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Turning my Canon HF G70 into one of the most expensive webcams I will probably ever use

In my Dead Space stream, I started using my Canon HF G70 as a webcam.

Stream example:

And yes, this is one of those setups that is both stupid and practical at the same time.

I bought the Canon HF G70 about two years ago, around 2024, and I have barely used it. I honestly kind of regret buying it. Not because it is a useless camera, but because I never really liked the recording quality enough for the kind of videos I wanted to make with it.

So instead of letting an expensive camera sit there doing nothing, I decided to use it for something.

A webcam.

A very, very expensive webcam.

I paid around 6,666 DKK for it when I bought it, which is roughly €891.82 / $1,034.32. Today I have seen it around 7,490 DKK, which is roughly €1,002.06 / $1,162.18.

So yes. If we are going to be dramatic about it, this is probably one of the most expensive webcams a normal person can accidentally end up using.

But the annoying part is that, as a webcam, it actually makes sense.

The video quality is much better than a normal cheap webcam. It is a real camcorder, not a tiny plastic webcam pretending to be a camera. It has proper optics, better control, better image handling, and it simply looks more serious than a basic webcam.

One big reason the Canon HF G70 still makes sense for streaming is the autofocus.

It has face detection / face tracking autofocus, so when I am sitting in front of it, it should detect my face and keep focus on me instead of drifting to the background. That matters when gaming, because I am not sitting like a statue. I move, lean back, look at the screen, react to the game, and sometimes probably look like the Ishimura itself is draining my soul.

A normal cheap webcam can easily look soft, flat, noisy, or just generally bad. With the G70, the picture side is much more solid. It can keep my face in focus, and that means the camera can actually behave like a high-end webcam.

So the video side is not really the problem.

The problem is sound.

The Canon can send video over USB-C as a webcam/UVC device, and that part works. But in my setup, USB-C only gives me the video. I do not get usable microphone sound from the camera through USB.

So the picture works.

The sound does not.

Because of course it cannot just be simple.

This means I had to build a workaround, because I still wanted to use the camera’s built-in microphone somehow. The camera has a headphone output, so my test setup is:

Canon HF G70 built-in microphone
→ camera headphone output
→ 3.5 mm jack male-to-male cable
→ Yamaha AG06/AG03 mixer input
→ Yamaha mixer sends audio over USB
→ PC / OBS / stream

So instead of the camera sending audio through USB-C directly, I am taking the camera’s audio from the headphone jack and routing it into the Yamaha mixer. Then the mixer acts as the USB audio interface and sends the signal to the PC.

It is very “Linux gamer with too much old hardware and not enough sleep,” but technically it should work.

The video path is simple:

Canon HF G70
→ USB-C
→ PC

The audio path is the cursed one:

Canon HF G70 built-in mic
→ headphone out
→ 3.5 mm jack cable
→ Yamaha AG06/AG03
→ USB
→ PC

The Yamaha mixer is made for streaming and audio-interface work, so that part makes sense. It can take audio sources, mix them, and send them to the PC over USB. So the Canon handles the video, and the Yamaha handles the audio.

The main downside is obvious: the built-in camera mic is still a built-in camera mic.

It is not close to my mouth. It is about an arm’s length away from my face. So the sound is going to have some room tone. It will pick up more of the room, keyboard, chair, game audio leakage, and general background space than a real close microphone would.

That is not really the camera’s fault. That is just physics. The farther the microphone is from your mouth, the more room you hear. A mic close to your face will almost always sound better for voice than a mic sitting on a camera across the desk.

So yes, the sound will probably be more roomy.

But if it works, it is still better than nothing.

The real test will not be whether it works in a silent local recording. The real test is whether it still sounds usable when game audio is under it, especially in a game like Dead Space, where the sound design is full of vents, metal, monsters, whispers, machinery, alarms, and general psychological damage.

That is where bad microphone audio can drown fast.

I did some basic testing, and so far it seems usable. The question is how well it holds up during an actual stream when the game audio is running and I am talking over it.

If the sound is acceptable, I can live with it for now.

Because the other option is buying a new microphone, and I am not really in the mood to spend 500–800 DKK on that right now. That is around €66.89–€107.03 / $77.58–$124.13.

