if they can just open their laptop and join the meeting with the built-in webcam instead of turning on their camera, turning on lights, starting OBS, confirming all the settings, etc.
Take anyone who notices and asks if you have a previously undisclosed twin-sibling out to dinner for being observant.
Bonus points if you wear the same clothes as your video self to really mess with someone's head
Same way how you get a lot from talking face to face vs talking on the phone.
Why would my coworkers need to see the individual pores on my nose anyways?
However one thing I have noticed is mic quality matters... up to a point.
I'm not even talking mic booms and super expensive setups, the difference between some omnidirectional mic on the bottom of a laptop or the side of one of those bluetooth headphones and pretty much any headset with a mic pointed at your actual face is night and day. It doesn't need to be expensive, but it does need to be within reasonable proximity to your mouth, and preferably not over a questionably compressed bluetooth stream.
I've been very happy with it! Indeed, I started typing without thinking during a meeting, apologized to the group and they said they didn't hear the typing at all. I was shocked because I am in a temporary setup and am using my mechanical keyboard - which I try to avoid during the day for obvious reasons.
Pretty amazing quality. I ended up getting one for my parents to use on their calls and they love it - works with the computer, their cell phones or their house phone. Provantage has 'em for $80 too.
That's coming from plugging a bose speaker in to whatever laptop I'm using before.
The machine has it's flaws, but this part is really close to magic for me.
Also, there’s nothing more annoying than hearing birds chirping when you’re trying to have a meeting with the volume turned all the way up to hear you talking. Buy a freakin headset.
Like what? Having worked from home since the time when (affordable) connections were too slow for anything but text, it's questionable if audio even brings any value. I never watch any video streams that may be present on calls. They are, while a fun novelty, useless.
> Why would my coworkers need to see the individual pores on my nose anyways?
Your coworkers wouldn't need to see you at all under normal circumstances, but if video is your product then doing it right is worthwhile. There's good reason why movies aren't filmed on first generation iPhones.
Please don't take it the wrong way, but it's extremely strange you don't see any of this.
If I may ask, what do you do for work now? What kind of communication do you need with people where text is as fast as face to face? Have you ever worked in a physical office before? Do you have any issues when it comes to socializing with people IRL?
Without trying to sound glib, it's a long list. I have a number of different jobs across multiple industries. However, director of a beverage company along with working with a software development team are where my calls take place most often.
> What kind of communication do you need with people where text is as fast as face to face?
In particular, software-related technical matters are painful to communicate by voice. Because of that, everyone wants to share their screen to reintroduce text, so any video that is being recorded gets pushed to the side anyway. This where text wins hands down, if you know how to communicate.
Indeed, it has become apparent in the last couple of years, with everyone moving home, that most software developers have no idea how to communicate. Calls have become a crutch to try and fumble their way through it. When you have to repeat yourself over and over again to get your point across, voice bandwidth starts to gain an edge. However, my experience in working with effective communicators in an age when text was the only practical option (long distance charges would have killed you!), it's clear that text is far more efficient when utilized well.
> Have you ever worked in a physical office before?
I have, even in software, a long, long time ago. Some of my jobs also still take me to physical locations. Software has been WFH for most of my software career, though.
> Do you have any issues when it comes to socializing with people IRL?
I guess that's for the receiving end to decide, but in terms of socialization IRL is my preferred mode. Work communication isn't really socialization, though. It's knowledge transfer. And that's where text shines. Not only in its ability to communicate ideas but also the natural maintenance of record.
> Please don't take it the wrong way, but it's extremely strange you don't see any of this.
Frankly, as mentioned, shared screens dominate the vast majority of calls I'm on given the ineffectiveness of voice. Even if I thought there was theoretical value in the video, it would be difficult to give attention to it. I don't find it strange that an animated postage stamp off to the side provides no value at all. What is to be gained from it? You can't see much without taking from the focus.
I'd argue only if you have a presenter without screen sharing, perfect video makes sense. In most business meetings screens are shared anyway or there's a group of people.
There’s definitely a lot of variables and points of failure here but this isn’t my experience using an elgato cam link and a Sony camera. Granted it was a desktop so it’s quite a bit more powerful than a laptop but once setup I had no such issues with overheating or random drop outs (tested for 3-4 hrs at times).
Adjusting the mic should also not take much time, put it in front of your face.
I’m far from an expert in such setups as well so it sounds like your coworker either had bad hardware or less than optimal config.
I agree with you though, if you’re going to use this setup make sure it’s solid before you rely on it.
I've since started recording some of my courses directly from OBS. [0] The framerate probably suffers, but I've never had thermal/overheating issues.
0 - https://store.metasnake.com/view/courses/a1a19c9e-af18-4615-...
Having a webcam on a proper tripod makes it really easy to control variables in testing of things like barcode scanning and other image recognition tasks as well. Being able to swap lenses and manually control the entire system can make a huge difference for my purposes. I will tape my test samples to a whiteboard (sometimes with varying backgrounds) and place the camera at a fixed location from it.
I don't go much further than the camera and basic software. I don't have patience for backdrops, lights, finicky software chains, etc. I simply do M50=>canon software=>windows webcam device.
People built Linux over email. Having audio meetings is more than enough.
Lots of these tools do real time closed-caption now anyway.
Some people write long emails like reports, other people write very short emails. There is no standard.
The real-time closed captions are gratefully appreciated and much needed from an accessibility standpoint, but they're not perfect. More technical words, accents, etc. all cause difficulties.
If the bandwidth is good and ping time low, video conferencing works very well. You can see and hear when the audio matches the lip movements. It's awful when the audio is not in sync with the video.
However, I have found that it's absolutely worth it to upgrade to a better microphone. Just about anything is better than the mic built into most computers and better voice quality will give you more presence and make it significantly more enjoyable for others to listen to you. Wearing headphones also helps so that the computer isn't forced to do echo cancelation on the signal.
It's fairly easy to get an audio interface and a xlr microphone. I always appreciate when other people have clean audio.
A mixer or interface also allows you to monitor the microphone signal in your headphones or speakers. It keeps your tone and volume more consistent and you'll immediately notice if you accidentally back away from the mic (as opposed to the other side complaining they can't hear).
After that everything works flawlessly.
Source: Recently swapped over to a better camera, after testing it out in informal meetings and verifying reliable function...
I'm using mine all the time (I do corporate training and haven't done in-person since March 2020), so it sits in the mount. I also know the correct combination of rain/blow-into-the-Nintendo dances to get OBS and other software to work with it.
From what I've seen people being late is more often a problem of the people and not the hardware.
And if after three years of remote work, you weren't capable of getting a working microphone, camera and stable internet connection, I'd con that as a people problem, too. Working meaning you can actually hear the other person and not only their fan.
This gear works 100% of the time, all the time, in Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, you name it.
Bootup is definitely does some things, turning on two lights, camera on/off switch, and a small button on back of it to shift to the 1080p output. But at this point it is just seconds, muscle memory.
I get a lot of compliments on quality, clearness, and the natural optical effect of out of focus blurred background.
