The fact that its a subscription is what really rubs me up the wrong way. Not everything deserves to be a subscription. Why is everything a subscription these days?
The one metric that matters: Annual Recurring Revenue
Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
171–180 of 665 posts
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
This levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access - like copying the CDs you already bought to your phone. Compared to what we used to pay on blank media it's not so bad. If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything...
> If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything The alternative is that we download torrents pretty much everywhere except Germany which developed a private industry of lawyers extracting money from leachers and seeders alike. Germans instead have VPNs set up in Poland or Ukraine and use their streaming websites.
Oddities in German copyright or related law don't just have that effect on piracy, they make certain forms of “copyleft trolling” by third parties (who may be in no way linked to the content creator) possible, or at least far easier. This isn't the only route to copyleft trolling, of course.
Refs:
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyleft_trolling
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
How easy and slick this setup will be depends on the camera. For example, my camera can't operate and charge over USB at the same time, so you need a supplemental power supply. And it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video. And videos can only be so long. So I've got a HDMI-to-USB converter, a special HDMI cable, a special power brick and adaptor, a…
I've been using a Sony mirrorless (anything above a5100 will work) for over 6 years now; it needed a "dummy battery", and an HDMI capture card (about $25 for noname brands, or $80+ for Elgato, BlackMagic etc). It auto-focuses, doesn't write to microsd, and works flawlessly. Even if you aren't buying Elgato, you can use Elgato's compatibility page to know which cameras work well: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/cam-lin…
Same setup here, down to the brand.
For those who don't know, the dummy battery is a power cable with a battery-shaped adapter that plugs in where the battery would go to provide continuous power.
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
How easy and slick this setup will be depends on the camera. For example, my camera can't operate and charge over USB at the same time, so you need a supplemental power supply. And it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video. And videos can only be so long. So I've got a HDMI-to-USB converter, a special HDMI cable, a special power brick and adaptor, a…
I've been using a Sony mirrorless (anything above a5100 will work) for over 6 years now; it needed a "dummy battery", and an HDMI capture card (about $25 for noname brands, or $80+ for Elgato, BlackMagic etc). It auto-focuses, doesn't write to microsd, and works flawlessly. Even if you aren't buying Elgato, you can use Elgato's compatibility page to know which cameras work well: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/cam-lin…
A word of warning on capture cards: I first bought a no-name off Amazon, thinking to save money. The video quality was abysmal. Artifacts everywhere.
I returned it and got an Elgato, which has worked great from day one.
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
That requirement is reversed in the last five years IIRC. My Sony A7-III doesn't have that, for example. Neither modern Canons, AFAIK. The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box. So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay c…
> The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box. Do you have a link? Could only find a 2010 article[1] that appears to have been debunked by MPEG-LA themselves (per the updates in the blog post). [1] https://www.osnews.com/story/23236/why-our-civilizations-vid...
Of course. Below a selection of some user manuals, with the texts copied verbatim.
From Nikon D500 User Manual [0], page 22:
From Nikon Z6/Z7 User Manual [1], page 236:
Sony has a similar note for A9 [3], but can be grouped under here, which is almost the same:
AVC Patent Portfolio License: THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD (“AVC VIDEO”) AND/ OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND / OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. S EE http://www.mpegla.com
From Canon R5 User Manual [2], page 939:
“This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video. No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4 standard.”
THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD (''AVC VIDEO'') AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM
[0]: https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive3/4qUKV00WD5Bh04RdeC...
[1]:https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive5/8Yygr00R9Ojb058Kwq...
[2]: https://cam.start.canon/en/C003/manual/c003.pdf
[3]: https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1830/v1/en/contents/TP0002351...
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP wants to just use the USB cable, which makes sense for me.
Why should the manufacturer raise the price of the camera for you and me just to implement something extra OP wants that they can already do through HDMI?
It is already implemented, otherwise they wouldn't be able to enable it once the subscription is active.
Why should the OP need to pay a subscription to enable a feature that is build into the camera, that is a standard feature on other cameras and imposes no ongoing costs to the manufacturer¹? This is an example of gouging, pure and simple.
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[1] unless they are forcing the user to use their hosted service for steaming the webcam output, in which case there is some bandwidth and perhaps other processing cost, but that is on them for having not just implemented a standard that enables local-only recording
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#177> Software development isn’t free Part of the burden of this is on us. If a digital camera OS is a small embedded system running on a microcontroller it has a fixed cost, and lasts forever, just like the electrical components. If it’s an instance of chromium running on Ubuntu server or Android, with hundreds of dependencies in your program alone than the cost to stop it from bricking is effectively infinite. (I’m eve…
The Dragon spacecraft uses Electron as well.
I would not make that choice, but At least that has someone looking at it everyday. It’s not a device that gets left to do its job for 5 years.
Those early chromium devs had no idea the whole world would depend on them!
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
No offense, but this sounds like a terrible camera for your use case. It sounds like you know that. My Sony that I've been using as a webcam since COVID can do that, and it was 6 years old when I bought it. Upgrade when you can!
To be fair, I also have the dummy battery + HDMI capture + desktop clamp mount + live view faff for my D7500, but once you set it up it's just... there. I don't need to fiddle with it much further. It's a bit of a cable mess but I intend to upgrade to the Z6iii together with an upgrade to a desktop (so I can have a PCIe capture card), which will cut down the number of dongles all over.
I have that setup too. I was referring to this:
> it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video
That basically defeats our setup as now they're worrying about their recording time running out in the middle of a meeting.
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#179Out of nowhere comment, but I somehow stumbled upon this thread which seems to point to OBS for making it work. FWIW. https://www.reddit.com/r/canon/comments/skdz89/experience_so... >
This doesn't fix the problems listed in the article, you'd still only get a 720p 30 fps feed out of a camera that shoots 4K at 60 fps. That thread helps with Zoom not finding the low quality feed to begin with.
Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...
Or my shirt that has a tiny, useless pocket on the inside of my shirt (down where it might often be tucked inside of your waistband.) It has a tag with a picture of sunglasses on it, and a reasonably sized pair of sunglasses might just tenuously perch inside. This makes it a jacket, and jackets are taxed at a lower rate than shirts. The same shenanigans more or less work for most types of taxation. There’s always an…
Why would jackets even be taxed differently than shirts. It's so silly.