# Distinguishing cameras with identical names

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/distinguishing-cameras-with-identical-names/139323>\
**Category:** Visualization\
**Tags:** videoio\
**Created:** [September 10, 2026, 6:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/distinguishing-cameras-with-identical-names/139323 "2026-09-10T06:41:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![grero](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/grero/32/109_2.png) [@grero](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/grero)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2026, 6:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/distinguishing-cameras-with-identical-names/139323/1 "2026-09-10T06:41:15Z")

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I have two identical cameras connected to two separate USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro. How do I tell VideoIO which of them to use?

```julia-auto
julia> get_camera_devices("avfoundation", "\"\"")
5-element Vector{String}:
 "Teslong Camera"
 "FaceTime HD Camera"
 "Teslong Camera"
 "iPhone (165)Q Camera"
 "Capture screen 0"

```

I want to stream the two Teslong Cameras to two different axes using GLMakie.

PS:  
I actually posted this as an issue on the VideoIO GitHub page: [Distinguishing cameras with identical names · Issue #465 · JuliaIO/VideoIO.jl · GitHub](https://github.com/JuliaIO/VideoIO.jl/issues/465) but in hindsight it is probably better asked here as a question.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![grero](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/grero/32/109_2.png) [@grero](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/grero)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2026, 7:32am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/distinguishing-cameras-with-identical-names/139323/2 "2026-09-10T07:32:58Z")

</div>

I could sort of get what I wanted by using this syntax, which I got from the FFMPEG documentation: [FFmpeg Devices Documentation](https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-devices.html#avfoundation)

```julia
cam1 = VideoIO.opencamera("0:0")
cam2 = VideoIO.opencamera("1:1")

```

This required at bit of trial and error since it wasn’t obvious how those numbers related to the list of detected camera devices in `VideoIO.CAMERA_DEVICES`.