Is there a way to use any video camera as a webcam?

You can use any video camera – an old camcorder, for example – as a webcam if you have a video capture board and software. However, you can pick up a USB webcam for less than 50 bucks, which is less expensive than most vidcap boards, so it’s kinda not worth it unless you want the board for something else.

How would I know if I’ve a video capture board?

@Quagmire , you’d know because most computers don’t come with them, unless you bought a media center computer that’s designed for an entertainment system. Here are some examples:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=video+capture+cards

These things are less expensive than when I last looked, although the ones that support ATSC digital TV are a bit more expensive.

It depends on your webcam and vid card: I can use my old Sony Digital 8 camcorder as a webcam just fine: I just plug it into the PC’s firewire port. XP and Vista have drivers for most mainstream brands (Sony, Panasonic and Canon for example) and XP recognizes the vidcam instantly as a DV camcorder. Windows Live Messenger accepts it as a webcam in the “audio and video settings” menu.

My Sony Avchd camcorder, on the other hand, doesn’t have a F/Wire port and my vidcard doesn’t have an HDMI-in port so I could only plug the vidcam into the USB port and windows doesn’t recognize it as a camcorder but as a computer hard drive.

@Jack_Haas, interesting. So I want to look to see if any of my digital cameras have a firewire connector?

That’s right. I have just tried my old, non HDD-based vidcam with a USB cable and it doesn’t work either. So it’s either Firewire or a capture card with video inputs.

Maybe one of your vidcams even came with a Firewire cable (my old Sony had one in the box when I bought it in 2003/2004) and you have one lying around somewhere.