And I definitely notice other people's poor lightning, bad quality picture, artifacting of cheapo webcams or got forbid native built in laptop cameras.
Also make sure your digital SLR or whatever expensive camera you're using as a webcam doesn't have a 30m video limit, which some do. This is one of the most recommended pieces of advice on /r/videoediting (non-professional) for new streamers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VideoEditing/
For most people, if you want better video quality for Zoom meetings or teaching Yoga online or similar, then a relatively recent smartphone camera + better lighting and microphone is more than sufficient.
The advantage in my case is huge: I have a bright window to my side (and I refuse to close the curtains and work in the dark) and a white background. My c920 would expose for the average brightness level, and made me look like I was in the witness protection program. With the mirrorless, it has more dynamic range, and also I can set the exposure manually so I always look fine and the background gets a bit blown out.
I agree with people saying that better lighting (I look better when I use the Key Light as a fill light on the opposite side of the window) and a better microphone (Rode USB mic on a boom arm that I keep positioned just under what's visible in-frame -- still close enough to my mouth to get good sound without the "hey, don't forget to like and subscribe" effect) are more important, but doing a better camera is better, too.
Written by some guy named Steve, it’s an incredible piece of web software that uses WebRTC to stream phone audio and video as an OBS input. OBS then features a virtual webcam capability to take that stream and make it a webcam. I can then also use OBS to do whatever processing I want, e.g. making my webcam also contain a screen share or whatever else.
It’s trivial to then load up multiple instances for multi-angle scenes in OBS, then cut between the two. For example, you could have one ‘face’ camera and one ‘page’ camera showing paper on your desk and make a 2nd scene with the ‘page’ camera as the primary and a small PIP view of your face.
It goes much farther than just being an input for OBS, though. For example, it can create video chatrooms of multiple participants with URL parameter configuration and without touching OBS (indeed that’s now one of its primary use cases).
I use it to stream applications/webpages with my partner when we’re apart so we can watch a movie together by creating a high res vid/stereo audio input with no noise cancelling as the movie, then have her and I connect as lower quality, mono+noise cancelling participants. Each of us receives the video and audio of the movie, but only the audio of each other.
There’s heaps of parameters to control video and audio quality, buffering, etc. - just about anything you need.
I stumbled across it when I was trying to get my iPhone to be a webcam early on in the pandemic. There’s multiple apps for that purpose - many paid - but this was so easy and worked so well that it blew them out of the water from a capability perspective.
I know I sound like a shill but honestly I’m just a huge fanboy. It’s one of those web apps that does a job really bloody well, with heaps of flexibility and extensibility. I’m genuinely impressed with it and all the hard work Steve’s clearly put in.
The docs explain a lot of its capability: https://docs.vdo.ninja/
Flick through the how it works and use cases pages, they’ll explain it far better than me.
Guides that show sown of the advanced capability: https://docs.vdo.ninja/guides
It doesn't look like StreamBridge supports WebRTC, but maybe someone else has a WebRTC to NDI converter that would be similar to StreamBridge? I really hate having the intermediate step, but I like having stable video even more :)
https://abhitronix.github.io/vidgear/v0.2.5-stable/bonus/ref...
vdo.ninja and a couple of iPod Touch's (RIP) were really useful to give the trainers the ability to walk around the parachute loft to get up close and personal with a specific set of equipment. Combined with OBS, some powerpoint plug-ins, and vdo.ninja, we were able to bring something together that worked really well in no time at all.
An alternative for a local network is running NDI. That's how for events we stream a bunch of remote cameras (and even computers on the network) into visual displays.
There are NDI apps for most phones etc.
It's a free driver download for MacOS and Windows and then a paid app for your phone (6 dollars I think) and you can use your phone as a webcam, either over wifi or USB.
It works with OBS, Zoom, Meet, and other stuff (maybe not FaceTime though? I don't use it on my Mac but I know Apple is picky about what cameras can work with FaceTime) and just shows up as a regular webcam on your system.
If you have an older or spare phone, the camera in it is likely waaaay better than a webcam.
They recently updated it so that it works in all apps now, including FaceTime.
Ohh, shared media watch is still such a mess right now, and it would have been so amazing in the peak of the pandemic. Replying so I can find this in the future.
I’d imagine anything where I need to read slides/notes on a screen would suck if done via a phone. In fact, the only time I use my phone is if my video is off and I am listening passively.
Nearly all modern cheap webcams are UVC-compatible and they work with linux. Different models expose different functionalities, but I ended up with this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R489K8L
It does 1600x1200 25FPS YUYV (as well as a wide range of other resolutions and FPS) uses the C/CS-mount lens standard (easy to buy a wide range of high quality lenses). It doesn't have a microphone but you should be using an independent mike anyway. Has software control of exposure color temp, and gain, which is great for various lighting conditions.
You read the data through USB, not HDMI. The one thing I haven't managed to do is autofocus, but imho, for webcams you want to set a fixed focus around your head anyway.
Works with all video conference programs, and OBS studio (I actually import the video in OBS and then create a virtual camera).
I use a GH4 or G9 with a USB3HDCAP at my desk because I already have them and the glass, personally, and I know the sensor is not going to be a trailing problem behind the (cheap!) glass that I use.
Arducam has a bunch of C-mount lenses, https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/35052708-55DC-4832-A0B6-A... as well as nice USB webcams that let you choose from several sensors. https://www.arducam.com/sony/imx477/
Do you have a web page somewhere describing your linux webcam microscope?
The idea is fairly simple. It's a basic construction kit for simple microscopes (just LED, lens, objective, tube, and camera, all mounted to an aluminum extrusion post using 3D printed parts). Then some inexpensive XYZ stages to move the sample holder holder around for large FOV and focus stacking.
Everything else is just cobbled-together from python, but see MicroManager for a tool that can drive an open source microscope.
Did you have any issues with that? Do you have a rough approximation of what zoom setting you're using and what FOV it gives?
I'd love to get a better camera than the built-in laptop one, but also don't want to shell out $1500 plus the hassle of a DSLR…
I experimented with a huge variety of mounting options before settling on a SmallRig adjustable arm clamped to the top of my monitor mount, so it peeks over the top of my monitor, basically where a built-in webcam would be.
To me it’s the best compromise between control, quality, and price. Having physical control of zoom, focus, and exposure is amazing. Meetings start up instantly, no software to mess with.
To be fair I spent another $150ish trying various mounting options, but those are shared between the camera, mic (Rode NT-USB), and lighting. Eventually I gave up on the camera light and fixed my room lighting. A more frugal person could get a similar setup for $250 all in.
Alternative C- and CS-mount lenses are easy to buy https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Aperture-Compatible-Mirrorless... and will focus near your face and have plenty of light. People will say your background blur is amazing.
Using OBS gives you a very flexible way to stack a window capture with video sources, composite them, etc, yes, but your output is then routed through the virtual camera driver and sent to Meet as a regular webcam feed.
