- We're about to run through
how to use your phone as a webcam,
step-by-step for both iPhone and Android smartphones
using completely free software on both Mac and Windows PC.
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video,
where we help you grow an audience and scale your revenue
with online video.
If you're seeing value in this video,
make sure you're giving it a thumbs up.
It really makes a huge difference.
And all the links to everything I mentioned in this video,
you can find linked in description box below.
So let's jump into it.
Now why would you want to use a smartphone as a webcam?
Well, if you've got a modern iPhone or an Android device,
that camera that's sitting in your pocket
will way outperform any of the off-the-shelf webcams
that are available today.
Now there's a lot of different tools and apps out there
to help you do this,
and I have tried and tested a ton of them.
Some of them are absolute rubbish,
whereas others of them work really, really well.
So my top two picks right now is Iriun and EpocCam,
and you can get great results with both of them.
Now both of them have a free version available,
but they also have a paid version,
where you can remove the watermark
and you can also unlock a higher resolution,
so higher video quality as well.
Both of them will work with both Mac or PC,
but right now at the time of filming this video,
EpocCam won't work with Android,
so you will need to be using an iOS device
if you're going to use that.
If not, if you're on the Android side,
then Iriun is going to be the perfect solution for you.
Now in terms of quality, it is primarily limited by
which device you're going to be using
and the capabilities of that device.
Iriun on Android will go up to 4K resolutions,
whereas on iOS or using EpocCam,
you're going to be limited to 1080P at 30 frames per second,
which is still amazing quality.
Now probably the biggest reason why these two apps
are the top two apps is because of their ease of use,
because of their simplicity, because of the price,
if you want to upgrade to the pro
or the full unlocked version,
but also because of just how well they work,
both over wifi and USB.
It is ridiculous how well these work with next to no latency
or next to no delay over wifi as well as cable.
Now really quickly, on the pricing to unlock
to the unrestricted versions of both of these,
Iriun for the pro version is $4.49 and EpocCam is $7.99.
Now in terms of getting everything set up and running,
the process for both of these is almost identical.
So I'm going to take you through the process
of using EpocCam,
but you can follow along the same process
with Iriun as well.
So you just want to head over to the website
and download and install the software for your computer.
Again, there's links in the description box below.
Once that's installed, you'll want to make sure that
you've got the app downloaded and installed on your phone.
You'll then want to decide if you're going to be connecting
your phone to your computer via wifi,
so then you'll want to make sure that they're both
connected to the same network,
or you want to be using a USB cable.
Now, as I said,
in both cases with both of these recommendations,
wifi works ridiculously well.
I really didn't think that it would work as well as it does.
There is next to no delay,
no latency in all of my tests and across Mac and PC.
But personally, I do recommend using a cable
wherever possible,
so that your phone isn't going to go flat
while you're using it as a webcam.
It's able to be charged from your computer at the same time.
And it's also going to help you remove
any potential wifi issues if you're in an area
where your wifi signal isn't that good,
or maybe there's interference from
maybe a neighbor's wifi or something.
Now for this example, I'm on an iPhone 12 Pro,
obviously using EpocCam.
I've just opened up the app
and it's connected to my computer.
So let's go ahead and open up in OBS.
A new video capture device, a new webcam.
Now we go, okay,
we can just find this now in the dropdown.
We can see here, we've got EpocCam.
Let's just change the resolution to high,
which will give us the 1920 by 1080.
Let's go, okay.
And this is it in real-time over wireless.
So pretty amazing.
And you can see if I grab the phone and move it around,
there is next to no lag or very minimal lag over wifi,
which is amazing.
Now on the app itself, if we go over here to settings,
you can see that we can choose
auto connection, wifi, USB, or NDI
if we want to connect that way,
and we get to specify our quality.
So it's currently set to best quality,
but we can also choose good or fair.
So if you are having connection issues,
if you're over wifi or you want a lower quality feed-in,
then you can do that in here as well.
There's also a built in green screen in this app as well.
Now if we tap out of that
and come back over to the side here,
then we have the ability to flip our screen,
mirror our screen.
You also have the ability to switch between the cameras.
So if we press on this button here,
then it's going to flip around to the back camera
and you can see that currently I am on the ultra wide.
So if we have look at what that looks like now
on the computer,
then you can see how messy the office is,
but we get access to the ultra wide.
If we press the little button up the top again,
I can also switch to the one times
or the two times zoom if you want as well.
That's definitely way too close.
But it's awesome that you've got access to use
all the different camera lenses
that are built into your camera.
Okay, so I'm just back on the front one now.
We also have the ability to bring in audio,
mute the phone's audio as well,
so you can use your phone as a microphone if you need to.
And down at the bottom here,
the last one is green screen, to enable that.
In my opinion,
it's absolute trash and I wouldn't bother using it.
Even though I don't have a green screen behind me,
it really doesn't work very well at all.
Now one of the cool features that both of these apps,
Iriun and EpocCam have is the ability to use
the flash on the back of your camera.
So if you're going to be using the back camera,
the primary camera, the better quality camera,
then you can actually use the flash to light you up as well.
So now if we go back to the computer and let's open up Zoom
and start a Zoom call,
you can see that it's already defaulted
to the right webcam here for me.
But if you're not seeing this,
then down at the bottom here,
you can switch and select your EpocCam
or your Iriun cam from here.
And again, this is us still connected over wifi.
You can see there's really next to no delay
or any issues with this.
It looks good and yeah, amazing.
I'm still using the front facing camera.
Now earlier in the video, I said I would share with you
a couple of pro tips to help you get the most out of this
and to remove any of the common issues
or places that people have problems when they're doing this.
So here's a quick list for you.
First off, you want to make sure that your
camera lens is clean.
This kind of goes without saying
with any camera that you're using,
but if this is your phone, it's up against your face.
You might've just come off a phone call
before you're going to hook it up to use it as a webcam.
You want to make sure that you're removing any fingerprints,
dirt, grime, smudges on your camera lens,
again, for the front camera or the rear one.
If you're going to be connecting over wifi,
then make sure that you've got enough battery
to last you for the length of time
you're going to be using your phone as a webcam.
This is going to be using your camera,
meaning that your battery life will go down
much faster than normal.
So wherever possible, plug it into power
or directly into the computer so that you're
not going to have your phone go flat while you're using it.
I'd also strongly recommend that you're putting your phone
into do not disturb mode, blocking mode, or flight mode,
so that you've got no interruptions
coming through while you're using it.
Worst case scenario here,
having something like a phone call come in
could definitely stop your webcam working.
And it may not resume automatically
after that call has finished.
So those are just a few simple tips
to help you get the most out of your new webcam.
And now that you have your new webcam
all set up and running,
if you want to level up on the audio side of things,
and you want to know the best microphones to use
for your scenario,
then check out the video linked on screen,
where we take you through all of our top options.
I'll see you in the next one.