Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

tratt.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 499 posts

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#481

Post by EricE »

zrail wrote: post #301
tzs wrote: post #188

We had a surprising result using a "proper" camera instead of a webcam for a task. 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…

> We then bought an under $100 Logitech webcam that ran a web server on its ethernet interface Wait hold up. Logitech webcams run web servers and have ethernet interfaces?

Heck, some cameras have NDI built in - look up the Logitech Meevo, for instance.

Pretty amazing for what it does and I've found NDI support in OBS to be rock solid (unlike RTMP!)

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#482

Post by fnordpiglet »

tjpd wrote: post #320
bradlys wrote: post #305

I hate to say this but it’s almost entirely not worth it. 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…

Respectfully, I have to disagree. I have a similar setup to the one in the article (Sony A6400 + Simga 30mm f1.4) and the difference in image quality is dramatic _even over Zoom_. It is such an improvement that, in my experience, almost every first meeting that I have with someone over Zoom the other participant will remark on how good my picture is. The perception of "quality" has little to do with resolution issues…

I have the same setup. The image quality is noticeable. People comment on it regularly, and others using DSLR webcams can always spot it due to the perfect optical blurring of the distance. It took me a while to get it to work reliably and I annoyed people getting it working right, but once I did it’s fairly solid. Sometimes the video capture freezes and sometimes the camera even shuts down, but these are rare and I know how to fix them in a second or so. I am a little disappointed that two years into broad remote work and virtual life it’s not gotten easier to have a high quality audio and video capture.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#483

Post by jpdaigle »

dekhn wrote: post #342
thinkmassive wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very similar hardware setup and love it. What benefits does OBS provide for your video conferencing? If it’s worth the extra hassle I might need to look into adding it.

I use it for the chroma keying in VC software that doesn't support it, like Meet (which has a machine learning system that tries to identify the background). I often present other windows and using OBS is often more ergonomic than connecting and presenting a second window; I can composite a transparent version of my head over what i'm presenting. Or present my whole screen, etc. Basically, twitch streaming for video…

How do you do present window sharing to a Meet call?

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?

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#484

Post by MetroWind »

Since I don't have a "webcam", I've been using my A7R2 as my meeting camera since covid. I use a 40mm manual lens, and adjust exp comp as needed. No overheating or other issues whatsoever. I'm surprised that so many people seem to have problem with their setup.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#485

Post by m3at »

dekhn wrote: post #238
NamTaf wrote: post #160

Protip: if your goal is to use your smartphone as a webcam, check out this: https://vdo.ninja 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 scr…

Does anybody know how to source a WebRTC stream for OBS inputs? In particular, I have a python program and want something that looks like: rtc = open_stream_to_obs(address) while True: rtc.send_frame(my_numpy_array)

You can directly with gstreamer, but it's a bit of a hassle to set up. You could try this python convenience library: https://git.aweirdimagination.net/perelman/minimal-webrtc-gs...

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#486

Post by NamTaf »

Acen wrote: post #336
NamTaf wrote: post #160

Protip: if your goal is to use your smartphone as a webcam, check out this: https://vdo.ninja 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 scr…

> https://vdo.ninja 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. https://www.ndi.tv/ There are NDI apps for most phones etc.

Thanks, I’ll check this out! VDO will route locally over a LAN when it can, which helps keep latency down, but its always great to compare options.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#487

Post by NamTaf »

vanillax wrote: post #462
NamTaf wrote: post #160

Protip: if your goal is to use your smartphone as a webcam, check out this: https://vdo.ninja 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 scr…

Why not just join the meeting from your smartphone? ie zoom/teams? What am I missing here?

My use case was doing remote language classes. I had multiple programs open on my desktop and had my lesson book on my desk in front of me. I was looking at slides that I had to read, with PDFs open next to the slides shared during the video call. Joining on a phone was prohibitive compared to joining from my desktop.

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.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#488

Post by NamTaf »

fulafel wrote: post #258
NamTaf wrote: post #160

Protip: if your goal is to use your smartphone as a webcam, check out this: https://vdo.ninja 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 scr…

How is the latency?

If it detects it’s on the same LAN it’ll route locally, so I find it quite good. The only challenge I’ve had with latency is desync when using it for video but using a desktop mic directly into the PC for audio, as opposed to using the phone for both. However that’s possible to overcome too with delay.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#489

Post by dekhn »

m3at wrote: post #485
dekhn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know how to source a WebRTC stream for OBS inputs? In particular, I have a python program and want something that looks like: rtc = open_stream_to_obs(address) while True: rtc.send_frame(my_numpy_array)

You can directly with gstreamer, but it's a bit of a hassle to set up. You could try this python convenience library: https://git.aweirdimagination.net/perelman/minimal-webrtc-gs...

Thanks. It's kind of disappointing there isn't a simple pip-installable library that can do this without gstreamer dependency.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#490

Post by CamelRocketFish »

cevn wrote: post #184
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #137

If you go this route, please make sure your system is robust and ready to go before meetings. 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 overheat…

That sounds unfortunate. After a few kinks at the beginning, I've moved to using my nikon z6 as webcam. The first kink was power delivery, I found a plug that goes into the battery slot. After that everything works flawlessly.

Could you link to the plug that you bought? I would have thought it could charge through the USB point.
Post reply on HN