So because Meet thinks it's just a webcam feed, your coworkers will just see your shared window as a tiny video tile downsampled on the sending end down to 720p, and the only way they have of seeing it large is to pin your video tile manually.
Is there a trick here where you got OBS to output the composite feed to a chromeless window then you share that as a regular application window presentation?
I’ve used Fujifilm, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and I think even a gopro once successfully using this method.
Edit - added mic suggestion
Also: this works for me on Win/Mac, but I’ve not tried Linux yet.
There's a web page on Canon's site here:
https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...
You'll see one list of cameras on there, but at the bottom, you can expand "Clean HDMI", and then you'll see a different list of cameras.
Now I'm debating whether or not I want to spend hundreds of dollars for a DIFFERENT photography camera that support clean HDMI.
EDIT - For your case perhaps using camera settings to minimize the data (ISO/aperture/shutter etc) being shown on on the screen works well enough to use what you have?
I saw a few threads with that suggestion, but I wasn't able to minimize the data being shown, or confirmation that anyone with a Rebel T7 was able to do it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31413073
EDIT: I mean it'd probably be OK if I were just shooting a video--I can fumble through it connecting unreliably, or just do another take if it unexpectedly disconnects. But I'm doing multiple video calls a day, and the webcam built-in to my monitor "just works" every time. It's tough to justify the additional complexity for something that isn't working reliably.
That's why I started leaning toward "Clean HDMI". With that method, as long as the HDMI capture device works, everything should "just work" on the Mac side, and as long as the camera can output clean HDMI, it should also "just work." I'm not dealing with a poorly-supported software webcam utility, special USB signaling, or annoying inactivity timeouts.
But it looks like I'll need a different camera, and it won't be cheap, but at least it's an option.
It should be an AF/MF toggle in the lens.
The biggest problem with my setup is that when I open OBS I need to disconnect and reconnect the dongle before OBS will pick it up. Until I figured out how to repeatably get that working it was... more trouble than it was worth. I need OBS because the version of the patched firmware I'm running produces a non standard aspect ratio that I adjust for in OBS, at the cost of a more involved setup and extra CPU utilization. If I used the patched firmware that removes the fixes that (I haven't tried it yet), I would likely forego OBS for meetings.
[1]: https://nikonhacker.com/wiki/Supported_Models
[2]: https://nikonhacker.com/wiki/Nikon_Patch
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B094N6W6SP
What I've found is that by USB charging and using HDMI out, it's good for ~2.5 hours of streaming, which I've only ever hit once as a limit.
there's a newer Sony in the same line (the ZV-E10) but it moved the ports to the other side of the camera, so if you flick the LCD round so you can see it, the cables are in the way...
[1] https://helpguide.sony.net/dc/1910/v1/en/contents/TP00028862...
The cheap ones (as little as eight bucks) all use the same all-in-one HDMI-receiver-MJPEG-encoding-USB-device chip; it's not perfect, but they do actually support 1080p at 30 fps.
i found this article https://havecamerawilltravel.com/nikon-d3400-webcam-live-str... that suggests the budget device is workable but obviously doesn't deliver the quality that the camera can provide. but how does it compare to a regular webcam?
It's a bit limited in that it only does 1080p30 and it's not the best quality either.
The body is old enough to not car about voiding warranties by using a generic battery adaptor and custom firmware.
The image quality only shows up here because they’re uploading images that they took from the camera locally. Trying doing it with Zoom.
The compression is absolutely terrible. You’re gonna find that you spent a lot of time and money only to see a decent quality image on your side. Everyone else is gonna see the same muddy mess that they always saw.
The image is always bad due to the compression. If you’re a twitch steamer or something where you’re doing a 50mbps bitrate then whatever. But for most folks - there is little to no improvement. Your best way to improve image quality would be to improve lighting. Even a good camera will have a bad image with bad lighting.
Standard HD (720p)
- 1-on-1 video calls: 1.2Mbps (up/down)
- Group video calls: 2.6Mbps / 1.8Mbps (up/down)
Full HD (1080p)
- 1:1 video calls:
-- Receiving 1080p HD video requires a minimum of 3.0Mbps.
-- Sending 1080p video requires a minimum of 3.8Mbps.
Group video calls:
- Receiving 1080p HD video requires a minimum of 3.0Mbps.
- Sending 1080p video requires a minimum of 3.8Mbps.
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207347086-Using-Gr...
I know it says "minimum" there but it's likely going around that rate most of the time or lower. I've worked in environments where they pay tens of thousands of dollars per room to set them up with professional cameras, high end plans, etc. Compression ruins it all. May as well be a $10 webcam. There are other requirements as to how you interact with other members. You won't even get high quality unless you full screen + make it to where you can only see one member at a time.
Me too. The value isn't so much in the quality of video, its things like PTZ control of the camera and preset control of the position of the camera. For example, in a larger room you can click a button 'whiteboard' on the control panel and it will pan up and zoom in to the whiteboard.
Not really true. It's often editing + lighting that really has the strongest effect.
$100k cameras can take dogshit videos and photos when you don't know how to edit them properly or know how to light the shot.
With blurred background due to bokeh, more bandwidth bits are available to the face detail. Nothing to tune, that’s just how constrained bitrate compression works.
1) "high end" webcam (~$200)
2) DSLR + capture card you already own
3) Any Webcam
[...]
10) Buying a DSLR and capture card only for this
You miss out on most of the benefits of a nice still camera when you use it this way - 90% of people will have less trouble and cost by just buying a better dedicated webcam. That said, some people need a nice webcam and need to produce video content - they SHOULD use this setup (or at least try it). Purpose-made webcams are "bad" as general purpose cameras but good at what they are sold to do - deliver good enough video that you expect to get murdered by compression.
I worked with a guy who used a DSLR as a webcam and his picture was totally remarkable over Google Meet and Zoom. The very first thing I did was send a screenshot of the meeting's tile view to a friend, asking if he noticed anything funny about one of the videos, and he easily spotted the one I was talking about.
Every time we had a new team member join the calls, they would immediately comment on this guy's ridiculously nice picture quality and ask him what kind of camera he had.
IMO as an expensive consultant™ I think it improves perception and is courteous to my clients to give them a higher level of production value.
Video streaming someone's work station is about as ideal as you can imagine for most codecs. There is VERY little movement, everything is consistent and stable. Change from frame to frame is ultimately what determines how good a picture looks at a given bitrate. Little change means the codecs can spend more bits on fine details.
As someone who has actually used both setups, the DSLR setup was great but a pain to manage. Just for simplicity of my desk setup, I switched to a decently pricey webcam after doing some research for whenever I am WFH and the image quality for streaming video is very close to my Canon's. There are some tuning advantages the DSLR has that obviously the webcam doesn't give you so it will never be able to match it perfectly IMO but it is far superior to any of my laptop webcams and a far more convenient substitute.
I've run a a6500/sigma 30 f/1.4 combo for a couple of months just for fun when COVID started and everyone noticed the quality difference. I ditched it in the end because it was way less convenient then to have a single usb webcam and nobody gives a shit about how you look.
