Using my Canon EOS M50 as a webcam

So, I’m slowly getting through my new online CityEngine course for work.  I had bought a Canon EOS m50 to record some of the video.  It has a 30 minute limit for video recording (which is okay for what I wanted) and seemed to be a good balance between quality and price.

To put the video together I’ve been using a number of tools like Adobe Premiere but also OBS Studio for screen recordings.   As part of the pre-recorded sessions I also do in-person video calls over several platforms because everyone seems to want different video conferencing tools!  Obviously at this time of lockdown these skills are important.  I have been looking at various methods for bringing all of this software and equipment together.  Quick video chats and ‘picture in picture video’ for screen recordings the Logitech c922 webcam is perfect, I use software called Chromacam to give me backgrounds and a logo for some stuff too.  OBS Studio is well worth a look at for it’s amazing capabilities (but a bit of a steep learning curve), yes it’s for streaming but also recording (webcam and screen capture) to.

Back to the title of this blog post! Basically I’ve seen various tutorials on how to use your nice camera as a webcam.  It generally involves ensuring you can get a ‘clean’ hdmi output from your camera, which the Canon EOS m50 cannot do without some hoop jumping. 

When I saw Canon’s recent news (and video) about a EOS Webcam Utility beta software I was happy! It is now possible with the aid of this utility to use the Canon m50 via USB as a webcam in all your favourite video conferencing software setups and of course tools like OBS Studio.

I installed the utility, plugged in my camera, turned the dial to video and turned it on.  I then in video settings (of say Teams) switched Camera choice to ‘EOS Webcam Utility Beta’, but no picture just this image in the webcam feed:

I realised my camera’s utility software EOS Utility was still loaded, you need to ‘right-click’ on the icon in the taskbar (bottom right) and close it.  Now the utility and camera work perfectly.  I’ve used this in various tools like OBS Studio and MS Teams and not had a problem, you can also use the touchscreen on the camera to change settings whilst operating as a webcam which is great for low light levels etc…

You can download the webcam utility here (and it has a list of cameras it should work on), I have seen in various threads that some people’s cameras aren’t listed but may still work..