On Thu, 2021-08-12 at 10:57 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > I've already been through several cameras but this is the first one > with acceptable sound. It's only for occasional use so I'm not that > keen on spending a lot. In fact I saw an article recently on webcams > which concluded that there are no good ones ... I'd be inclined to agree. But since I work in video production, my expectations of what a camera should do are probably even higher than theirs. They should be able to do 1080p30 without any struggles, not have hideous lag in normal room lighting, not require studio lighting levels, and really should manage 1080p60 (that's pixel height & frames per second). Sound should be in sync with the picture, colours should look normal, shouldn't require some crappy loading driver, etc, etc. Many years ago I bought a webcam on a whim, back in the win98se days. It was truly awful, and video-only. I never had any real use for it, and internet was too slow for it to be practical, even though it was really low resolution, so it spent most of its life stashed away. Recently, with teleconferencing being needed during the commie plague of 2019-2021, I did buy a cheapy for about $50 (Australian), and it's not too bad considering the price. https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/j-burrows-1080p-webcam-with-autofocus-jbcm200bk I don't think you'd be a serious vlogging-attention-whore with it, but was okay for a video telephone. It's picture quality was sharp, though colours look not-quite-right like many cameras where they haven't put an infrared stop filter in (it does easily see infrared remote control emissions), and no amount of fiddling produces natural colours. If you wear a finely-patterned shirt, the picture goes nuts with moire patterns. OBS studio thinks the camera has higher resolutions than 1920 by 1080, but I suspect they're upsampled fakery (2592 by 1944). It just has a tiny mike that hears through a tiny hole, and does sound rather like a cheap telephone from 30 years ago. Okay for someone on the desk near it, but it wouldn't be that great for a group conference call around a big table. USB info in obs-studio says the camera is actually a CM200 camera, and the audio side of it's USB info said Webcam Vitade AF Analog Stereo (but only has one mike, sending two identical channels of audio - that's not what stereo means), so appears to be a combination of two chipsets for audio and video. I'd bought a near identical one about a year ago, again on a whim, for a lot more ($129), that was okay, but had different odd behaviours. It boasted some extreme resolution, that resulted in a terrible frame rate. But if used at a more normal resolution (e.g. 1080p), gave a decent frame rate of 20 hertz (okay for teleconferencing, but not for real video). And as you change resolution you notice light sensitivity, noise, and colours, frame rates, all change. It too can see infrared, but doesn't seem as sensitive as the other. Sound quality is similar. And despite the sales blurb about stereo, only has one microphone. USB info in the obs-studio program says this is a Lihappe8 Webcam L0485A2SP, for both audio and video, so I'm guessing it's a one chip converter. https://www.jaycar.com.au/high-definition-5mp-web-camera/p/QC3207 They both use the same shell (that either sits on your desk, and falls over from the stiffness of the camera; or tries to clip onto the edge of your monitor, but has no spring clamp), and just have whatever generic camera module they deigned to fit in it at the time. And I think that's going to happen whenever you buy a webcam. One production run to the next, it's going to have different parts. The chipset info probably means something to people who play with the USB gear, but they're all new codes to me, it's a long time since I've dabbled in researching that kind of thing. -- uname -rsvp Linux 3.10.0-1160.36.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jul 21 11:57:15 UTC 2021 x86_64 Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted. I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list. _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
