The demand for remote cameras to stream live events, plus video conferencing in office and corporate environments, has rocketed massively since the pandemic. Many sectors have embraced the new possibilities offered by a PTZ infrastructure including higher education, concerts, theatre and houses of worship.

Thanks to Canon’s new Webcam Driver¹, which is available on Windows OS, it’s easy to set up PTZ cameras for high quality streaming, webcam functionality, longer cabling options via LAN, auto camera detection and the ability to register multiple cameras.

4K 30p output
Via LAN and the new USB driver, users can now utilise the CR-N300, CR-N500 and CR-X300 for video streaming up to 4K 30p², with further flexibility of where the camera can be located when connected to a PC.

Automatic Camera Detection
The new software will detect compatible Canon PTZ cameras that are on the same network as the PC. This enables easy set-up of the cameras for users to identify which cameras they’d like to register to the software.

Register multiple cameras
You can register up to five cameras to the software, so depending on the installation it’s possible to easily select which one to use from the PC.

4K 30P² image quality is now a real possibility thanks to output via LAN. USB is limited because of the maximum length of the cable (usually 3m). On the other hand, a LAN connection has a substantianlly longer cable run, making it ideal for larger venues in the professional AV space. Take a university for example: instead of being limited to a 3m USB connection from a laptop to PTZ camera, thanks to Canon’s new webcam driver users can install it at the back a large auditorium without sacrificing reliability or quality.

Two new protocols have also arrived to the Canon PTZ range which makes integrating them into workflows which rely heavily on Broadcast and VR/AR easy and seamless. The firmware will be available for download later in 2022 and will apply to the CR-N300 and CR-N500 PTZ Cameras.

SRT
The SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol is a video transmission protocol that has gained a high reputation from the remote production market and is capable of high-quality, low-latency, and secure video transmission, even in unpredictable network conditions. This is a widely used protocol in the broadcast industry and is currently applicable to Canon’s CR-N300 and CR-N500 PTZ Cameras.

FreeD
The FreeD protocol is widely used in virtual studios and in VR/AR productions. Canon’s CR-N500 and CR-N300 can now be easily integrated in virtual production applications such as news, weather forecasts, sports and live events thanks to this protocol, which enables them to directly feed in real time the Pan, Tilt, Zoom, Focus and Iris, as well as the position of the PTZ Camera into a virtual platform such as unreal engine.