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How to Livestream a Canon EOS M50 eg YouTube or Facebook Live

Written by Laurel Papworth in Social Media Last Updated December 3, 2019

I have an EOS M50 camera and I wanted to use it for livestreaming on both Facebook Live and YouTube Live.  It was challenging to work out but I did it! 🙂

How I connect my Canon EOS M50 to Facebook Live or YouTube Live or Twitch via OBS. 2018 version. Took me a while to figure out, so here it is 🙂

  1. Put the Canon EOS M50 camera on a tripod etc, and then connect USB (NOT HDMI) to the camera and the computer. You should get a computer icon flash up on the viewfinder of the camera. If it doesn’t, check the cable and connections.
  2. Turn the camera on, in any mode, but do NOT press record. The computer is just going to act as a viewfinder, as a feed, the camera does nothing but be on.
  3. Launch software that acts as a webcam driver. Camera Live for Mac, Windows has Sparkocam. You can even try the EOS Utility but it didn’t work for me.
  4. On my Mac, Camera Live says ACTIVE above the camera name. If it does not say Active, make sure you have NOTHING else that can grab camera feeds open. Close Camtasia, Google hangouts, Screenflow, Quicktime, even your smartphone if the Canon app is launched and active on your phone.
  5. Make sure that whatever service you are running can see the camera as a video source e.g. Camera Live. To make sure, and because I like multiple cameras plus screensharing, I use OBSProject to run Facebook Live and YouTube Live (see below) so I choose {Game Capture Syphon} and then add the camera. Go to 2:05 in my video if you get stuck.
  6. Now I can record a video or stream live (you have to add the secret Facebook or YouTube key to OBS if you are using OBS or any other 3rd party broadcasting software).  Choose CONNECT (not camera) in Facebook live and take that info into OBS Project etc).

The key to remember is that the Canon EOS M50 is simply acting as a viewer, not as a camera, in this scenario. Once you have connected the camera to your computer, and have the software driving it to a broadcasting platform etc, everything else says the same. I cannot emphasise enough that if Camera Live will not pick up the video feed from the camera, make sure you are properly connected and NOTHING else has grabbed the feed already. This was an issue for me!

Free software/drivers

MAC Camera to Apple Mac   https://github.com/v002/v002-Camera-Live/releases

WINDOWS Camera to Win PC     https://sparkosoft.com/sparkocam-download

PLUS FREE STREAMING SOFTWARE OBS for Mac or PC https://obsproject.com

Laurel Papworth

Named by Forbes™ Magazine in the Top 50 Social Media Influencers globally, named Head of Industry, Social Media (Marketing Magazine™) and in the Power150 Media bloggers (AdAge™). CERT IV Training and Assessment certified trainer (Diplomas and Certificates etc) Adult Education. Laurel has manager Facebook Pages for Junior Masterchef, Idol, Big Brother etc. and have consulted on private online communities for banks Westpac, not for profits UNHCR & governments in SE Asia. Lecturer, social media, University of Sydney for 10 years and Laurel has 11,000 online students. Laurel Papworth personally connects to 6 million followers online and has taught around 100,000 people in the last 10 years how to be social media managers.

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