Vixia HF R800 not recognized by computer

[busler62]

I just bought the R 800 to use as a streaming Web Cam for our church services. I plug it into the computer and it's not being recognized at all. I bought a refurbished one from Canon and I'm thinking that maybe the USB plug is bad. Shouldn't it be a simple plug and play device? I downloaded all the appropriate software from Canon website.

[Mark35mmF2]

Hi busler62,

To get a live video feed from the camcorder you will need to use the HDMI connection instead of USB.  Another common road block when beginning to live stream is that the HDMI port on most computers is designed for output only which would mean that it can output onto an external monitor, it does not accept an HDMI input signal from another device. If your computer does not accept an HDMI input signal then a separate piece of hardware called a capture card would be necessary to adapt your computer to work with HDMI input.