talkmagic.co.uk

ok i found one web cam for $30 and it had 30fps and a video resolution of 640x480 as well as a built in mic and i found a $320 witch had the same stuff it had a dual microphone built in though, also it looked nicer... and it may of been a bit smaller

why the huge price jump size and looks can't make it jump that much... what other sorts of things should i be looking for in a web cam?

I am an audio engineer. And I can not, for the life of me, think of 1 good reason for a "dual" microphone on a webcam. Illogical. Go with the cheap one unless you really need something of quality. If so, you can get it for far less than 320 bucks i will tell you that.

those were just the two examples i picked... i know i get get a good one for less... the dual mic made me chuckle as it didn't make sense to me but what do i know?

i just want one to record my flourishes and tricks to post on the net...

Just wanna add my personal opinion here. I think that you should realise a relatively cheap webcam regardless of the 30 frames per second boast will definitley not be good enough to record flourishes. Don't get me wrong they would capture it but it really would not do them any justice. If you want to record video it would be better to buy a cheap video camera. Also webcams usually have very poor settings when it comes to the camera's iris. eg. light settings. They tend to look dark and if you increase the settings looks over-saturated.

I know your not looking for anything professional but to capture flourishes like the Pirouette change where speed is an issue you'd need something designed for video capture alone.

you could always buy the cheaper one and if you don't like it, ask for your money back.

right now the main flourishes i know are "The Werm" and "Genesis" off of the system... but i plan on learning the rest of them, i don't know if many or any of them require high speeds to preform successfully.

Are the webcams out there that will capture Flourishes at high speeds or are all of them pretty much sucktacular?

i1011i wrote:I am an audio engineer. And I can not, for the life of me, think of 1 good reason for a "dual" microphone on a webcam. Illogical. Go with the cheap one unless you really need something of quality. If so, you can get it for far less than 320 bucks i will tell you that.

My field is in video production, and I can tell you that there is in fact a very good reason to have a dual microphone, whether for a webcam or other applications.

Not for the stereo effect you might imagine, but for noise suppression.

What happens is the housing will have one microphone aimed at you, to pick up your voice, and one aimed elsewhere (to the side or back of the unit), to pick up ambient noise. The audio engineer should realize instantly that with a very simple circuit, the signal from the second microphone will be used to cancel that ambient noise from the 'main' microphone, giving a much cleaner, clearer sound than a single microphone can provide.

Kemo wrote:Are the webcams out there that will capture Flourishes at high speeds or are all of them pretty much sucktacular?

Check the frame rate, the best is likely 30 frames/second, but many are 15, 12, 10 and maybe even slower. 30 fps is the same as regular TV, and should be fine.

How'd you fare with the snow? (I'm from out-of-town, Lantzville!)

Kemo wrote:why the huge price jump size and looks can't make it jump that much... what other sorts of things should i be looking for in a web cam?

The electronics have a lot to do with the quality of the picture, just as they do with digital still cameras.

You'll find digital cameras with fewer mega-pixels that actually look better than ones with more pixels, because of the way they treat the image. Since they all add noise, the ones with better electronics add less noise, so can actually keep more of their detail than one that started with more information, but got muddied up in the process.

There is also image compression involved, to reduce file sizes for storage or transmission, and again, better compression software will lose less detail. Different cameras also are just set for different amounts of compression, and that will greatly affect their visible quality, no matter what the original specs were.

Kemo wrote:video resolution of 640x480

Final thought about these cameras.

Although the output resolution may be as stated, it may really be interpolated up from a much lower quality sensor.

This would be a similar idea to using a high definition TV to show regular broadcast.

The TV is interpolating the signal to fill its screen, but can't show detail that wasn't in the original signal, but a real HD broadcast or the new HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs will already have all that detail present, and will show a dramatic improvement over the lesser quality signal upsampled by the TV.