C/CS/D mounts are for CCTV camera so you can find new and used lens for cheap. They will not fix a cheap/bad sensor, but they will definitely get you extra flexibility in what kind of framing/shot you can do.
As a bonus, you can disconnect the built in mics and opt for a nice boom mic with a hardware cut off switch.
Similar to how you can get mounts for phones to improve the shot options?
C/CS/D mount are screw-on, they are also completely manual, so you lose software control over focus and other things, and you need to rotate rings in the lens itself to adjust.
https://github.com/Kurokesu/3d_models
The github license field says: "GPL-3.0 license"
But they look great. I am tempted to buy a Brio and their kit.
[1] https://caddiebuddy.com/teleprompter-for-ipads-androids-and-...
[1] https://i.imgur.com/4JPIHx1.jpg [2] https://www.twitch.tv/mrdonbrown
I have a twitter thread describing my setup. [0]
Were I to do it again, I would get a slightly larger monitor for it. I don't know if it is causation or just correlation (I'm getting old) but my eyes have gotten a bit worse in the past bit.
0 - https://twitter.com/__mharrison__/status/1515078084600348677
I've thought about getting a proper teleprompter but my issue there would be screen space and lighting. Has this worked well with a decently inexpensive webcam or do you use a full-on streaming/production type camera setup?
Regardless, I recommend capturing in 4k, and running that through OBS so you can zoom/crop the image for ideal framing, optional of course.
For anyone else confused about what a teleprompter adds here, it's that the two-way mirror lets you put a webcam 'behind' the virtual reflected screen, so it can be perfectly centered in the screen.
Though this just makes me want to tape or suspend a webcam to the middle of a regular monitor, so it could show actual size human faces.
I cannot wait until cameras work behind the screen and can be positioned right in the center but for now, the only option I found was something called Center Cam that mounts a small lense on a skinny support that can be positioned over the screen, somewhat unobtrusively.
I am a Camo user too and it's incredible but having the phone off to one side in a tripod or mount exacerbates the "here's (not) looking at you" issue.
I started a project that uses Camo and suspends the phone upside down from the top of the screen via a 3D printed mount. Then, an app on the phone, mirrors the portion of the screen that is covered by the phone. Not perfect (or even close) and it means you need to use the lower quality front facing camera but it fun to dabble.
1. As low latency on the audio as possible, so people can lightly talk over each other like in meatspace.
2. If you really want to be able to gauge people's reactions as you're talking, or whatever reason people like to see each others faces, you get Tom Goes to the Mayor-style avatars which animate slowly (once per second?) in response to the user's movements. No need to send a full video feed over the wire.
The experience of tiled window panes with our heads floating in front of blurry living rooms and nobody looking anywhere near the same place just sucks.
The quality of your audio has an impact both on the intelligibility of what you're saying and on listener's subconscious evaluations of you. Audio software and hardware is also cheaper and much, much easier to deal with than video--I've had no problems with essentially the same setup across Mac, Linux, and Windows.
The cost of entry is somewhere around $50-$100 for USB microphones, although if you're willing to spend closer to $250, you can get a decent USB audio interface ($120) + standard (XLR) microphone ($100) + XLR cable ($10) + stand or boom arm ($20).
I've been in countless online meetings where I'm barely able to hear one or two of the participants.
Every time I've evaluated a better video setup, it's been clear that there are a bunch of things you want to get right in order to have a smooth & reliable experience. You want a camera with clean HDMI output, a capture card, and make sure that your camera can be run continuously for as long as the meetings will last--don't forget back-to-back meetings. If you might be in meetings for three hours in a row every once in a while, do you need a camera that can be run for three hours continuously? Most "proper" cameras just can't do that. If you dig into the specs, some of them will list the maximum amount of time that they'll run before shutting off. Twitch streamers and people who run YouTube channels have done the research and will tell you which cameras are suitable for this kind of work, but at that point, you're often spending like $700 or more just so people can see a clearer picture. I would love it if I could just use my DSLR, which is a very nice prosumer DSLR with some nice lenses, but it's just not designed for streaming video. I would have to buy something new.
High-quality audio for $50-$100 is a much, much better deal.
Is a XLR microphone worth the cost increase - for meetings, not streaming(or youtube creation)?
I'm not sure how to quantify it, and I've not used USB microphones. By the time USB microphones appeared on the market, I already had microphones and there was no reason to downgrade.
My point of reference is the Shure SM57 / SM58 (which are very similar). The SM57/SM58 is dirt cheap at $100, extremely reliable, and has a very good sound to it. The "sound" of the microphone is largely created by the construction of the capsule and the construction of the microphone body. When you listen to a recording, you're hearing not only the sound, but also the resonances of the microphone capsule and body. My experience is that as you explore cheaper options below $100, you see microphones with much cheaper construction and noticeable resonance problems. I am extremely skeptical of USB microphones that are radically cheaper--up to 80% less expensive--than the most basic, inexpensive USB interface + microphone combo I could come up with.
For this reason, when I give advice to people who want to make music using a microphone, I recommend that they start with the $250 (total budget) USB interface and SM57/SM57. If $250 is out of their budget, then they should just save up until they can afford it.
So I will tell you that I am not happy with the quality of microphones in general under $100, or the quality of condenser microphones under $200-$300. I'll also tell you that the main thing I've been using Zoom for in the past couple years has been remote vocal lessons, so my needs are different from yours.
I would also caution you that there is an enormous amount of misinformation and bad advice about microphones online. People forget about acoustic treatment (super important), recommend that someone starting out get the SM7b (awful choice for first microphone), or tell you that condenser microphones are more sensitive to background noise and poorly treated rooms (just plain false--this one makes no sense at all).
So is it worth it? Don't know--how much money can you play around with, and how much do you care about audio quality?
I care enough to want to upgrade my work-issued Plantronics headset. Not enough to spend $500 doing so. $250? Possibly since it's a one-time investment, as long as there's a significant upgrade that can still be perceived in low bandwidth online meetings.
One thing I would like to avoid is the 'youtuber' setup. Ideally I'd like the microphone to be able to pick up my voice without it itself being in the camera view.
Microphone placement is a massive subject by itself. The basic idea is that you make the signal loud by moving the microphone reasonably close to your voice and point it at your mouth, and simultaneously, the part that people forget, you put the microphone far away from noise sources and pointing away from them. This second part is what built-in laptop microphones are especially bad at. (Note that microphones have different pickup patterns, so pointing "away" from a source means different things to different mics, and it's irrelevant for omnidirectional mics.)
Depending on the camera set up, you can put something like an SM57 just out of frame and still have it be fairly close to your mouth, away from noise. A boom arm or mic stand will help. Setting your mic on the desk can work but this will pick up vibrations from the desk.
Other common setups are lavalier microphones, headset microphones, and shotgun microphones. Fair to assume you're not using a shotgun microphone.
