A camera control apparatus provides an end user with environment to easily remote-control a video camera via a general network such as the Internet. When the camera control apparatus receives a file-transfer request described in the format of the network from an external device connected to the apparatus, it handles the characters in a character string of a file name of the request as a camera-control characters. As a result, if the character string includes a description corresponding to the format for camera control, the camera control apparatus controls the camera in accordance with the description to perform image sensing, and transfers the obtained video image as the content of an image file requested by the external device as the file-transfer request originator.