A small camera-mounted or clip-on mic could be around 149 DKK, roughly €19.93 / $23.12, and that might already improve the sound if placed better. A more serious mic around 700 DKK, roughly €93.65 / $108.61, would probably sound better, especially if it is more directional and has some kind of windscreen or filter.

But even then, distance still matters.

If the mic stays on the camera, it is still an arm’s length away. A better mic pointed at me would help, but it will not magically behave like a proper close microphone near my mouth.

So this is where I am right now:

I have an expensive Canon HF G70 that I regret buying for normal recording.
I do not like letting expensive hardware sit unused.
As a webcam, the video side actually makes sense.
It has proper camcorder image quality, face tracking / face detection autofocus, and should keep my face in focus while I stream.
USB-C gives me video, but not proper mic audio in my setup.
The workaround is routing the camera’s headphone output into the Yamaha mixer.
The Yamaha sends the audio to the PC over USB.
The audio may sound roomy, but it may be good enough for now.

And honestly, that is very much my kind of setup.

Not clean.
Not perfect.
Not “professional studio polished.”

Just a gamer trying to make the hardware he already owns actually do something useful.

If it was not around 4 in the morning and I did not have to be up again in a few hours, I probably would have tested it properly right now with local recordings, game sound, voice testing, OBS levels, and all the usual “just one more setting” nonsense.

But I also know myself.

That is exactly how you go from “I will just test this for 10 minutes” to “why is the sun coming up and why am I still adjusting audio filters?”

So the real test will probably be in the next episode.

If it works, then my Canon HF G70 becomes my absurdly expensive webcam.

If it does not, then I am back in the endless technical swamp of Linux streaming, audio routing, camera workarounds, mixer settings, and asking myself why I keep doing this to my own brain.

But for now, the plan is simple:

Use the Canon for video.
Use the face tracking so my face stays in focus.
Use the Yamaha mixer for audio.
Accept that the built-in mic may sound a little roomy.
Avoid buying another mic unless I really have to.
And keep streaming.

Because at the end of the day, the setup does not have to be perfect.

It just has to work well enough that I can play games, talk, and not sound like I am broadcasting from the bottom of the USG Ishimura’s ventilation system.

I started a new run of the original Dead Space from 2008, playing the physical disc version I picked up second-hand for 5 Danish kroner. That is roughly €0.67 or $0.78.

So yes, less than one euro for one of the best sci-fi horror games ever made.

I have completed Dead Space somewhere around 10 times already across different platforms and versions, so this is not really a blind run or a “can I beat it?” run. I already know this ship. I already know the vents. I already know the mistake of shooting the body instead of the limbs. I already know the Ishimura does not welcome anyone politely.

This run is mostly for two reasons:

First, I want to test that my physical disc copy actually works properly.

Second, I want to mark the game as completed in my CLZ collection. I am trying to actually go through the games I own instead of just letting them sit there forever as another unfinished pile in the backlog abyss.

And honestly, Dead Space is one of those games that deserves to be completed again.

The episode starts with Nicole’s message to Isaac. It is the perfect opening for this kind of game: personal, broken, and already full of dread. She is sorry, everything is falling apart, and Isaac is watching the message again and again because he clearly still cares about her. Then the Kellion arrives at the USG Ishimura, and right away the game starts building that heavy atmosphere.

The Ishimura is just sitting there dark.

No proper running lights.
No response.
No normal communications.
A massive planet-cracker ship that should have around a thousand people on board, but nobody is answering.

That is classic Dead Space. It does not need to scream at you immediately. It just shows you a dead ship and lets your brain do the rest.

Then the docking goes wrong. The guidance system is damaged, the Kellion gets dragged in, they hit the Ishimura, and suddenly this “routine repair job” is already turning into survival. The port booster is gone, comms are down, autopilot is gone, and the crew is stuck with a ship that is clearly not just having technical issues.

Once Isaac and the others get inside, the Ishimura feels wrong instantly.

The ship’s welcome system still talks like everything is normal, explaining the Ishimura’s history and its planet-cracking record, while the actual ship is empty, damaged, and clearly falling apart. That contrast is one of the things I love about the original game. The corporate voice keeps pretending everything is fine while the walls are basically breathing death.

Then the quarantine hits.

The first real Necromorph encounter still works even after all these years. You are not a soldier. Isaac is an engineer. The game does not hand you a normal shooter power fantasy. It teaches you very quickly that panic-shooting the body is a waste. You cut off limbs. You dismember them. That was the rule in 2008, and it is still the rule now.

