OT Question for Skype users about cameras

[Jeff Leites]

I guess I confused Skype's High Quality with High Definition.

I bought a Kodak 3MP HD camera today, that was on sale at Frys for only $40. I'm going to return it on Monday due to it's mechanical flimsiness. The USB cord hanging out the back creates enough pull on the camera's ball joint mount to gradually reorient the lens towards the ceiling, and the little plate on the bottom that covers the ball joint just fell off.

So I'm wondering, just how good of a camera do I really need? I think Skype's best rez is 640/480 so why are they pushing s 2MP Logitech camera?

[UstadKhanAli]

It doesn't sound like you need much of a camera at all, particularly when you consider that a lot of cellphones have cameras that would fit Skype's resolution. And for $40, unfortunately, a lot of cameras would probably feel flimsy. To me, a lot of cameras costing five times that feel flimsy.

[spokenward]

The Logitech and the Creative cams seem to have the best reviews on Newegg and Amazon. That Kodak in the Fry's ad is a bottom-feeding licensed product. Kodak can be really stupid sometimes. (And not everything in the Fry's ad is a really sharp price. The Creative notebook cam in the ad seems like a fair price - but the clip is too small for a regular screen.)

 

A misguided license like that cam can drive people away from interesting Kodak products like the zi8 flash memory camcorder.

[the stranger]

I have a logitech and be warned that it is prone to causing severe system crashes when combined with my belkin wireless adapter. For whatever reason, those two don't play well together.

 

Now I'm not sure if this is a logitech or a belkin issue, but if the belkin is already plugged in and you plug in the logitech webcam, it locks up XP so hard the task manager doesn't work.

 

Obviously, it some sort of USB conflict. It's a real pain in the ass, though.

 

And Logitech also tries to get you to install these various software items which you don't need, but they tell you that you do.

 

The webcam works fine (aside from some video smear due to the fact it's a 1.2 mp cheapo) once you get it to play nice with your system.

 

I doubt I'll buy another logitech, though. Their software usually sucks and their drivers don't play well on my system.

[the stranger]

P.S. I will add that even with my complaints, I have managed to do a lot with it. It has served me well, I'm just ready to get something a little better.

 

I did my first live streaming on the web last night and I'm ready to take my video to the next level. I was just doing a test, but one of my viewers was giving me some good feedback on how my audio and video quality was. I got positive feedback on the audio quality (you would hope I could get this one right), and he said my video was good, except for the smear which I told him was the low quality camera.

[spokenward]

I think the anecdotal experiences like the stranger's make me glad that I am just using my netbook for video and a Polycom speakerphone on XP.

 

These devices are "driverless"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_USB_video_class_devices

 

Any "Vista" logo indicates that the device is driverless.

[the stranger]

Well, I just spent the last few hours researching cameras and if you have the system, the HD offerings look very nice. And don't even try one without a dual core and at least 3gig of ram (from what I read).

 

I'm just needing an improvement over what I have and I still haven't really pinned it down, but the lower end Microsoft devices don't look bad.

 

The VX-7000 would appear to give me better quality than what I have now, but would still run fine on my system. I looked at a lot of MS webcams since I'm thinking this might solve that conflict issue.

 

I also spent a lot of time researching video capture devices (internal and external). It appears that I could use my HandyCam with it's s-video/ect with the right capture device and this should theoretically give me better video quality than my webcam.

This type of setup[ isn't exactly cut and dry, though. But, I do think I can get it to work.

 

My main questions revolve around whether I would be better with an external converter of the USB 2.0 variety, or if I would be better to get a pci card, or should I just replace my existing video card with one that can capture from s-video.

 

Any tips/ideas about this would be greatly appreciated. I really want to improve my video quality, but I want to do it in a way that is the most efficient (rather than a hodpodge of hillbilly engineering). I'm somewhat of a noob when it comes to video cards/etc.

 

Is just replacing my existing video card with one that has s-video/composite capture the best idea? (And do they make them that way, or are video capture cards typically a separate card?)

[the stranger]

After more research, I've decided the best bet would be to just get an appropriate capture device that will provide quality video input and then get a garden variety video mixer, so I can just use whatever cameras I can get my hands on. Plus, I would then be able to pan video, do fades, etc...

[uitar9]

I've got the MS VX-3000. Just using it to chat with my son who is in Europe right now. Don't use it much but once it's set up has been faultless.