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Thread: Limitations of Webcams. Nothing new in years

  1. #11
    Senior Member
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    Think about it.. You can buy a new in the box C920 for around $70. The C920 has a 1/4 inch taped holed in the mounting bracket and you can use with tripod, and across the top of a laptop. It folds up real snug and you easily carry it with your stuff. No sense messing with a built in laptop camera, which is just a baker dozen item. In other words, instead of a dozen donuts you get 13 donuts. Which is just a cheap way to give you something extra to encourage a sale.

    http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webca.../dp/B006JH8T3S
    Last edited by domineaux; 08-01-2015 at 02:48 PM.

  2. #12
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    The webcam market as a whole is a commodity space. The C920 and C930 are best of breed considering the broad user base. The volume market is in the sub $100 range. the last big advancement was putting the compression engine into the camera, which is why we have the C920/930e.

    For more particular applications, like corp video conferencing, there's the Logitech BCC950 & PTZ Pro Webcam, also the AVER VC520...but these are in the $1k range. They have better lenses, and mechanical PTZ with remote control.

    VDO360, HuddleCam and a few others are this space. But the cost goes up considerably. They usually target corporate applications since there's a well-defined, funded market there.

    Beyond that you're into the low-end of the professional AV market, like churches and smaller cable/TV stations.

    Some people have been making use of DSLRs as higher performance webcams. They often take an HDMI output into a capture card.

  3. #13
    IAIB Broadcaster dasme's Avatar
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    When you look at who would commonly need webcams the most: parents, kids, grand parents etc you'll see that the bulk of their computing devices already come with a webcam. Every tablet, phone and laptop these days has one stock. So when the vast majority of your potential customers won't buy your new product, you are less likely to innovate in the consumer space. I would honestly surprised to see many new standalone high end web cams come to market.

    What we as podcasters will have to do in the near future is setup more pro rigs with real video cams and tripods to get better resolution or performance.

    It's a little sad, but expected. Tempted to play around with some old iPhone or iPod Touches to see how they would fill the need in case my C920 dies in the near future.
    Lloyd Hannesson - @dasme
    Founder of the VGPodcasts Network - http://vgpodcasts.com

  4. #14
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    I wouldn't waste your time with such devices. The built-in cameras of laptops, phones, iPods, etc can't match the quality from the C920 or C930. Worse yet, you may then constrained by the use of Wifi as a connectivity scheme.

    Telestream does offer an iOS app to using an iPhone or iPad as a source for Wirecast, but I wasn't impressed with the result.

  5. #15
    IAIB Broadcaster dasme's Avatar
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    On the mac and with the latest OS you can directly tether the device to your machine and mirror the screen. It's how I broadcast iOS games through Wirecast. The cameras on the latest iOS devices are close to the c920. I'm worried about lag, and on screen controls getting in the way. Just looking for something that can fill the gap incase something blows up with the current setup.

    Definitely not something that I would want to use permanently, but it would be quicker to setup and way less than an external camera and capture card. I'll be moving there eventually, just taking small steps.
    Lloyd Hannesson - @dasme
    Founder of the VGPodcasts Network - http://vgpodcasts.com

  6. #16
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    My iPhone 6+ takes better video the my 1 year old Handy-Cam.
    Last edited by Dana; 11-15-2015 at 04:45 AM.

  7. #17
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    The big difference being that USB attached are a low cost way to get decent video for live production. Post-produced video can come from a wide variety of sources. A $70 Logitech webcam is hard to beat for live work. Great quality/price ratio. Very accessible.

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