Lav mics are simple and unobtrusive. TV hosts use them a lot. (You can see that late night TV hosts have a lav mic in addition to the desk mic... 99% of the time, you're hearing the lav mic, and the desk mic is off.) Headset mics give you more consistent and clear sound, with more freedom of movement, which is why singers and presenters use them a lot. Beware that cheap lav / headset mics will sound as bad as your laptop microphone, just with less background noise. You can watch reviews on YouTube for these kind of mics and decide if you want to try one out.
I'm almost convinced to get a real microphone(probably with a stand, for the time being). Doing some research on models now. The Johnny Carson setup may not be a big deal if most of the time the camera is off, but audio is important. And even then I might be able to keep it off frame. We'll see :)
If you are going for the prosumer option, I recommend Scarlett Solo + Shure SM58 + XLR cable + mic stand. This may be a bit overkill for meetings, but it's a good starting point if you want to record music, stream, record a podcast, etc.
If I were modifying my setup today, I would've gone with an XLR mic out the gate: at the end of the day I ended up running analog audio to the Blue microphone anyway because the value of having monitor audio to your headphones is incredible (and you do not want any latency on that at all).
You can find the Konftel Ego for $80 at Provantage.com (around $120 everywhere else). Konftel makes amazing speakerphones that rival polycomm, for a lot less. Indeed, I actually prefer their sound to polycomm.
The Ego will be a dramatic upgrade from whatever is built into your other gear. If you still aren't happy with it, then you can start going down the USB/XLR microphone rathole if you still prefer. But it's probably unnecessary.
As an example, on my home setup I use a Canon R5 for video calls (way overpowered for this task but I have it for stills photography). This lists maximum recording time as 29:59. However it doesn't limit the amount of time it can be switched on and outputting via HDMI and I've used it for calls of 3+ hours without any issue (with an AC battery adapter).
That's for recording to memory card, not for the HDMI feed.
Everything you said about audio is spot-on. I will say the cheap booms suck, and it's worth spending money on a proper boom. Heil makes a boom that's relatively cheap and actually good, but most people at work who ask me how to get started I say to either buy a Blue or Rode setup, with their kit that includes the boom and shock mount.
For audio software on Mac, Rogue Amoeba makes the best stuff, bar none.
Obviously if there are others in the room/house then a speakerphone may not be the best solution; but if you aren't going to annoy others I find a speaker phone far less fatiguing than dealing with headsets all day.
I was so impressed I bought a used iPhone to use solely as a webcam; the whole setup was cheaper than the Logitech C920 he mentions.
The picture quality is great.
I do have a lifetime license, and have tested it with my 12 pro and while it obviously looks better, most of the time I stay with the 6s and default settings since I can just leave it mounted on top of my monitor.
It’s waay better.
I only use default settings. Quality trumps anything I tried before.
Added bonus: I cannot use the phone when in a call.
Is there anything like this that shows up as a webcam without additional software that doesn't come with the OS (i.e., uses a driver already available on Windows, Linux, ChromeOS like most webcams such as the Logitech C920 do) ?
I just switched from an old apple cinema display to a modern monitor with small bezels, so I need to cut a new one to stop it from blocking the top of my screen.
https://www.shopmoment.com/products/wall-mount-for-magsafe/s...
Changed out the mount to work with my USB webcam and it works a treat. Obviously it won't work with a heavy mirrorless camera - but there are tons of mini tripods out there - the Joby Gorillapod's and their numerous clones are among my favorites due to their flexibility.
I tried doing meetings with it, but ended up getting a lot of inane comments about it, particularly as the microphone is in frame. Personally, I don't want to draw attention to myself in a meeting, so I've ended up going back to using a terrible webcam for work, like everyone else.
Recommend getting a shotgun mic (AudioTechnica AT875R) and mounted it atop the camera, as these sit out of frame and still have great sound. Worth trying!
It is directional, you can get a shock mount for it.
You can also get it quite close but slightly off camera pointing at you.
I'm not a fan of the microphone in frame, so this was my solution.
Way easier than fussing with a shtogun mic and way more forgiving if you move around too.
I'm am at a loss as to why this guy is comparing said camera to cameras in the region of £600-1300. if they could produce 20x the quality, then it might be a wothwhile comparison, but they evidently cannot
the C920 has inbuilt hardware h264 encoding (for £30!) which the majority of video streaming and conference platforms will thank you for, freeing up your processor to focus on network quality - which is far more important than choice of camera
the C920 also outputs its nicely pre-encoded stream at 1920p, so I'm not sure why this guy is testing at 720p. perhaps he doesn't realise this and is why he is surprised by the wider angle. perhaps his £600-1300 "proper" camera or HDMI-to-USB only outputs at 720p. who knows. maybe if he'd have spent less time faffing around with desmurfification and Moire he'd have noticed this in the settings
I was expecting an article comparing the C920 to an affordable proper camera with some ffmpeg wizardry, but all I got was a wishy-washy amateur photographer with a stable internet connection and lots of money to burn
Got lucky and got one before the prices of webcams went crazy due to pandemic demand. Think they are back to around ~£60 now.
It just works. Plugged it in, picked up within macOS without a problem, immediately usable in Google Meet. Picture is fine, audio is fine. No complaints.
But is there a "proper camera" for under $100 that can also offer an improvement over a webcam?
no just buy an off the shelf web camera if that's all you're willing to budget.
but for those of us with these cameras already becuase we enjoy photography, this dual use is quite nice!
I didn't see this documented anywhere, but apparently it's built only for Intel-based Macs. It'll still work on Apple Silicon, but only if the application using it is also built for Intel-based Macs. So you'd want to ensure you install the Intel-based version of Zoom, and then be careful to avoid it auto-updating to the version for Apple Silicon.
I bought a license for Cascable's Pro Webcam, and it mostly worked, but I'd often have issues getting it to initially connect to the camera and it'd sometimes cut out unexpectedly.
I use Syphon Virtual Webcam[2] to feed to Zoom, but you can also use OBS.
I have played with EOS webcam utility in the past and if you are not ready to spend big, DSLR is not the way to go.
https://medium.com/@sukeshgtambi/24-portrait-character-light...
I actually don't want colleagues to be able to inspect my face in immaculate detail, and the amount of ceremony and awkward stands begind the monitor, etc. do not make sence to me. The more expensive webcams do a decent enough job.
A dedicated camera with a fast lens has three key improvements over a typical webcam:
- bokeh
- less noise in the dark, better dynamic range (almost irrelevant for a webcam)
- less compressed video (potentially), which is critical for chroma keying; certain USB3 webcams can deliver a much less compressed stream as well.
If you're willing to sacrifice bokeh and don't need chroma keying, $100 or slightly more can buy you light sources to make you look substantially better on your under $100 webcam. And without proper lighting, the proper camera is useless as well.
Some other steps to look good on a webcam: choose a good lighting scheme, use proper camera settings, do some color correction; a color calibration card helps with this immensely, even a cheap one. Use the virtual webcam in OBS with a LUT generated from your card, control your scene with a vectorscope plugin. Voila, you just upgraded your look to a 100x more professional one, using just a simple webcam.
