Webcams aren't good enough • Hacker News Board

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#571

Post by Rediscover » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #254

jacquesm wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. Interesting: you could put the battery in the screen making it quite a bit thicker, and then have the base thinner, that would change the balance though and it might not be as stable when sitting open on a desk. It'd be great to have a 20 hour life laptop though.

> that would change the balance though and it might not be as stable when sitting open on a desk Iirc that was one of the SB’s issues which the hinge had to manage. And things would probably be worse for a lid filled with battery.

The OLPC XO1 laptop has the screen and computer in one half of the clamshell, with its battery and keyboard in the other.

Its balance is quite good.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#572

Post by sagarm » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #62

ramraj07 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how much time you spend on zoom calls but if both sides have genuinely good connections and you have a good camera and lighting, you can get fairly high def video across. And it makes a big difference, especially if you’re 1-1 and want to make a proper connection and read their expression.

In a small call with 2-4 participants, sure. But a work meeting with 6 people and a presentation? Every participant's video will be shrunk to the size of a postage stamp.

Big meetings are the most worthless meetings anyway. It's 1:1s or three person meetings I find most productive, and where I care more about video quality.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#573

Post by wyager » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #465

wyager wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy solution; use Fujifilm. We both agree they don't overheat. Incidentally, I think they are also much better cameras for most use cases.

But he said anything Fuji won't work.

Which comment are you referring to? I can't find it. Whoever it is is wrong though; fuji stuff works better than anything else I've tried, except for dedicated cine cameras.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#574

Post by aksss » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #207

feet wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay? So change it? Are the gods of thin devices stopping engineers from doing something different?

i’d be first in line for thicker everything, but there is a lot more value in thickening the body of a laptop than the screen.

Gross.. no.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#575

Post by httpsterio » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

aksss wrote: post #565

underlines wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here: Used my Sony A7III with USB and their software as an excellent webcam and since I bought the new Sony A7IV, all my client always ask in video calls, what Webcam that is. At my new employer I had several coworkers asking me how the heck I did the insane background blur. (They didn't know it was a mirrorless) If you have an old DSLR or a modern camera, you can use a 20USD Chinese HDMI Capture stick and get t…

Old DSLR - I think there’s an issue with latency that you’ll find on many older DSLRs - converting out to HDMI in real-time - that makes them impractical for use as webcams. Make sure you record yourself in a test conference first and verify.

I dunno what you count as old but my 8 year old Sony A6000 has basically no latency at all. You just have to look up some reviews beforehand and make sure that the camera you're looking at supports a clean HDMI output, combined with a decent capture card you can get rather great image quality for a reasonable price.

My Sony A6000 with a 35mm f3.5 lens was 350 euros second hand. Elgato capture card was 99 euros, a mini-hdmi to hdmi cable 8 euros and a dummy battery wall charger was 25 euros. All in all I get a 60 fps 1080p crispy image with great bokeh for under 500 euros.

There's always the Opal C1 that comes at around 300 dollars but imo the image is pretty terrible in comparison.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#576

Post by dang » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

feet wrote: post #456

dang wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please review the site guidelines and stick to them when posting here? You've unfortunately been breaking them quite a bit, such as with snark, flamebait, and ideological battle. What we're hoping for on this site is curious conversation that remains thoughtful across differences. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we…

Can we add a site guideline against absurd claims that have no basis in reality?

Thats a good question. The answer is no, for two reasons:

(1) there's no clear way to distinguish "absurd claims that have no basis in reality" from statements that are simply false, and

(2) there's no clear way to distinguish false statements from true ones. We don't have a truth meter.

In the absence of clear criteria, what would we do? Decide what is true ourselves? Not possible—we're ludicrously unqualified, and the community would never support it. Also, I shudder to think of the karma one would incur.

There are other factors too. The mandate of HN is intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Curiosity needs the freedom to get things wrong sometimes. Finding the truth involves probing the edges.

Another factor is community. It would not serve community to ban people, or kill posts, for being wrong. A true community allows people to be wrong—belonging is about relatedness, not correctness—and a robust community would withstand wrongness the way a robust immune system withstands pathogens. I'm not saying that HN is either a true community or a robust community, yet, but that is the aspiration.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#577

Post by thewebcount » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #224

thewebcount wrote: post #199

What is going on in the video of the C920 exposure test? It’s not clear if he’s changing lighting, changing camera settings, or letting the driver change some internal settings, but the view out the window is getting less and less overexposed while his face remains exactly as overexposed at each step. It’s like it’s exposing different parts of the frame differently and all poorly. WTF?

He is quite clear: he is changing the lights in the room.

OK, fair enough. Point being that the exposure of his face never changes, but the exposure of other things in the frame does. That’s pretty bizarre, especially given that his face is overexposed.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#578

Post by IshKebab » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #482

IshKebab wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I kind of agree. We're years away from when most people's videoconferencing quality is close to C920 quality. Audio is much more important. The C920's is pretty crap. You can easily buy better mics, but unfortunately most people just don't care about the quality of their own output. I think part of the problem is that it's quite difficult to know your audio/video sounds/looks crap to other people. For most users…

Audio is very important, but I have no idea what would make a good microphone, everyone seems to have a different opinion on what constitutes ‘great’.

You can just record yourself in Audacity. We're not talking recording studio grade here. It's pretty obvious what is good and what isn't.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#579

Post by IshKebab » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

imhoguy wrote: post #507

IshKebab wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I kind of agree. We're years away from when most people's videoconferencing quality is close to C920 quality. Audio is much more important. The C920's is pretty crap. You can easily buy better mics, but unfortunately most people just don't care about the quality of their own output. I think part of the problem is that it's quite difficult to know your audio/video sounds/looks crap to other people. For most users…

Zoom is the test of connection itself. The way it handles choppy link with slowdown then speedup technique to mask the issues, balances audio over video priority etc, just amazes me. One of the best videoconf software I used since 1990s which works in really shitty conditions (remote LTE, HSDPA).

Yeah I agree the sped up audio technique is clever. But I don't know what you mean by "Zoom is the test of connection itself".

The only indication it gives you that people can't hear you is a "Your internet connection is unstable" warning and that doesn't really tell you much.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#580

Post by bronco21016 » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

aksss wrote: post #567

bronco21016 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree with you on audio. I’m not entirely certain it’s solvable without cultural norms changing. Even the absolute best noise reduction systems cannot work in every environment and echo cancellation always has enough delay to cause people to “step” on each other. It’s just physics and propagation of sound waves. At a minimum, normalizing the use of in/on ear audio needs to become the norm. Echo cancellatio…

> cultural norms changing Like what? Greater acceptance of sirens, roosters, kids, dogs, and motorbikes in background while people talking?

Using earbuds or earphones.

I suppose my comment does seem like it’s talking about background noise. My major issue is echo cancellation. Background noise is a factor that really messes with echo cancellation but, if everyone is using on/in ear audio then it becomes less of a factor.