Hooking a Canon Camera up via USB capture device

irongeek

Member
Hi all, not sure this will be a full fledged guide, so please move if it fits better elsewhere. Just wanted to report some hardware that works.

I wanted to hook my Canon camcorder up as a video source, but it really does not have USB out as far as acting as a webcam itself. I decided to hook it up via a capture device. First, I used the HDMI port out of it and turned off a feature that output the on screen screen controls to video out. I then hooked it up to my Elgato GCHD, and that worked, but you can only capture from one device at a time is seemed and I want to use the Elgato to capture a presentation coming from a laptop. The info on recommended USB capture devices that work is kind of slim. I found one that seems to work:

http://dx.com/p/usb-2-0-dvr-video-captu ... ngle-23345
Seen what looks to be the same USB other places, like (after testing, it is not the same and I can't get it to work in Windows 7 x64)
http://www.monoprice.com/Product/?c_id= ... &p_id=5616
I think there is some company making them generically, and different people slapping a brand label on.

When you plug it in, it seems to identify as a DIAMOND VC500. At first it always defaulted to PAL for video, which was not what the camera was sending. After I used the drivers from Monoprice it seemed to stick with NTSC. From there, I had to hook it up via composite. Sound on one had a hiss, but the other two I have worked fine. The new Canon Vixia HF R40 only came with an HDMI out cable, but I used a STV-250N from one of my olded cameras and it seemed to work fine. You can get STV-250N online for under $10. After hooking it all up, it seems to work well with the Elgato for being able to do slides and presenter''s laptop capture. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i3n8b5tEcw

Just wish I did not have to use a delay on the Elgato, or could capture on more than one source from the Elgato (it has composite in, but doubt it is possible to capture from HDMI at same time as ).
 

irongeek

Member
I got the Monoprice capture dongle to work. Had to set it to 720x480, and update the drivers for the SMI chip set to 1.0.8.28.
 
Top