Insta360 Link

I "invested" in early 2020 when all of my training moved to Zoom. I've gone through a lot of equipment and frequently am complimented on my sound, camera, and background. [...] Mic - See my mic comment in another thread 2. Lighting - It is hard for good cameras to compensate for poor lighting. [...] You can get cheap fluorescent or LED lights with a diffuser. [...] Camera - I have used Canon M50 and Sony A6500 as webcams. These days, I use an Insta360 Link. It's not quite as good as the cameras (you can add more "background blur" with their software), but it's more convenient. [...]

The Insta360 Link does a decent job. Hard to beat a mirrorless camera. (I use both almost daily for my trainings.)

That's a solid option, but around the same price point, there are some decent options from Insta360 that can move. 🤘 I have the 4k Brio and the Insta360 Link, and I use them both for recording/streaming. There's also Elgato's offering, which is stationary, but I believe it has a larger sensor.

Considering going back to using my phone to record videos. The Insta360 link is a very nice web cam for sure but I think I can utilize it better for top-down shots or getting other angles I have some ideas for using the Blackmagic camera app for some of the cool features it has (ProRes and LOG)

[...] I've been using Insta360 ( @insta360) Link 2 Pro and 2C Pro for a month now. Really cool features like AI-tracking, auto framing, and exceptional picture quality. [...]

I loved the Insta360 Link 2 so much I bought two of them (Review: franklineh.com/l/insta360li...), now they’ve gone and dropped the Link 2 Pro!!! Watch Here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0qd...

I got a new webcam (insta360 Link 2) recently and it can track me! It also has horizontal and vertical flips (ignore the mess behind me in the kitchen, I was making my dinner at the time 😂 )

Some thoughts based on my anecdotal experience — but it depends on the price you are willing to pay. You can get quite good webcams for $100–300 (from Insta360, Obsbot, Logitech maybe …) which work out of the box with USB-C and have mostly okayish software that supports changing things like brightness, white balance, etc. [...] I had a Logitech StreamCam and upgraded to an Insta360 Link 2C, which is definitely much better but still not on-par with a proper camera. [...] The next step up would be mirrorless cameras with built-in or interchangeable lenses made for vlogging, which also can be used like a webcam. [...] Sony ZV-E10 II, Fuji X-M5, Canon EOS M50 Mark II, … most of them claim webcam support with the provided software. Fuji's software is bad though, so I wouldn't recommend it on a Mac. [...] The benefit is that they also have a flip screen that you can use for better framing. [...] If you have a camera that has an HDMI output and that outputs a clean HDMI signal (without any overlays), you can also buy an HDMI USB capture device and feed that into OBS, which allows you to set up a virtual webcam. There are cheap no-name USB capture cards that produce mediocre images, and more top-of-the line ones like the Elgato Cam Link. This should be the most device-independent variant where you're also not dependent on any vendor's proprietary software.

[...] I was trying to vibe code an OBS plug-in just last week to measure sync between audio and video. My system flashed the screen white and played a note. The idea was to have the camera detect monitor brightness and detect the offset from the audio note. [...] (I ended up vibe coding a Python GUI to quickly allow me to push through video frames and show the audio frequency. I could quickly type 'v' (video) where I clapped and 'a' (audio) where the waveform changed. [...]