Keep in mind that you need much (and by this I mean MUCH) more lighting than you probably think you do. And possibly blackout shutters or curtains to completely block the outside light, making your lighting controlled.
1 - Lighting
2 - Microphone
3 - Camera
Even when you see people on the news through webcams, their pictures and audio often are not well lit or mic'd.
*Edited for grammar.
We needed to take a picture of a particular thing every 15 seconds over a weekend. Our first though was to get a cheap webcam that has some reasonable interface to retrieve static images.
Then someone remembered that the owner of the company was doing some personal projects that involved photography and he had a bunch of cameras in his office. One of them was a Canon Digital Rebel. That could be controlled by a computer.
The owner always liked to save money, so agreed to let us use the Canon for the weekend. I wrote a script to trigger it every 15 seconds, set it running Friday before I left, and came back Monday to see how it went.
What I found was a dead camera. The electronics seemed fine, but something mechanical was broken. A bit of poking around on camera forums turned up that something in the mechanics of the Digital Rebel didn't like extended rapid picture taking, and apparently every 15 seconds counted as rapid if you were doing it for more than a few hours.
We then bought an under $100 Logitech webcam that ran a web server on its ethernet interface that made available a URL that when fetched gave you a static image of whatever the camera was currently looking at. It was simple to write a script to hit that URL every 15 seconds and save the result in a file named with the current timestamp. That ran flawlessly over the weekend capturing all the images we needed.
Wait hold up. Logitech webcams run web servers and have ethernet interfaces?
Pretty amazing for what it does and I've found NDI support in OBS to be rock solid (unlike RTMP!)
meetings with external contacts are always with camera.
They either work through OBS or a dedicated app that you have to start on your pc. I paid for an app (droidcam, 15$ for the "premium" HD version and free for SD+watermark irrc) because I was in a hurry but I know there are good free alternative if you have some time to spend trying them.
Agree with the others, it makes no difference. The only people likely to notice are other geeks. I look like a freshly excavated potato when shot with the webcam, and a slightly more favourably lit potato with the Z6Ii, good glass and diffused lighting.
But hey, people have stupid hobbies, thats ok as long as it reliably works.
Yes the app is $20 but for me it was worth it.
Also I found out that the difference in image quality between a good webcam and a semi-professional camera is not that big after video compression.
Apart from that it's pearls before swine - any mm² of sensor area above 1/4" OF doesn't matter for MS Teams video crushing.
But a new problem emerges. Your face is now larger than other faces in the meeting. When the view splits everyone into the grid, your face will be the odd one out.
I don't think it's important for your face to be 50mm photo quality portrait photography for a work meeting. Sometimes when the meeting window is full screen, I reduce its size because I don't want my colleague's faces up close in my face!
Also why do people stare directly into the camera the whole time? I don't get that. I have my laptop off to the side slightly, and use main monitors for other work during meetings, or for viewing the meeting if someone is sharing their screen. Just like in real life meetings, we don't stare directly into each other's faces the whole time. I guess personal preference in these things will vary.
The categories are still defined the same way: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:... (Ctrl+F "8525 80 30")
"Digital cameras that are only capable of recording still images remain classified in this subheading. Cameras of this subheading may also have video-capture capability to record continuous periods of video. However, when such apparatus are capable, using the maximum storage capacity, of capturing video in a quality of 800 x 600 pixels (or higher) at 23 frames per second (or higher) for a continuous period of at least 30 minutes (regardless of the fact that the captured video images may be recorded in separate files of a duration of less than 30 minutes) they are always to be classified in subheadings 8525 80 91 or 8525 80 99."
…but the duty was reduced from 2.5% to 1.6% for "video cameras" (8525 80 91), and from 3.5% to 0% for "camcorders" (8525 80 99): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
People are often misinformed about EU laws, but on the other hand the EU has no shortage of ridiculous laws that give fodder to the euroskeptics.
In this case, it DOES look like the 30 minute limit is the EU's fault[1]. Thankfully it ended in 2019.
[1]: https://www.fujirumors.com/yes-eu-import-duty-reason-fujifil...
Even the "good" webcams (like the Elgato FaceCam and Logi Brio) have tiny sensors with small lenses. And iPhones (with Reincubate Camo) have bigger but still relatively tiny sensors.
Pair an APS-C sensor with a ~24mm f/2 lens, with no controls; just a USB connection. This would barely be bigger than the lens itself (think double the size of Apple's old iSight).
I'd easily pay $400 or more for this just to avoid messing around with mirrorless cameras and trying to mount them and use their drivers or HDMI capture USB interfaces.
There's a huge market there that doesn't know it wants one yet, but it will once it becomes available.
More importantly though why does most conferencing software limit us to such low resolutions? From what I remember Zoom is still max or 720P which is pretty damn terrible....
I turn on the lights before teleconferences and turn them off afterwards, everything else is plug and play.
For example, Fujifilm's X Webcam software[1] would allow the author to connect his X-S10 to his PC using a USB-C cable, and use it as a webcam. The downside is X Webcam lacks support for Linux.
[1] https://fujifilm-x.com/global/products/software/x-webcam/
Z 9, Z 7II, Z 7, Z 6II, Z 6, Z 5, Z fc, Z 50, D6, D5, D850, D810, D780, D750, D500, D7500, D7200, D5600, D5500, D5300 and D3500.
I think the Z 50 (and updated, but cheaper construction Z fc) are the cheapest options here out of the mirrorless cameras.
[0]: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility...
[1]: https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/548/Webca...
The (free) version of the webcam utility doesn't give you full tethered photographic control of the camera, which might have made it more useful to me.
I looked into this a while ago- trying to use gcam technology for scientific imaging- when I worked at Google, and there was zero interest from those teams. They were 100% focused on next-gen camera tech (and it showed- that was the period when phones got unbelievably good at taking high quality images using computational photography).
That being said, you can buy good usb cameras based on many modern image sensors from a company like e-con[1], but you have to do research about what features are enabled by the driver.
I'm not sure why actual webcams including a way to mount on your monitor are so far behind and expensive. Logitech C920 is still a common recommendation, and it's now 10 years old!
Have they given any indication about whether it'll be a standard UVC camera and Just Work on all platforms?
That doesn't subtract to the fact that audio is the stronger medium. A great mic setup is orders of magnitude better than a pretty face via a DSLR. Podcastage has been one of my favorite youtubers on the matter since last year, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEMZa5VN3Zw, and in that video he somewhat proves the point.
For camera recommendations, I agree with the majority that it needs to be a reliable setup. I was not a fan of DSLR with capture cards precisely because of that. I recommend AverMedia line of 4K webcams which have good defaults, amazing glass and have a great resolution and adjustable depth of field. In the past I used an Aver C340 4K which is amazing, but bulky, and now more recently I use a PW513 which is way better than anything Logitech has to offer.
For those with no camera, DroidCamX works rather well too!
I occasionally use a Nexus 6 on another setup, but it's a bit bulkier to mount and is a bit finicky with DroidCamX. It has froze up on me a couple times. The OBS version works fine, though. I'll chalk it up to not cleaning up the phone prior to repurposing it.
