THE world of streaming has exploded with so many new streamers in the last two or three months. And we can all thank this pandemic we’re all going through right now. Streaming has also become one of the top thing to do for a lot of creatives to get their presence online. It’s also become a way for so many entertainment companies around the world to still reach out to their audience and keep things going; to keep brands relevant and in the minds of the people.
Together with this surge in popularity of streaming, I’ve been hearing a lot about shortages of stock on webcams. And if there are stocks you can purchase online, it will weeks before it even arrives at your doorstep. Let’s face it, you can’t wait that long or else you run the risk of being “forgotten” by your audience.
Hopefully, you have a dSLR camera there at home that’s just gathering dust in your cabinet. If you do, you can raise your hopes up a bit because that might just be repurposed to become your webcam. So, for this week, I’ll share with you how to do that exactly.
Before we begin, please bear in mind that (as mentioned in the title), this is for Canon dSLR cameras and the app I’ll be talking about is a Mac only app.
So here we go.
1 Make sure you check your camera’s connectivity ports. It’s possible that your dSLR has a mini-USB port to enable it to be connected to your connector so you can download or transfer photos and videos from the camera to the computer. And to be doubly sure, you can check this list for the Canon cameras that are supported by the app that I’ll be discussing after this.
2 The app is called v002 Camera Live. Go ahead and download the free app from Github. Once you have it, just follow the instructions detailed by the developer.
3 Also, you will need to download and install CamTwist. CamTwist is an app that acts as a server so that whatever comes through Camera Live, it can be used by your favorite video calling app or even your streaming software.
4 Once you have both installed, connect your Canon dSLR camera to your laptop using the appropriate USB cable.
5 Launch Camera Live.
6 Turn on your camera. If everything’s okay, Camera Live will be able to detect your camera. If it’s detected, leave it as it is.
7 Launch CamTwist. Once you CamTwist open, select Syphon under the Video Sources column. Skip the second column and go straight to the third column. In the third column, make sure you tick the checkbox there. It should be say there something like “Syphone (your camera model). And on the last column where it says Settings, there’s a dropdown list labeled Syphon Server. Click on the dropdown and look for “Camera Live” then select that.
8 Now launch your video calling app then go to the preferences window of your app. You should be able to find an option there to let you check on your webcam and audio. In Skype, for example, under the Skype menu, you go to Preferences then Audio & Video. On the video section, you’ll see a dropdown list of the available cameras that you can use. Just select CamTwist and voila!
All you gotta do now is to setup your camera nicely just like it’s a webcam in front of you. The only thing left to do now is to make sure that you set your camera to manual focus and make sure that you’re focused properly.
That’s about it! Enjoy your kinda-brand-new webcam!