The stream also had the usual slightly cursed subtitle/transcript moment where “shoot the limbs” became “shoot the nips,” which is very much not the correct tactical advice, but it did make me laugh. The actual rule is simple: cut them apart.

Most of this first episode is the opening Ishimura setup and the tram repair section. Isaac has to get the tram system working again while Hammond and Kendra argue, panic, and try to keep the mission from collapsing completely. The game sends you after the data board, introduces stasis, shows the vents as the enemy’s highway system, and keeps reminding you that the crew is gone but not really gone.

The tram repair section is still a good early-game design. It teaches movement, map use, stasis, limb damage, locked doors, elevators, maintenance rooms, and how the Ishimura works as a connected space. It is not just random corridors. It feels like a real industrial ship where every system is half-broken and everything is trying to kill you.

After the tram comes back online, the game gives you one of those classic horror moments: you think maybe things are stabilizing, then the Kellion gets destroyed. The shuttle was the way off the ship, and then it is gone. That changes the entire situation.

At that point, it is not “repair the ship and leave.”

It is “you are trapped here.”

Then the episode moves into the medical deck. The captain, Benjamin Mathius, is listed as deceased, and Isaac has to get his rig so Kendra can access the locked command systems. That section pushes the horror more into body horror and madness. Medical logs talk about the colony, the Marker, Unitology, hallucinations, depression, insomnia, violence, paranoia, and people transforming into something else.

That is where Dead Space becomes more than just “monsters in space.”

It is not only the Necromorphs. It is the entire collapse around them. Religion, science, corporate greed, mining, the Marker, the colony, the ship, the crew, the doctors, the captain, all of it gets tangled together. The Ishimura is not just infected physically. It is mentally and spiritually rotten by the time Isaac gets there.

The episode also goes through the thermite and shock pad objective, zero-g sections, kinesis, medical storage, and the morgue. You get more logs, more screams, more signs that Nicole was there, and more evidence that whatever happened started on the colony after they found the Marker.

By the end of the episode, Isaac gets the captain’s rig codes, the executive lockdown is lifted, and Hammond finds out the bigger problem: the ship’s engines are offline and the Ishimura’s orbit is decaying.

So the first part ends with the game basically saying:

Congratulations. You survived the introduction.

Now the ship itself is dying.

That is why I still respect Dead Space so much. Even after completing it many times, the pacing still works. The opening gives you the personal hook with Nicole, the mystery of the Ishimura, the first Necromorph attack, the repair objective, the loss of the escape shuttle, the medical horror, the Marker hints, and then the bigger ship-wide crisis.

It is a very clean first act.

And playing it from the disc version makes it feel even better to me. No modern live-service nonsense. No battle pass. No giant storefront shoved in my face. Just a physical game, installed and played because I own the copy and wanted to see if it still works.

That is the kind of old-school PC gaming I still care about.

A 5 kr disc.
A broken mining ship.
An engineer with bad luck.
A dead crew crawling through the vents.
And one more run through the Ishimura so I can mark the game completed in CLZ properly.

I already know what waits in the dark.

But the Ishimura still deserves the respect of being finished again.

Horse & Pony: Riding School — an educational horse game that Linux did not want to forgive

I streamed more of Horse & Pony: Riding School, and I think I am stopping here for now.

Streams:

This game is originally part of the Swedish Häst & Ponny series. The original title is Häst & Ponny: Ridskolan, released around 2007, developed by Upside Studios AB and published by PAN Vision. It is not really a normal arcade-style horse game. It is closer to an educational riding-school game made for people who want to learn about horses, horse care, and basic riding theory.

That is actually the strongest part of the game.

It feels less like “ride around and be cute” and more like a horse-theory test. In some parts it almost feels like taking a driving test, just with horses. The game asks you questions about horse care, riding, tack, stable work, and how things are supposed to be done. If you get too many answers wrong, you fail that section and have to try again. You also get horseshoes that work like lifelines/help points, so the game does try to support beginners instead of just punishing them.

If someone is new to horse riding, or young and dreaming about owning a horse, I can actually see the value in this game. It goes over a lot of basic information, and it even has a built-in wiki/encyclopedia-style section where you can read about horse-related topics and how things work.

