On Tue, 2003-12-30 at 13:15, Malcolm Greene wrote:
> I'm curious how well webcam technology works "in real life". I would
> like to webcam with various customers all of whom have very fast
> connections (T1 or faster). My DSL connection is 128K up/512K down.
For full speed you'll need a better upwidth. Yes I made that word up ;)
> I visited my local Compusa and Logitech seems to be the brand of choice.
>
> Any tips on what brand and/or model webcam makes sense for lowcost business use?
I have 3 here: arcade.havokmon.com
These three links
http://arcade.havokmon.com:8001
http://arcade.havokmon.com:8002
http://arcade.havokmon.com:8003
Are supposed to stream (Netscape/Mozilla), but all 3 take up too much
bandwidth on the USB bus - and it's acting funky at the moment. Never
took time to get it working right. Maybe #3 isn't plugged in at the
moment.. (been moving stuff around..)
All Quickcam Pro 3000's from Ebay for about $35 each.
> >From experience - what's a "good" resolution (size and colors) to run at? Can I really expect 30 frames per second of video?
30FPS would be like 320x200 16bpp at most.
> What about audio - do webcams come with microphones or should I purchase a seperate microphone or headset? How decent is the audio quality?
The QC3000's have decent Audio. Played with it once with
www.inetcam.com software.
> Should I use Yahoo/MSN or a 3rd party fee based service as a "bridge"
> to connect with my clients or are there better services or can I just
> connect directly via TCP/IP?
You can connect directly with NetMeeting/GnomeMeeting - but that's not
where my experience lies.. I pretty much just do view only stuff.
> Is there a minimum CPU/memory or OS that all participants should have
> in place, i.e. something along the lines of 1G/256M/XP?
That should be fine. You need a decent CPU, no Celerons.
> Logitech has a new model webcam that claims to track your movement. Is
> this valuable or is it more a high tech gimmick.
I've been using 'motion' on Linux for Years. It's a simple program, and
works fine for the security stuff I built here.
> Or ... is the technology "just not there yet"?
It's there ;)
> Any advice or first hand experience appreciated.
I've been playing with webcams for years, but not in a "NetMeeting" sort
of capacity. Netmeeting, though, I believe is what you're looking for.
Rick
> Malcolm
>
[excessive quoting removed by server]
©2003 Rick Romero |
