Would a video camera and a capture card be a better webcam?

[yoda313]

I was curious about this. Would using a video camera and a capture card make for a better web cam then those specifically designed for it?

Or does the quality have more to do with your bandwidth speed?

[BJ_M]

well sure it would have better quality

[yoda313]

Is that because its designed to do video very well?

But it would still be degraded over a slow connection right?

[redwudz]

Web cams are usually based on a inexpensive video cameras like this B&W one, less than $12US retail, about 1 1/4 inch square, with a lens about 1/8 inch dia., so you can imagine the quality is not too good.


A DV camcorder may cost a few dollars more ( ) and should give you a lot better quality. You will still have to compress the video, probably on the fly, to save on bandwidth. But at least you would have a decent source to work with. There is probably a bunch of 'DV to web converter' programs out there to make using a camcorder a little easier.

[thecoalman]

Or does the quality have more to do with your bandwidth speed?

Yes, and the person who's viewing it and using a machine that can encode it on the fly fast enough. I've sucessfully tested using my DV cam via firewire and windows Media Encoder and it was streaming at the full 30FPS at a very high quality. As in at or above what you would expect from VCD. I didn't try higher resolutions....

[Koleman]

My Sony TR-V33 MiniDV camera has USB streaming which with the Sony drivers works as a webcam aslong as it is attached via usb.

They do make som DV--> Webcam software, by a company with Orange in its name, it's been a while since I've been a cam whore (too much info I am sure)

[edDV]

It's Orange Micro Webcam DV
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/orange_micro_webcamdv_streaming_video_camcorder_software.htm


Basic rule for any video or audio compression:

The better quality the source, the better the quality of the compressed result.

an alternative way to say it is a high quality source can be compressed more than a low quality source.