Webcam Recommendation for Livestreaming Music

[paulsmusic]

I want to livestream some acoustic gigs from my home studio, and wondered if anybody could recommend a good HD webcam, that can be used with an interface (rather than the built-in webcam mic)? Many thanks!

[Drew Stephenson]

Depending on your streaming platform you'll probably be able to choose the audio source separately to the video source anyway. So as long as the streaming platform recognises the interface (not guaranteed!) then any camera that meets your picture requirements should do.

[paulsmusic]

Depending on your streaming platform you'll probably be able to choose the audio source separately to the video source anyway. So as long as the streaming platform recognises the interface (not guaranteed!) then any camera that meets your picture requirements should do.

Great, thank you!

[N i g e l]

^^^ what blinddrew said.

I mainly use zoom & the audio source selection is independent of the video source.

If its a broadcast from a home studio, you might want to consider the angle of view of the camera to get everything in.
I think webcams tend to be quite wide angle, even the cheapy <£25 ones that I have used.

There are some video apps that will allow you to use multiple cameras and switch between scenes or even have several camera views on screen at the same time .

If you want to improve video quality, make sure the scene is well lit

[paulsmusic]

That’s really helpful, thank you!

[Mike Stranks]

I use a secondhand camcorder as my camera for Zoom/livestreaming.

I use the HDMI output plus a gizmo that converts HDMI to USB.

Note that if you route audio and video separately you'll almost certainly lose sync. You can get complicated and use audio or video delays, but I've simply taken the audio I want to use and fed it into the camera external mic input - and there are plenty with way more sophisticated kit than me who do exactly the same. That way your pictures and audio will be in sync when it arrives in the PC. If you then use intermediate software like OBS you might lose sync again... you do need to check at every stage of the process...

[paulsmusic]

Thanks Mike!

[MarkOne]

Or if you own a DSLR or mirrorless camera from one of the major brands, most of them developed USB drivers to turn their cameras into webcams, to capitalise on the world shortage of webcams at the start of the pandemic, when we all suddenly needed to Zoom/Teams/Webex for our jobs.

And of course the quality is insanely better!

[Drew Stephenson]

Or if you own a DSLR or mirrorless camera from one of the major brands, most of them developed USB drivers to turn their cameras into webcams, to capitalise on the world shortage of webcams at the start of the pandemic, when we all suddenly needed to Zoom/Teams/Webex for our jobs.

And of course the quality is insanely better!

I never got round to trying this but it's definitely worth looking at. Most DSLRs will have a mic input so you can, as Mike suggested, get your audio and video from one source (in sync).

[Mike Stranks]

Yup! Spot-on about DSLRs... I tend to forget about them as I'm exclusively a camcorder man. (When I started Zooming I was using a £1100 camcorder for the video input... lovely pictures but a little OTT. )

And you may need to think about auxiliary lighting... As a matter of course I'm using an LED fill-light for Zoom calls and livestreaming.