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esambell
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PCIe Webcam in Workstation Player

Hello,

I'm running VMWare Player 15.5.2 on a Bootcamped MacBook Pro with Win 10 as the host and guest OS. If the webcam was connected via USB it would be trivial, but is there a way to do it with an integrated PCIe webcam? It seems it can be done in Fusion, but I haven't seen any references to Workstation?

Thanks!

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dariusd
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That's right... Fusion has support for acting as a camera "client" on the host machine and then presenting that video data to the VM through an emulated USB device, but we do not currently have that support in Workstation whether on a Windows or Linux host... It's only in Fusion for now.

We have received other requests for adding this support to Workstation, notably for supporting the built-in PCIe camera in Microsoft Surface devices.  There's a feature request in our issue tracker, and I'll add your feedback to it.

Thanks,

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Darius

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RDPetruska
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No PCI passthrough devices work on the hosted products, so I don't know how it could work under fusion.  Very unlikely it can work under workstation.

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esambell
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I assume it would have to be done in the OS layer where VMWare captures the camera on the on the host and emulates a camera in the VM.

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dariusd
VMware Employee
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That's right... Fusion has support for acting as a camera "client" on the host machine and then presenting that video data to the VM through an emulated USB device, but we do not currently have that support in Workstation whether on a Windows or Linux host... It's only in Fusion for now.

We have received other requests for adding this support to Workstation, notably for supporting the built-in PCIe camera in Microsoft Surface devices.  There's a feature request in our issue tracker, and I'll add your feedback to it.

Thanks,

--

Darius

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esambell
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Copy, thanks for the clear response and glad to hear it's in the queue. I did uncover a workaround, there is a video streaming protocol called NDI, which has a free set of tools (NDI Tools | NDI.tv) that can capture the webcam on the host, stream it over the virtual network and emulate a camera in the guest. It's a bit laggy in this application, but can work in a pinch and for testing.

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