I've been looking into getting a webcam for a while, but have never been sure what to look for. I have an old Creative Webcam, but it hasn't been in use for several years since I got Win2K which didn't support it. I have no idea if it does now, but I'd doubt it.

So I guess the questions are: which webcam do I get and what program do I use with it?

I'd like a cam that's pretty inexpensive, but decent quality. I would use a camcorder or something, but I don't really trust my AIW card anymore (the latest Catalyst software is pretty bad).

As for software, I have no idea what to use. What's good?

Thanks for your help.

ps- I'll be getting two of whatever cameras they are, so the less expensive the better.

Not sure about which webcam to use, but this software is fantastic:

http://www.at32.com/doc/comcam.htm

It's got loads of effects such as bluescreen effect etc so you can do things like this with it:



Erm, if you want to

I used the ComCam a couple of years ago. It's absolutely brilliant.

To put it in perspective, it's the only piece of shareware software I've ever bought a licence for.

Hey, that looks like a great program. I'll definitely give that a shot with whatever webcam I end of using. Thanks.

*edit*
By the way, will this work with basically any webcam? There's not really very much info on their website. I'm thinking of getting this, because this is for my girlfriend and me. That seems to be the exact price range I want (though it would be nice to try to find the combo package somewhere for even less), and the cams are 640x480 like Comcam prefers for image resizing. Anyone have one of these webcams?

It should work with any webcam. I'll ask the developer though - he's a friend of mine.

As far as I know as long as the camera supports DirectShow then there shouldn't be a problem. Which probably includes every camera on the market with windows drivers. It would probably work with Firewire cameras as they can appear as directshow sources as well.

EDIT: We used it with a webcam that cost £10 brand new. I doubt you'll have problem with whatever you choose.

Thanks, guys. This is heartening. I think I might go with those webcams because they're pretty simple and have mics built in (they probably won't sound stellar, but that's okay).

I actually can't wait to try your friend's program out. It looks excellent.

My only claim to fame is as a ComCam beta tester.
I tied it with 5 different cheap web cams, all worked fine, been running without problems for a couple of years. Developer has emailed out a few updates ( for free ) while I have been using it.





http://mardibloke.co.uk/gcam1.html

http://www.mardibloke.co.uk/studycam2.html

what kind of car is that?

It's a (currently broken) Lotus Elan

1990's Lotus Elan SE

http://www.lotuselancentral.com

It's a (currently broken) Lotus Elan

No wonder he's called Mardibloke....

Amazon.com lists several cheaper sources for the Logitech 2-pack

Is comcam just for video capture and web publishing? I can't seem to figure out or find any info on how to use this for communication. I actually have a cam hooked up now and it's working with this program, but now I need to know how to connect to another person and their webcam.

I purchased a Creative Labs PD1130 WebCam NX Pro for $42 from Amazon.com. It got great reviews and people always comment to me on how good it looks for a web cam. I was looking at some Logitech ones, but they got bad reviews.

Well, I've got a camera for myself, actually. It's a 3Com Big Picture web cam. It's also about 5 years old. It actually has an RCA jack that plugs into a video capture board that it came with. It's actually a pretty good camera.

Now I'm trying to find communications software. It's only natural that Netmeeting, which was so simple and, well...worked, has been sort of dropped by MS. It's built into Win2K, but it keeps telling me I have to download MSN Messenger. I don't know if it's worth it.

So, any very simple webcam communication programs out there?

I had to bump this thread because I thought it was cool to see a current photo in an old thread like this! (The images are from a real time web cam, not attached images).

I had some trouble setting up ComCam... I'm thinking of switching to it however...

Because most web cam software ftp's the images to a site, if you have multiple cameras, is there trouble with two programs being logged in at the same time? (I only have one camera now, so I can't test it).

Since the thread is up, does anyone have opinions on good netcam/software combos these days? I'm still running Win2K, so preferably something that works with that. I tried Comcam with this really old netcam I had lying around, but the camera was just too flaky and didn't have real drivers available for 2K. I'm more looking for software that will let me communicate with other cams, rather than send images to a site. For that purpose, Comcam is great.

Do you mean like Yahoo IM?

Oops. I forgot that a lot of IM clients come with that these days