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Webcams aren't good enough

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Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#51

Post by lucb1e »

myself248 wrote: post #22
lucb1e wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full ack on that last part. I got a new laptop from my employer a few months ago and the angle is so wide, I have trouble not having something like a drying rack or other unprofessional stuff in the background. It's still on my to-do list to look for a way to crop the image, and manual quality control would also be a welcome feature. That's not to say that I don't see the use-case for good quality. The "360p ought to…

> It's still on my to-do list to look for a way to crop the image, and manual quality control would also be a welcome feature. OBS with virtual camera. Add the camera as a source, scale and crop to your heart's content, click 'start virtual camera', then launch your videoconferencing software and choose the virtual camera.

Thanks! I already glanced at my options and this one seemed like overkill, but yeah it does sound like the go-to solution that everyone uses. Will be installing this some time soon, thanks for confirming this is the way to go :) (Also to the sibling comment)

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#52

Post by dheera »

For a REALLY good webcam just get a Pi Zero (v1), Pi HQ camera, a good C-mount lens, and flash this firmware: https://piwebcam.github.io/ which makes the Pi Zero appear as a regular USB webcam when plugged in, and also gives you a telnet thing to control camera parameters.

It's particularly nice because it doesn't mount any filesystems in RW mode, so you can just plug and unplug it as needed.

There are also some enclosures you can 3D print for this combination.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#53

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

This is a symptom of the race to the bottom in the digital camera industry. Most webcams are built around low cost modules running firmware developed by an OEM who made it good enough to ship and nothing more. They don't have any incentive to improve the features beyond banner specs and their buyers have little influence.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#54

Post by OJFord »

ketzo wrote: post #30
feet wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, because I never want to use my phone while in a meeting What the actual fuck are they thinking just use a decent cam in the laptop But yea, mic audio is always trash too

> just use a decent cam in the laptop I mean, phone cameras will literally always be better than laptop cameras. They're just a lot bigger. Edit: I should clarify this a little. From my understanding, camera quality is pretty overwhelmingly limited by lens quality. Better lenses require a thicker / deeper camera housing, which is hard to stuff into the top lid of a laptop. Phones are "always" (although that might not…

Why does that mean 'always'? i.e. rephrase GP you quoted: 'just use a lot bigger of a cam in the laptop'.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#55

Post by bufferoverflow »

pintxo wrote: post #15

As I had a Canon DSLR lying around during Covid, I have repurposed it to a webcam using Canons webcam driver: https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se... Image quality is top notch and the ability to Zoom in/out using the zoom lense is nice. You also get some nice background blur, depending on your used lens. For power there are modified "batteries" allowing to plug the camera into AC for power.

The problem is auto focus. Only modern mirrorless (and a few DSLRs) cameras have eye detection, and are actually good at keeping the focus.

Hopefully in a few years we will have cheap versions with excellent AF.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#56

Post by krono »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #49

Webcams feel like a deadend technology like self-rewinding cassettes on the eve of the release of the compact disc. The fidelity is garbage relative to something like a DSLR inside an Errol Box[1] and miles away from Starline style holography[2]. Eye contact is poor. Putting in a software filter to fix eye contact should be universal practice at this point. Hell even getting basic ring light next to your lens is univ…

Not entirely sure if this was meant as satire, but in case it wasn't: If I wanted to be judged on my physical looks or the quality in which those are presented to others over the wire, I would have been working in the film industry.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#57

Post by kkfx »

Mh, I wonder what article author think for webcam use cases... Personally I consider them useless 99% of the time in the sense that there is no need for video. When a video is needed 480p is enough, eventual dropped frames or artifacts does not matter much. If we really need hi resolution it's beyond webcam, something about YT, TV, ... not webcams anyway. If we need to share paper docs (LIM alike) it's better scan them before.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#58

Post by brunick »

vehemenz wrote: post #50

Camo is fine, but is there a third party app that I can just buy without a subscription?

Yup, droidcam obs - you'll need obs with the plugin, but its a one time fee

Its pretty nice in my opinion, have been using it the last 2 years without a flaw

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#59

Post by OJFord »

kyriakos wrote: post #36
lucb1e wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably know of this already, but in some software you can have speech to text live subtitles. I hate to advertise for Google but their Meet thing is the only one where I know this exists. The quality is slightly worse than their YouTube auto-subtitles (and even those are worse than my own hearing as a non-native listener), though perhaps that's because the input is also worse and it needs to be realtime? Not su…

Microsoft Teams has live transcription feature too unfortunately if you don't speak in a native or near native US or UK English accent the results are quite bad.

I'd remove 'UK English' from that at least - at my previous company we joked about how completely unusable it was: almost everything was transcribed as 'Samoa'; it also liked 'certainly Christmas' and other odd phrases that certainly weren't being said.
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