End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Logitech’s Brio 4k Webcam Pro

There’s a new webcam in the house…errr…home office! Yes, I have received a sample of Logitech’s latest, the Brio 4K Webcam Pro.

Even before the sample arrived I had a great conversation about the Brio with Dave Michels. Dave captured that discussion for publication on his blog.

I’ve put the Brio through a few simple experiments and learned a few things. At least superficially, it does what it says. Connected via USB 3.0 it delivers a 2160p30 (aka 4k) stream using MJPEG encoding to vMix and OBS.

By the way, contrary to past policy, the latest vMix demo…still a 60 day full-function trial…supports 4k operation! Seriously, vMix is awesome software for desktop video production. Highly recommended!

The image above was captured in the trial version of vMix on my recently rebuilt Lenovo laptop. I’ve highlighted the status indication showing the software is working in 2160p30 (aka UHD.) Note also that 48% of available CPU power is in use while actually doing very little.

This second image shows the camera set to deliver 3840 x 2160 at 30 f/s.

Brio delivers YUY2 uncompressed video or an MJPEG encoded stream. This has revealed something about my desktop computer. It’s become painfully clear that my 5 year old desktop computer simply isn’t up to properly evaluating a 4K webcam. It struggles to encode anything beyond 1080p30 at decent frame rates.

It will take me a couple of weeks to acquire and deploy a new desktop. That in itself itself will likely be an interesting story.

Rest assured there’ll be more to come as I put this little wonder-cam to use.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Does the BRIO do any H.264 encoding or just MJPEG and YUY2? If all it ever does is fill that 5Gbps USB3/3.1 bandwidth with 2160p MJPG @30 fps it would be a huge bummer.

    1. Brio does not support H264/5 or VPx encoding on camera. It only delivers MJPG or YUY2 streams. If you require some other codec that encoding must be done on the host platform.

  2. I am also wondering if you can get it to record @ 4096 x 2160 (DCI native) or just 3840 x 2160 (UHD) and how is software support for these 2 resolutions (OBS, Windows Camera App, etc.).

    1. Brio does support 4096×2160 MJPG in use with vMix Pro. Not sure about those other apps.

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