I have a setup much like the article, Sony A5100.
The increase in quality compared to even the "high-end" webcams is significant, with only a minor increase in complexity. I think if your solution requires you to start faffing around with proprietary camera software or OBS then you've gone too far.
I also agree with other commenters in that a higher quality microphone is far more important. I personally use a Rode Procaster into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo USB interface, but I also use the microphone for professional use. Even something as simple as an external USB microphone (e.g. AT2020USB+ [1]) is going be a massive improvement to *the people who need to listen to you*.
Just use `adb`, `ffmpeg` and the `v4l2loopback` kernel module.
I second others here in that having a good quality mic is generally far more important. High quality doesn't mean spendy either - the location of the mic is just as critical as the mic you choose, many cheap headset mics sound pretty good because they get to place the mic directly in front of your mouth, not because they are especially great mics.
I fully appreciate my opinion might be different if I worked in a field where being seen clearly mattered, such as guitar teacher in online lessons etc, but I imagine for most of us here this isn't the case.
Works nearly flawlessly. Sometimes Google meet refuses to pick up the video until I unplug but that might have to do more with the handshake between my back and my TB3 dock.
errrr... no they aren't. The 24-85 I have on my Nikon D600 is extremely sharp. The 18-55 on most DX Nikons is also pin sharp. For a webcam it surely doesn't even matter?
I draw as a hobby; during the pandemic, lots of people started hosting art posing sessions over Zoom (here is an example of one of my sessions, model was in Mexico - I live in Europe: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb8WpdEAsOk/?utm_source=ig_web_c...) so I was interested in this article because it looked like something that could make a difference for some of the studios/models I worked with.
Well... it is not really practical. Models do not have large budgets for a start, and are not necessarily tech savvy enough to put together something like this or make it work reliably.
Some places do combined live/online sessions (artists are in the room with the model and there is also a camera for people drawing remotely). I sincerely doubt that this would be of use even for studios.
I believe that online modeling could be a valid use case, but the cost/hassle ratio makes it absolutely impractical for anyone who could be even remotely interested in something like this.
In other words: as the article itself mentions at the start "The market for decent quality webcams seems to be non-existent". Just like "build your AV". It may be an interesting project for a blog post, but it is really improbable that anyone else would try to replicate the endeavor.
Not so, this week I bought one of the cameras mentioned in the article for the same purpose.
So, if you want to use Canon DSLR on M1 in a web browser (e.g. google meet), get a browser built for x86.
I'm using Chromium, it can be downloaded for x86. The issue is that Chromium doesn't have screen share feature. So, for screen share, I'm using Chrome, and joining the call for the second time, in "companion mode". That's 2 separate browsers to participate in a call. Maybe there is a way to get Chrome or Firefox for x86, but I was a bit too lazy when setting it up :)
Theres also the annoyance of actually powering the thing on and off in the first place, which must be near universal. As it is, I use a USB "fake-battery" and just disable that. But its still something I have to manually do instead of the OS just "activating" it.
One issue I did run into was getting a decent HDMI -> USB capture device that works with Linux. My first choice was a high end (~£200) ClonerAlliance Flint 4KP [1] which worked fine for Hangouts, but had issues with Zoom and actually seemed to get worse as time went on and it eventually became a bit of a joke as I tried to join calls and had to restart my camera, unplug cables, etc. just to get video. Eventually, I swapped it out for a cheap £15 no-name brand from Amazon and have had literally 0 issues since [2].
The biggest drawback to this sort of setup is that if you're using a camera you already own, it can be a pain to switch between using it as a camera and using it as a web cam, so I've essentially got an expensive camera that I don't get to use as a camera very often. The advantage of course is that even on a dark, rainy evening with nothing more than a small lamp hidden behind my monitor, the image still comes out looking great [3].
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07YY52YP6/
Also useful is Sony's remote control, for engaging/disengaging autofocus without reaching for the camera. The a5100 has a useful flip-up screen, where I can see myself.
Before that, I was running a RasPi Zero with a HQ camera module and a C-mount lens as a webcam. That worked well, too. Better image quality than any of my colleagues, but a long shot from the Sony, obviously.
A "yesteryear" smartphone that is collecting dust is also an excellent alternative, as they have surprisingly high quality cameras and lenses (on the rear side, anyway). I use a cracked-screen-not-worth-repairing Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (about 5 years old now) placed in an amazon ring light (that conveniently has a phone-sized clamp-style mount in the middle). There is an android app that turns the phone into a network-accessible webcam, and a windows app to receive it and map it as a system camera input.
Quality (resolution, field-of-view, focus and light levels even with very bright background) is miles ahead of my logitech brio 4k webcam - to the point I resold the brio after only a few days. I can actually stream in 2160p from the device at a pretty respectable framerate.
Probably not on par with a modern DSLR but for something that most people I think have laying around - highly worth trying first.
I haven't paid attention to cameras in a while. Did I miss this happening?
Since I'm still mostly using my old Macbook (late 2014) and a Sony A7II + (Sony FE 55mm f/1.8), I soon realized that with a basic USB capture device (a UVC device that exposes an uncompressed video as webcam) I couldn't get anywhere past 360p with 24fps, and even then, CPU was skyrocketing.
Next I tried to utilize an Raspberry Pi that I have to stream the video, but using VLC as well as FFMpeg and few other streaming products, all did not do well when it came to resolution, fps and latency.
At the same time, I researched some existing USB capture devices, and while Elgato seems like the popular choice, non of their USB capture devices perform hardware h.264 encoding, so the bottleneck remains the host machine.
The only two hardware brands that I found at the time (around a year ago) that made USB capture devices with on-board h.264 encoders were Blackmagic and Magewell.
I went with the Magewell USB Capture Gen 2 which seemed to do exactly what I wanted and no more than that. I was able to find for ~$80 and it has worked perfectly since — no latency or missing frames at 1080p. It also has a very nice management console that let you tweak the (hardware) encoding (enable/disable mirror mode, crop frame and more).
EDIT: another thing that I tried was to use Sony Imaging Edge Webcam — a USB driver that turn Sony cameras into UVC (webcam) device. It works pretty well but has a max resolution of 1024 x 576. Not what I was looking for but still I remember it as being equal or even better than combining a cheap HDMI to USB devices that don't do hardware encoding with OBS for virtual camera.
Just checked and the price for new one where I live (Tel Aviv) is around $450, so I guess I was lucky, at least in that sense.
Still, I do not know of any cheaper option to get 1080p video with older machines. I'm assuming that OBS on a 2022 Macbook would be able to deal with live encoding, but back in 2021 I was still seeing posts on OBS forums detailing streaming issues with M1 macs, and since most of them describe issues with streaming on Twitch, I could only assume it must be for video conferencing.
My Covid solution was a GoPro 9. Which was like $500, so still way more expensive than the $70 webcam in question, but still way cheaper than any kind of "proper" camera. Sadly the GoPro as a Webcam can only output 1080p even though solo it can record 4K, but since it usually record very wide fish-eye in the webcame mode you can crop to a more sensible "narrow" view that mimics traditional lenses (and since we are cropping 1080 out of 4K the image is still crisp).
