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

Question

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).

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

If the camera has HDMI out you can use something like AverMedia ExtremeCap.

This captures the HDMI output from the camera and processes it and outputs to USB 3

You can then capture that source feed with the provided software and stream as you wish.

Other software that also allows real time addition of graphics such as lower thirds (overlays) are available e.g. Wirecast, vMix etc.

Cheers Ash