Livestreaming with a DSLR camera – Magic Lantern and Wirecast
With Magic Lantern installed on your Canon 7D DSLR camera, it is now possible to remove the meta layer of informations on the display, that by Canons firmware are exported through the HDMI output. Livestreaming with a DSLR camera have never been easyier and pros out there just want crystal clear video! Phones to livestream, fx with switcher studio pro, is quite new, and it seems to works very good. But as long as the quality of the mobilephone cameras are rather bad, you’ll get a much more professional look with just a cheap DSLR camera and a BlackMagic Design recorder box for about the same price.
To be livestreaming with a DSLR camera, you’ll need:
- 1 x MacBook Pro w/ Thunderbolt
- 1 x Installed WireCast or the open source ‘Open Broadcaster System‘
- 1 x Intensity Extreme from BlackMagic Design // or you could probably use the cheap blackmagic ultrastudio mini recorder
- 1 x Canon DSLR camera, running Magic Lantern. I’m using the Canon 7D
- 1 x HDMI to Mini HDMI cable
- 1 x Thunderbolt cable
- 1 x YouTube account
How to
- In the Magic Lantern menu, under display settings, toggle screen meta off.
- Install the driver for Intensity Extreme fra BlackMagic Design
- Plug the Thunderbolt between the Intensity Extreme to the MacBook Pro & connect your Canon DSLR 7D with the HDMI cable to the Intensity Extreme.
- Now connect, in the BlackMagic Design driver, the camera to the computer. Use input as HDMI and resulution to “1080p59.9”.
- Open WireCast, and attach the BlackMagic Design Camera, and use same settings, “1080p59.9”, here also. It has to fit.
- You are up running, and you can now start livestreaming to YouTube with great quality from your Canon 7D!
Conclutions & a little troubleshooting
I’ll be posting some pictures later on, to show how well it worked. But I can only say that it worked smooth and fine. I did spend quite some time getting the camera to connect. But that was because I did not know what settings to use. Now I know, so it’ll be very convinient to set up next time!
Hope you will all enjoy the small hack!