Of course I can't recommend buying a GoPro to just be a webcam, but if you are not into traditional photographing as a hobby (I think my iPhone does the job well enough that I can't justify spending thousands on DSLR and lenses) GoPro is a neat gimmick camera you can attach to various other hobby projects and it still works as decent webcam.
I had the desire to get a Sony mirrorless but all the local Kijiji sellers were flaky. Saved me a couple thousand anyway. No need for it unless I was recording videos (and maybe not even then).
On the higher end, cameras make different choices around pixel quality, heat fluctuations, etc in still and video cameras. I think the "professionally remote" segment of the market is super under developed but it's the perfect bingo of awful startup challenges: selling specialist (HIGH capital) hardware to end users with a socially-contextualized value proposition. Good luck!
Edit: in case anyone else is confused - it's that you build a sensor differently to best transmit lower-resolution images for extended periods of time.
1. Sony A7II
2. 35mm lens (I tried others and this gives the best results for 2-3 feet)
3. Sony XLR-K2M adapter + Shure condenser microphone (this is absolutely overkill but I like to record myself playing guitar, and it beats timing stuff by hand)
4. Mini-HDMI cable to Elgato CamLink 4K USB dongle (I tried others, this one worked the best)
5. Two cheap LED photographic lights from Amazon - my workspace is very badly lit, so these also help me keep things well illuminated.
The main downside of using a setup like this is white balancing - I found the camera was not doing a good job by itself, so I had to do some trial-and-error. In less controlled environments, like rooms with lots of windows, this becomes even harder over the course of the day.
And yeah, I originally set all this up to stream games. How could you tell?
DSLRs will almost certainly be a cheaper option than a mirrorless camera for this, because pretty much any DSLR from the last ten or so years works for this, and there are many more of them. Autofocus and availability of clean HDMI in video-liveview mode depends though. Many support direct streaming over USB using proprietary tools.
That used to be true, but with used a6300 cameras going for around 300€ nowadays, it's not the case anymore.
I did spring for a nice software-controlled key light[0], and it makes a huge difference. It basically compensates for the fact that my home-office location has the worst lighting conditions, with a bright window directly behind me and another to one side.
[0]https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Key-Light-Air-app-adjustable/d...
I had an old camcorder laying around (a samsung https://www.samsung.com/ca/support/model/SC-MX20/XAC/ ) with composite out and I also had a composite to hdmi converter and another to convert hdmi to usb. (they also make composite to usb all in converters) I found the box for the samsung camcorder and I still had the RCA output cable. Chained them all together and windows sees it as a usb camera.
Works without a hitch so far.
Optimizing for that would have me downgrade the video resolution being received by the 8-10 people on my calls.
Also what are the folks on the receiving end actually seeing? Certainly not the image he posted.
And I get it, to each their own, but it just seems overly complicated.
I think as long as you have good lighting, something like the c920 is good. I have a Razer Kiyo Pro and it's good too. My biggest issue is lighting. I have blackout curtains to keep heat out so my office is dark. I need more front lighting. Even an expensive set up like the article wouldn't help much.
I'm probably not explaining very well. In the end I want to rely on OS & Software as little as possible because things keep breaking (on Linux) for me so if I can just get a single video feed to select as the camera source for Zoom, Teams et. al that'd be great.
in a remote office world, I'm glad my team leaves their cameras on and I view it as a form of professionalism to present myself as best I can, and if that's not following a dress code and keeping trim in an office, its giving good video quality in online meetings.
Aside from that the cost of the Very Special USB Cable is a real insult.
The battery I use is one that uses the shell of a matching battery but provides a wired 8V DC through a usb SMPS, 20$ from aliexpress and I never have to worry about it.
You can really see this effect when the early mirrorless DSLRs took to market and every youtuber was using one with a fast wide open normal lens. Everything was zoomed in and out of focus resulting in queasy viewers. It took a couple of years for them to get the hang of it though.
If I were doing some serious webcamming I'd probably go with something smaller and less expensive, there are whole youtube series on what best cameras to use when streaming or recording. I forget which one seemed to lead the pack. A panasonic maybe?
Manual means there are less failure modes - slow autofocus, autofocus trying to refocus, focusing on a wrong thing, etc.
It also means the hardware can be cheaper - camera doesn't need to have good autofocus (some old DSLR is fine), you can also use manual lenses.
I’ve put it next to my monitor and put my meeting on the side of the screen so I look “into” the camera.
Not every camera has clean HDMI output, though. It's hard to find a single list of cameras that have this feature, so you have to Google around. Cameras without clean HDMI out will show icons and focus windows when you stream from them.
I switched to a Logitech Brio, and have been very happy. It's almost just as good, with no hassle. Highly recommend for anyone looking for an upgrade without wanting to go all-in.
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/webcams/brio-4k-hdr-...
I record a lot of video in my office so it’s a different thing, but I think the new Opal camera ($300, I got one last week) is pretty great. It’s going to be my new travel camera setup.
gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0 -f v4l2 /dev/video1
It doesn’t have to be perfect, just better than a standard Logitech Webcam. If it would be in the quality range of an iPhone camera, I would be super happy.
Any ideas what to buy?
I want it to just work. With zero overhead.
I started recently using an alternative using droidcam on an old Iphone 5 I had laying around, with a battery that could not hold charge.
If your are in Mac you have to use virtual camera in ops, but works great with linux and windows. I still use a headset mic, but provides great image quality with the benefit of being wireless.
I set up howdy (facial recognition login) in Pop_OS and was pleasantly surprised at how relatively simple it was to get working.
I've been using my camera as a webcam for over 2 years without any issue, and it's usually on for several hours per day. As long as the sensor isn't getting very hot then I don't think there's much risk to the camera.
Contact me if you want to buy mine! I bought mine at the start of quarantine for streaming live video at my local church but haven't really used it much since.
Twitter or email? My gmail is my username.
Mirrorless cameras can be powered by USB, either Micro or C depending on model. The batteries have a built-in BMS so leaving the camera plugged in won't harm them.
Some mirrorless aren't thermally compatible with running full video on battery for long periods, this is worth researching before purchase, but for the ones which are it's not going to damage the battery to run off of it.
There's no motive to do so with a desktop setup.
With a use case as repetitive as jumping on a call, the UX is important.
Wear a headset for a microphone. Avoid the echo cancellation step on each other effect.
If you can't be bothered to do that at least put earbuds in.
Most laptops screens are much thinner than a smartphone.
That said, i'd gladly have a little camera bump.
Laptops have a decent amount of compute power available.
If you look at laptop webcams, they are much smaller(and thinner) and have way crappier optics than an iphone camera. And nowhere near the same amount of optics.
Look at this ancient iPhone 6 exploded camera view. Does it look like it's even close to laptop webcams? Let's not even go into the "huge" (in smartphone terms) lenses modern phones have.
https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/iPhone-2...