Can a normal camera with a USB connection be used as a webcam

camerawebcam

Is this possible natively on Windows or is there special software to do it?

EDIT

My goal is to stream a lecture from our hall over the internet, but we want the computer / camera to be in the back of the room (so it does not get in anyone's way). I was hoping to use a standard point-and-shoot camera with a high optical zoom factor to do this rather than buying some kind of new hardware. (I have access to several different specific models from among the faculty).

Best Answer

I have used some cameras as webcams, however there a a few issues:

  1. There are relatively few still cameras that support this.
  2. Some video cameras also don't support it
  3. There are often speed issues - even before streaming, I've seen up to 5 seconds of lag

I normally use VLC for this. Just select "Open Capture Device" from the "Media" menu and you should see a drop down list of devices - you'll get just "Default" and "None" if you don't have a camera that supports it plugged in.

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