Important

Progress is underway towards full support for both macOS and Windows. Significant help is needed in testing on these platforms.

webcamize

Use (almost) any camera as a webcam!

Webcamize allows you to use basically any modern camera as a webcam on Linux—your DSLR, mirrorless, camcorder, point-and-shoot, and even some smartphones/tablets. It also gets many webcams that don't work out of the box on Linux up and running in a flash.

There's literally only two steps...

1​. Plug in your camera

2​. Run the webcamize command

Now your camera is a webcam! 🎉

Using webcamize

Webcamize is designed to be as easy to use as possible. Just plug in your camera, turn it on, then run the webcamize command:

$ webcamize

In the vast majority of cases, that's all you'll need to do. You might be asked to enter your password to enable and configure the video device.

View the list of supported cameras and devices.

Advanced Usage

$ webcamize --help
Usage: webcamize [OPTIONS...]

  -s,  --status                 Print a status report for webcamize and quit
  -c,  --camera NAME            Specify a camera to use by its name; autodetects by default
  -f,  --file [PATH]            Output to a file; if no argument is passed, output to stdout
  -w,  --wait                   Daemonize the process, preventing it from exiting
  -x,  --no-convert             Don't convert from input format before writing
  -p,  --fps VALUE              Specify the maximum frames per second (default: 60)

  -l,  --log-level LEVEL        Set the log level (DEBUG, INFO, WARN, FATAL; default: INFO)
       --no-color               Disable the use of colors in the terminal
  -v,  --version                Print version info and quit
  -H,  --help                   Show this help message

Installation

Package Managers

Note

Webcamize is a small hobby project and probably not available via your distribution's package manager (yet)—if you want to support the project by maintaining a package for webcamize, I'd be eternally grateful.

Arch Linux (AUR)

Webcamize is available from the Arch User Repository as webcamize

$ yay -S webcamize

Building From Source

Webcamize has a few additional dependencies that you should make sure are installed before beginning:

• libgphoto2
• ffmpeg (libavutil, libavcodec, libavformat, libswscale)
• v4l2loopback DKMS
• libkmod
• Linux headers

These should be available from your package manager.

1. To get started, clone this repo somewhere

$ git clone https://github.com/cowtoolz/webcamize && cd webcamize

You don't have to, but you should check out a tag. To checkout the latest tag automatically:

$ git checkout $(git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1))

2. Build Webcamize

Webcamize doesn't require any configuration; you can just run make.

$ make

2. Install Webcamize

If ~/.local/bin/ is on your path, you can use the install-local target—otherwise, use the normal install target:

$ echo $PATH | grep -q ~/.local/bin && make install-local || sudo make install

Webcamize can be uninstalled with the uninstall-local and uninstall targets respectively, but if you installed it from source you should be able to safely rm $(which webcamize).

That's all; you're ready to go! 🎉🎉

Issues & Contributing

This project follows the following philosophy:

• If this project is not helping you, then there is a bug
• If you are having a bad time using this project, then there is a bug
• If the documentation is confusing, then the documentation is buggy
• If there is a bug in this project, then we can work together to fix it.

If you find yourself stumped, find a bug, have a bad time using webcamize, or have a suggestion that could make webcamize better, please open an issue in the issue tracker—noobs welcome!

Cheers!

Webcamize does little more than orchestrate other open source software; the software it depends on is where the real magic happens. With that being said, a big thanks goes out from me to:

• Michael Niedermayer and other contributors to ffmpeg for their incredible work on the absolute behemoth that is ffmpeg.
• Marcus Meissner, Hans Niedermann, and the other contributors to libgphoto2. This project is underrated given the insane quality and scope.
• You, the reader! Thank you for using, supporting, and contributing to webcamize; without you, this project would not be possible.