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Webcams aren't good enough

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Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#531

Post by lloeki »

masklinn wrote: post #175
davidmurdoch wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bump would go towards the keyboard, I'd think.

There's very little clearance in that direction, and the clearance which there is is necessary for the screen / lens not to touch the keyboard / case and get scratched. So if you have a bump on the inner side, you also need to have a notch in the topcase. And unless you move the webcam something weird (an edge or below the screen), you need to have that notch through or below right below trackpad, which is less than…

> move the webcam something weird (an edge

Would it be so weird? I mean: top corner/edge is less of a problem than bottom (nostril+big hands)

Assymertic? let's go nuts: two webcams, one on each side... suddenly, no notch, double the amount of light, stereoscopic vision. Combine that with some software processing and probably two very cheap sensors could produce decent results without bumping the price as a thin and tiny high quality sensor would.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#532

Post by raesene9 »

goosedragons wrote: post #253
andrepew wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who have video calls throughout the day constantly. I don't want to have to mess around setting up my phone on a stand and getting it connected every time I need to do a meeting.

Buy an actual camera and use that instead? Basically every camera that has video out is pretty easy to get working as a webcam these days.

I would sound a slight note of caution there, in that AFAIK not every camera has clean HDMI out and there can be challenges about powering cameras for longer periods of time (if needed).

It is a good option though if you need higher quality. I'm using a Sony ZV-1 and it's worked out pretty well.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#534

Post by ako »

atombender wrote: post #353
dharma1 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect mobile phone cameras to kill webcams. All the innovation happens there and when people already have something getting closer to dSLR quality each year, why invest in a specialised webcam? Apple just needs to bake webcam sharing/remote camera control into iOS and come up with a nice attachment for the phone that works with MacBooks and displays so you don’t have to look at the camera at a weird angle. Maybe s…

I frequently use my phone while in a meeting. I can't see how using your phone as a webcam would be productive. Using a phone, like an old iPhone model you have upgraded from, would be neat, though. But there are a bunch of apps that let you do this today, I believe.

I would expect most people to be more productive during a meeting if they can't use their phone at the same time...

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#535

Post by wernerb »

Even if i hook up a great camera, chrome/Firefox's webrtc will squeeze my bitrate and lower res to 720p. There is no way from the client to upgrade basic quality for Meet/Teams/Zoom web apps.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#536

Post by ChrisRR »

rlei wrote: post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

> that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S

Would that be such a bad thing? Arguably there haven't been many technological leaps in the years since and if it weren't for planned obsolescence the 4S would still be a totally fine phone

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#537

Post by Beltalowda »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #234
Beltalowda wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Lumina work on Linux? I can't really find anything about it (there is also a Lumina Desktop Environment for Linux it seems), and while it says "Lumina is compatible with Windows and Macintosh machine" this can mean "we don't directly support Linux, but it should work" (like Logitech), or it can mean "we have specialized drivers/software that only work on Windows and macOS".

If your software works only on Windows, you've written non-portable software. Likely, you have all your core logic mixed up with Windowsy UI and now you're stuck there. If it works on Windows and Mac, you've written portable software but just can't be bothered to support Linux. At a guess the problem is that you want to ship binaries only and don't want to deal with doing all the packaging and testing for Linux. For…

My thinking was that it might use some platform-specific APIs for that AI stuff it mentions, or maybe it requires some non-standard extensions because of it. Whether that's a good design or not is kinda besides the point here.

I might be interested in this camera, and asking support will likely only generate "we only support Windows and macOS" without any nuance, so I figured I'd ask here. Better ask before spending $200.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#538

Post by herbst »

m348e912 wrote: post #437
rlei wrote: post #171

I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…

Hijacking top comment to mention that Apple is planning to let you use an iPhone as a webcam soon. https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/6/23156834/apple-iphone-webc...

I just had to check the date. It says really 2022. Are you actually telling me that you can't use the iPhone as Webcam right now?

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#539

Post by herbst »

I am using my phone and Ip Webcam so I can compress the stream directly from my phone and use the compressed stream on my computer as native webcam input via vl4c (or whatever the kernel module is called)

This way I get high quality and high frame rate in a manageable format and my computer can focus on streaming, while my phone does what it was (also) built for, providing a quality video feed.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#540

Post by Shorel »

googlryas wrote: post #116
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

Why does this make you so angry? Laptops rarely have decent cams, because phones are afforded a greater thickness than the typical location of a laptop camera(above the screen). The webcam in my macbook has about 1/8" to work with, whereas my phone camera has almost 1/3"

External cameras like the Logitech 920 tested in the article have more than enough thickness to have better optics and better electronics than the cameras in phones.

They just don't.

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