Why can’t you buy a good webcam? | Vsevolod Solovyov

submited by

Style Pass

2022-05-18 06:00:06

My brother decided he wants to try streaming. Some people can just do a thing and other people want to research all the bits and pieces beforehand. Our chat history is comparable in length to all my other chats combined, so I learned a lot of it as well. The craft is full with small details and inconveniences.

He found that there are basically no good webcams. A lot of the time an image quality is meh, and the rare presence of 4k is usually not better than 1080p, because resolution is not quality. Some camera apparently does upscaling from 1080p to 4k in its driver, indicated by poor quality and high CPU load. He also has a really good camera, Fujifilm X-T1. It can't be used as a webcam when connected to a USB port. Usually it's possible to buy an HDMI-to-USB converter, but his camera can't output a live stream into HDMI, only a recorded video.

So we had an idea — maybe it is possible to create a good webcam ourselves. Would anybody care? Well, it’s almost 2021 now, streaming is still on the rise, pandemic is going strong and video meetings are everywhere. People are willing to spend some money, as indicated by countless videos on YouTube regarding the problem.