The magic combo that you are looking for is this:
dSLRs don’t need to be recording to be used as a webcam.
Any time limit on recording doesn’t apply.
Unless you’re using a battery and it dies or if an automatic power saving mode is enabled.
That elgato thing is basically just a tiny capture card. The problem is that a computer can only handle so many capture cards at once because the CPU of the computer has to encode the video from the HDMI output. The elgato I had back in the day could barely encode 1080p, and then it died. I’ve had no confidence in the quality of elgato products since. There is no way a tiny USB adapter has a video encoder in it. It’s just an interface that makes your CPU do all the work.
A DSLR camera already has a CPU that encodes video. That’s part of what you’re paying for in that high price. It records video to H.264 on its own internal SD cards in near real-time with minimal buffering. It can do it itself. Therefor it can send that encoded video over the USB cable, and no capture card is required.
My DSLR also has wifi. Internally they might not have put enough bandwidth on whatever bus connects the wifi module to the video encoder. But if that’s not the case, there’s no reason a firmware update couldn’t allow the camera to stream itself to an RTMP URL over wifi. It already sends live video over wifi when you use the tethering apps.
I think it’s kind of wild how modern webcams still just use USB connections and not HDMI.
Also how modern graphics cards don’t have a HDMI in, for webcams (and other devices).
The primary use case for webcams is not getting raw live video into a computer or display. The primary use case is for getting compressed video ready for use by applications. USB has plenty of bandwidth for that and just works.
Most people don’t have a way to input HDMI. HDMI input is not a common use case for the vast majority of people. The hardware to do it is also more expensive, and people don’t want to pay more for their video card and their webcam. Using HDMI adds no value for anyone but a professional.
Look at how much CPU/GPU it takes to convert a raw video feed into a usable compressed format. Look at how expensive anything but the most garbo-quality capture card is.
You can buy condenser microphone that connect via USB/ XLR. These are options that exist.
Webcams have been USB only since time began.
Yes, multi video setups are edge cases. Not high fidelity video input.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to use your graphics card as video recording/ streaming device other than, no one thought to sell that to consumers.
Why isn’t Nvidia and Ati right now not unleashing new models of graphics cards with HDMI in ports?
Kill Elgato, Newtek and whoever the fuck else.
Because there is almost zero demand for this.
Most people want cameras and microphones that connect via USB. It just works. There is zero value to other options for them. Most people don’t own cameras that can output HDMI. Most people don’t own any camera that isn’t a webcam or a cell phone/tablet, and never will.
I’m willing to bet, if Nvidia released their new GPUs with ‘HDMI in’ and didn’t tell anyone that all their GPU were also capture cards Elgato would be out of business.
Those cards would cost more money and use more power. Very few people would buy them: they’d buy whatever cheaper but otherwise identical option didn’t have HDMI in.
They also wouldn’t be usable for actually playing a game due to latency. You want a low-latency display out to the PC’s main monitors? That would add even more cost.
Nvidia’s Geforce Experience already provides built in streaming. You can already add webcam footage on top of that.
It’s not a far jump to instead of taking a USB video stream, use a HDMI video stream. All processing handled by the GPU.
I imagine more latency to be involved using more separate devices than one sole dedicated GPU.
If you’re GPU can handle rendering multiple 1080p60 screens, I’m sure it can handle one 1080p60 or less as an input.
What? USB is better. HDMI would be a huge pain in the ass. It doesn’t provide power! The webcam would need a second cable to power itself.
Also, what a graphics card does has nothing to do with video input, only output. Putting a video capture card onto your GPU card is like in the old days when they’d combine a sound card and a modem onto the same board for no reason.
None of these sound like problems that don’t already have existing solutions.
There are existing solutions. The solutions we have already. USB webcams and capture cards. They are much better than what you are proposing. What you are asking for is to make webcams more complicated, expensive, and harder to use. And also to duct-tape a completely unrelated feature onto GPU boards like one of those TVs that has a VCR built into it, which most people won’t use, will raise prices, and increase complexity.
“Prosumer hardware”
There’s almost no market for that. USB3+ webcams are capable of 4k, are extremely high quality, just work, and are compatible with any and all capture software.
You could plug four of those into a PC and it’ll just work in OBS without issue. Plugging four 4k HDMI cables into a PC would require a PCIe card that uses 8 of your precious PCIe lanes. Nothing else would have sufficient bandwidth for the raw data from a camera. Those multi-input cards are very expensive, and for good reason.
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On June 24 Panasonic is going to announce the G100 mirrorless camera. It’s directly targeted at people who want to use it for vlogging. For anyone interested in making damn good YouTube videos at less than actual pro level, it may very well be the best possible option.
What’s the smallest full frame dSLR, that isn’t a Sony?
Wait, smallest? As in, the lightest and easy to carry around? If it’s full frame, it’s gonna be big and its lenses are going to be big. If it’s a DSLR, that means it has a mirror and is gonna be big. There are no small ones. There are probably small size differences between the different Canon and Nikon models, but none to the point where it’s enough to make a difference. If you want small you have to get a smaller sensor, ditch the mirror, or both.
Adding to what Scott’s saying, IIRC, the smallest DSLR money can buy is the Canon EOS Rebel SL1, and even then, it’s still a little bigger than an average mirrorless, about half again thicker(body only, obviously) and thanks to the flash hump, about a half-inch taller, but then of course, you have to have a lens on. And that’s holy shit tiny for a DSLR.
And that’s not even full frame. It’s APS-C.