As someone who is trained as a zookeeper and has taken care of horses before, I still got some of the questions wrong. But most of the time, when I slowed down and actually thought about it, I knew the answer.

One example is mounting a horse.

In real-world riding, you are normally taught to mount from the horse’s left side. That is the traditional “near side.” You put your left foot in the left stirrup and then swing your right leg over the horse. You also normally dismount to the left. Part of the reason is consistency: it is easier for both rider and horse when the same routine is used, especially for beginners and riding-school horses.

If you think about most riding videos, riding-school lessons, or basic horse-handling instruction, you usually see people mounting from the left. That is not random. It is standard beginner practice.

The mistake I made was answering too fast. I said you use the right leg when stepping onto the horse, but that is not correct in the normal beginner-school method. You use the left foot in the left stirrup, then swing the right leg over. I knew that. I just answered before I let my brain catch up.

And that is honestly what makes the game interesting. It does not just test whether you like horses. It tests whether you actually know the little practical details. Which side do you mount from? What do you do first? What equipment matters? How should you treat the horse? It is basic, but it is real basic knowledge.

So as an educational horse game, I respect it.

But as a Linux experience?

It is a mess.

I ran it through a Wine/Proton-style environment, and it was not stable for me. I do not know if the problem is missing old Windows components, DirectX behavior, old system calls, timing issues, file paths, codec problems, or just weak game code that Wine exposes more clearly. I cannot prove exactly what is wrong.

What I can say is that it does not behave well on my Linux setup.

Sometimes I had to go in and out of an area several times before a trigger worked. Sometimes the game crashed randomly. Sometimes I had to run around or jump around an area just to make something activate. Some horse interactions worked early on and then later stopped working properly. I tried messing with save files and other small fixes, but nothing really solved the core problem.

I got about 50% through the game, and that is where I am stopping.

Not because I think the game is worthless. Actually, I think the game has a decent idea behind it. But there is a point where Linux tinkering stops being fun and starts becoming mental damage.

I do not mind fixing old games. I use Linux. I am used to Wine, Proton, old DirectX issues, broken launchers, old installers, missing files, and weird compatibility problems. Sometimes getting an old game running is part of the fun.

But this one feels different.

This does not feel like a clean technical challenge. It feels like the game is fighting me every few minutes. It becomes less “let us preserve and play an old PC game” and more “how much frustration can one wolf take before he throws the saddle into the sun?”

So my conclusion is mixed.

As a horse-care/riding-school game: surprisingly good for beginners.
As a theory-test style educational game: actually interesting.
As someone with real animal-care background: it got enough real-world basics right that I had to respect it.
As a Linux/Wine game: unstable enough that I am done around halfway through.

If you are on Windows and you like horses, horse riding, or educational horse games, I could actually recommend giving it a try. Especially if you are a beginner or someone who wants a game that teaches more than just “press button to ride horse.”

But on Linux, at least in my case, it was rough.

I wanted to finish it, but sometimes you have to know when to stop before a broken old PC game turns into a full psychological endurance test.

So I am calling it here.

The horse won.

Linux did not.

My current physical PC game list — old games, Linux tinkering, and why this still matters to me

I have been rebuilding and cataloguing my old physical PC game collection, and this is basically my current game list as it stands right now.

The list is around 150 catalogued physical/boxed PC games, mostly old PC titles, with some Steam/Blizzard boxed releases mixed in. Most of them were found second-hand for very little money. A lot of them were in the 1–10 Danish kroner range, which is roughly up to about €1.34 / $1.55 per game. That is part of the whole point for me: old PC gaming does not have to be expensive if you are patient and willing to hunt through second-hand shops, charity shops, flea market shelves, and places like Kirppu here in Denmark.

This list still does not fully include the newer games a friend found for me, including Diablo II, Total War: Rome II, Crysis 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, I have the first one. Crysis 3 is a nice one because it was the only main Crysis game I was missing. The list already had Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and Crysis 2, so now that part of the series finally feels complete.

For me this is not just collecting plastic boxes.

I have played somewhere around 8,000 games in my lifetime for sure. Maybe more, but 8,000 is the number I can say without feeling like I am exaggerating. I have been gaming for most of my life, and when I look at this list, it is not just a shelf of old discs. It is basically a map of my own gaming history.

There is a lot of RTS history in the list: Age of Empires, Age of Empires III, Command & Conquer, Red Alert 2, Empire Earth, StarCraft, Warcraft III, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Sins of a Solar Empire, Caesar IV, Lords of EverQuest, and more.

