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Comment by jurip | Hacker News Reader

Feels like Apple could boost their ecosystem by making great iPhone/macOS webcam integration. There's Kinoni's EpocCam and it seems to work, but it is a bit rough and requires installing their driver which I don't love.

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I’ve been using CamTwist (http://camtwiststudio.com/) for it after checking the alternatives. Even if old-looking it works well (in Catalina and Mojave) and has converted my old iPhone into a good-quality webcam. OBS studio is getting virtual webcam support soon (see a recent post about OBS studio) and will allow for that as well (I have tried the proof of concept implementation)

Ah I didn’t know camtwist can use your iPhone as a cam.

Unfortunately it isn’t working anymore on one of my Catalina installs. Which is my primary daily driver. Luckily works on secondary older Mac that I use for Zoom frequently. Will try it out, thanks!

Oh, interesting, it works for me on Catalina. For some unknown reason I had to restart to make it work, _and_ only works on Chrome (for Meet) and some other selected programs. I guess it shows its age, I may have been lucky it works for me.

I reformatted a 2014 Mac Mini a family member was going to throw away :p. First by accident to Catalina. It was fine there in the hour I used it. Downgraded the Mini to 10.14 so it can actually run though.

My main driver already has other minor issues like too much cpu usage from certain Mac processes etc. I’m sure if I took the time, I’d be able to get Camtwist working.

But yeah if for you it works depending on browser and software. Yeah age is showing.

Thanks for this. My MacBook’s camera is broken and I should probably try this with my iPhone.

John Boiles has a proof of concept of the OBS virtual cam. I tried it out and it worked for me, although I had to build it and OBS from source. He has good instructions.

https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam

Yes, that's the proof of concept I have tried. It builds from source relatively straightforwardly (takes a short while), and indeed the instructions are very good.

Or Apple could put a better cameras on their laptops. Video conferencing was already in wide use for businesses prior to covid19. While they are at it, they could put FaceID on it.

To fit a better lens and image sensor, they would either have to thicken the Macbook lid or add a camera bump. Seems unlikely.

I'll bet you could fit an iPhone 11 facetime camera in a MacBook pro no problem, for the air you are probably right though.

How’s the cpu usage? I was looking at it. I have been hoping if I can use an iOS device as external cam and mic (mic not necessary I guess), that it would drop the computer’s cpu usage. Is that true for EpocCam?

What kind of machine are you using where CPU usage is an issue during videoconferencing?

With a quad-i7 MB Pro from late 2015, CPU usage is quite an issue for me during video conferencing.

I’m more worried because of the age of the Mac. Got it a bit over 5 years ago and likely avg 50+ hours every week for those 5+ years. I don’t want to upgrade until the MacBook 16 inch has another update or two if possible.

So I don’t like my main MacBook Pro to be 190 F temp and mid cpu usage all the time since I’m on video a lot

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