Sony is releasing a new application to turn your Sony Z-V1 vlogging camera into a USB webcam
Jun 30, 2020
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Sony’s ZV-1 vlogging camera, while not perfect, has got a lot of people very interested since its launch in May. It’s an all-in-one camera that offers optical image stabilisation, a flippy out LCD (finally, Sony, thank you!), 4K video up to 30fps, a 24-70mm equivalent field of view lens at f/1.8-2.8 and a microphone socket with a hotshoe on top to mount it.
But it’s about to get even better. During the recent Interview between DPReview and Sony VP Kenji Tanaka, he revealed that a new desktop application is on the way that will turn your Sony ZV-1 into a USB webcam. No HDMI capture device required.
There isn’t much mention of it aside from one line. They don’t say whether it’ll cause your computer to see the camera as an actual webcam so that you can use it in Skype, Zoom, etc. Or if you have to cheat using OBS and a plugin, as with the Panasonic app.
A lot of people will also enjoy the ZV-1 as a webcam when connecting it to a PC via USB. We will deliver a new Desktop application in July to enable this.
Mr Tanaka also did not say whether this would be PC only or if Mac users would also be able to utilise this feature. Hopefully, it means both, but this sort of thing often tends to come to the PC before the Mac, so we’ll see.
No specific date was mentioned as to when the software would be released, just that it would become available at some point during July.
[via DPreview]
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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21 responses to “Sony is releasing a new application to turn your Sony Z-V1 vlogging camera into a USB webcam”
Sony is making it more and more tempting to buy one of these and dump my RX100 VII
Yeah, it will be interesting to see if they end up expanding this capability to the RX100 line eventually.
Useless. Every laptop has already a webcam
Cameras are useless in general. I mean, you’ve got a phone, right?
Also, desktops are a thing. :)
John Aldred Well, I think this camera can deliver better video quality than a Phone or a webcam and You can record your video directly into your computer. Can be a good tool for live streaming
I too hope it will apply to the RX line. But my typical zoom meeting is longer than the battery life of the camera, so I’ll still be stuck using HDMI + framegrabber so that I can use the USB port to keep the camera powered.
Never understood why you can’t just plug any dslr or mirrorless straight into any computer.
Stewart Norton yep… but that would be too easy ?
Duncan Dimanche Sparkocam lets you do it so it is literally a simple bit if software why the hell can’t camera manufacturers have the software to do it ?! ?
I completely agree!! I don’t understand why it just can’t double as a webcam natively. If cheap webcams are plug and play, why not the equipment we spend thousands of $$ on do the same thing?
You can: but having the plug isn’t enough. There’s also the tiny matter of writing the software that has to run inside the camera, converting the raw video feed into a format palatable to your PC.
Which, I’m sure, you’d have been happy to pay extra for when you bought the camera?
Tunes Firwood Be interesting to see if the Sony App is free if it is and they can do it then hopefully other manufacturers will follow suite.
Stewart: free on a new camera model is likely to boost their sales: I’m not holding my breath for it being free on the camera I already own. :P
Cute caterpillar on the camera…
Ah … following in Canon’s footsteps.
Waiting for this…
Anyone hear any news about this app being released yet?
July came and went and no status update from Sony. Did they really mean July-ish, Q3, July 2021? Bought the ZV-1 to solve a bunch of problems – webcam being one of them. I understand delays but lack of status update in frustrating.
Don’t make me buy a camlink for this…. c’mon
Yes, this wait has been frustrating. A lot of folks bought into the Sony system when they heard this call. Sony shouldn’t disappoint buyers.
I’ll be returning my ZV-1 tomorrow (refund window closes next week), and I’m pretty disappointed about this empty promise. Well, other manufacturers can get it done, so…