Camera For Chat/vids? Options

[Todd Simpson]

As some of you know from last weekend, my trusty HD video camera just died outright and I've been using my built in web cam for vid chat. I must say I'd forgotten how crap built in web cams can be. For those of you using a built in or other web cam, I'm sure you've noticed that your frame rates are often too slow to capture the movement of your fingers even with good lighting and that your video tends to be a bit grainy/noisey. I've been really frustrated with the quality since switching back and am going to buy another handycam with firewire to replace the one that died.

Having a remote control to be able to zoom in is just too crucial to go without for vid chat lessons IMHO The bad news for me is that new cameras mostly don't come with firewire anymore and many newer vid cams simply don't work as web cams especially on Macontosh OS X.

I thought this would be much more common than it is actually. Most people it seems simply use either a web cam or a built in cam for video. I was curious to find if anyone else is using either a Digital Still camera (dslr etc.) or Digital Video (handycam) camera for their videos/streaming?

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[Socky42]

Well, if you have a Canon DSLR, you can use EOS Utility to show a remote view on your Mac. Then stream just that window. But you have to deal with the extra lag from the video going through an additional program.

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[Mertay]

hey Todd, until you buy a new cam. did you try tweaking the software of the webcam? when I select the autolight (can be something similar on your webcam) as you said its terrible but once disabled its much better, sure its no hd camera quality and speed but with a little distance hands seemed understandable while doing my tests.

Here's something I found on youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by51w0Y3W4E

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[Todd Simpson]

I actually did try that and got a nice canon DSLR just for it. I ended up returning it as the cam didn't have a remote control for zooming in Also, utility was the only thing that could see the preview. I couldn't get any streaming apps to see it. So I had to use a screen capture utility as the input which increased the lag so much that audio and vid didn't synch.

So that was the end of that. But if they put a wireless remote on one, and let the preview utility feed quicktime apps/streaming directly, I'd definitely try it again

Todd

Well, if you have a Canon DSLR, you can use EOS Utility to show a remote view on your Mac. Then stream just that window. But you have to deal with the extra lag from the video going through an additional program.

The built in web cam doesn't have a ton of tweaks but the software I used (MANYCAM) does have wads of tweaks so I have tried that but sadly, no matter what it's a crap web cam with a low frame rate and low quality glass/lense. Just not up to the quality standard of a standalone handy cam with a zeiss lense and optical zoom

I"ve got the web cam set as good as I can make it, just not up to snuff when compared to what I"m used to. I've gotten really spoiled using a digital video camera as a web cam.

Todd

hey Todd, until you buy a new cam. did you try tweaking the software of the webcam? when I select the autolight (can be something similar on your webcam) as you said its terrible but once disabled its much better, sure its no hd camera quality and speed but with a little distance hands seemed understandable while doing my tests.

Here's something I found on youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by51w0Y3W4E

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

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