Age of Empires 1 is still one of the big emotional ones for me. I grew up with that game. I can still hear the monks trying to convert units in my head almost as clearly as if I had the game running right now. AoE2 may be the more popular and better-supported game today, and I fully respect that, but AoE1 has that raw nostalgic feeling for me. It takes me back in a way very few games can.

Then there is Black & White and Black & White 2. Those are exactly the kind of games that make physical collecting feel important. Black & White is one of those strange old Lionhead-era games that does not really have a modern replacement. It was weird, ambitious, messy, creative, and very much from a time when PC games were allowed to be strange. I paid more for Black & White 1 than I normally would, because that game is just harder to get your hands on now.

The shooter side of the list is also very much my era: Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty, World at War, Black Ops, Black Ops II, Far Cry, Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Crysis, Crysis 2, Crysis Warhead, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Operation Flashpoint, STALKER, Soldier of Fortune, Sniper Elite, and others.

That old PC shooter period has a very different feeling from modern live-service shooters. A lot of those games were not trying to sell me a battle pass every five minutes. They were games first. Some were rough, some were broken, some were janky, but they usually felt like products made to be played, not engagement systems made to keep me logged in.

Counter-Strike is also in the collection, and that one is personal. I spent around 24 years with Counter-Strike in one form or another. From the old days to Source, CS:GO, and then CS2. I am not going to pretend CS2 did not damage that connection for me. CS:GO was already slipping, but CS2 was the point where the magic finally felt dead. Still, having physical Counter-Strike boxes means something. That is history, even if the modern direction pushed me away.

Dead Space is another one that stands out. Dead Space 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games. That kind of atmosphere, sound design, tension, and sci-fi horror is the sort of thing I still respect. Seeing Dead Space on the shelf feels right. That game earned its place.

There is also a whole simulator/management side: The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3, The Sims 4, SimCity, SimCity Societies, SimLife, Zoo Tycoon 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002, Theme Park World, Transport Giant, Train Empire, Euro Truck Simulator 2, and more.

That is another thing I miss about older PC gaming. PC used to be full of these slower, stranger, more specific games. Not everything had to be cinematic. Not everything had to be a massive open-world map. Some games were just about building, managing, experimenting, failing, and learning the systems.

And then there are the oddities and lost things: No One Lives Forever 2, Battle Realms, Space Rangers 2, Rayman 3, LEGOLAND, Monsters Inc. Scare Island, Shrek 2, Horse & Pony: Riding School, and a lot of other titles that are not exactly modern Steam front-page material.

That is what makes the list fun to me.

It is not just “the best games ever made.”

It is a real old PC collection. Good games, broken games, weird games, childhood games, forgotten games, damaged discs, missing manuals, cracked cases, and titles that probably need ten different fixes to run properly today.

And as a Linux user, that part does not scare me.

Some of these games will need Wine, Proton, Lutris, Bottles, old DirectX files, dgVoodoo, patches, no-CD fixes, community fixes, virtual machines, or just patience. But honestly, that is part of the appeal. Getting an old game running on Linux sometimes feels more rewarding than installing a modern game that still wants three launchers, online accounts, telemetry, and a 100 GB patch before it even respects my time.

That is where I am mentally with gaming right now.

I am not done with gaming. I still love games. I have played too many games and spent too much of my life with this hobby to pretend otherwise.

But I am tired of modern gaming as an industry.

I am tired of games being treated like services instead of products. I am tired of launchers inside launchers. I am tired of online requirements in games that should not need them. I am tired of battle passes, FOMO, microtransactions, unfinished releases, server shutdowns, and digital “ownership” that often feels more like temporary permission.

Old physical PC games are not perfect. They can be scratched. They can be incomplete. Some DRM is dead. Some installers are annoying. Some games are a fight to run.

But the disc is there.

The box is there.

The manual is sometimes there.

The history is there.

And for me, that feels more real than a lot of modern gaming does now.

This collection is partly nostalgia, partly preservation, partly Linux tinkering, and partly just me going back to what made me love PC gaming in the first place.

Not everything old is better.

Not everything new is bad.

But when I look at this game list, I see something modern gaming often lacks now: personality, physical history, and the feeling that a game was allowed to simply be a game.

Mint virgin.