Full Review
Here's a cheap way to get a WebCam up and working in a few seconds: TrackerCam is the official software companion used by TrackerPod, a hardware pan/tilt unit for your WebCam.
It is not required, however, to own a TrackerPod to operate TrackerCam as a WebCam software.
Set up is driven by standard wizards and you need to allow a certificate to be installed in your system.
You can then launch the application, that will check for installed cameras and TrackerPods in your system and take you to the
initial control screen.
A nice interface allows you to preview the video coming from your camera. If a TrackerPod is present, you can begin panning and tilting your camera instantly.
Do notice that TrackerCam's specialty is automatic tracking, which means locking onto a subject in the camera's view and
then automatically following them with the camera so that they stay in view. Tracking performance depends on camera quality (Eagletron recommends using
the Logitech QuickCam 3000 WebCam). Thus, a TrackerPod pays special significance here. Otherwise, you can go and set up parameters to let TrackerCam publish your live image within minutes.
Going deeper...
The TrackerCam interface |
TrackerCam enhances a variety of digital video applications and allows for some entirely new ones too. You can record movies with it, do videoconferencing (and being
tracked while you move in the middle of a videoconference, if used with a TrackerPod), give voice commands (start and stop recording, movement...), panoramic capture
(allows you to capture a panorama of the camera surroundings when used with a TrackerPod), etc.
The interface is quite intuitive, and a serie of icons (hideable) allow you to execute each of the functions mentioned above.
A TUNER button lets you finetune your tracking experience.
The WebCam side of the software acts like a typical server push image server, where the other end must know your IP address so they can connect to you.
Actually, TrackerCam software does not stream video nor audio but sends .JPG images at 1 second intervals. Voice over IP is
still not a standard, although there are a number of solutions that do work with TrackerCam software: NetMeeting, iVista,
PalTalk. You must have TrackerCam software running and you must select the TrackerCam Capture video source in any of these other
applications that will stream sound to the other end. Once the first user tries to connect to your WebCam server, the software will prompt you if you want to
accept the "call" or not.
Another option is to turn Surveillance on, which will record video only when motion is detected in front of the camera.
You can also capture single frames or some movies (and audio) with this software. There's even an option to capture a Panorama with the aid
of a TrackerPod, but it's for advanced users only since it requires finetunning of the final image before getting something shiny,
visually speaking.
To Zoom or not to zoom
Zoom is a feature not present in almost any WebCam in the market. High costs to produce one make it hard to implement in a end-user business figure, but the most
recent version of TrackerCam includes a digital zoom feature which is really interesting to bring in a new field of vision on your WebCam site.
TrackerCam scales the camera image from 10% to 500% to get a full view or close-up view using an ordinary WebCam.
The good part of this is that it takes advantage of high resolution WebCams too.
It really tracks you!
TrackerCam in action |
We've already mentioned some features that will work great when using this software in conjunction with a TrackerPod unit, but
may be the most appealing one is the tracking feature of your face in front of the camera: no matter if you're videoconferencing
and moving on your chair while speaking or you just want to impress some friends or track your pet doing things at home while you're not
present, TrackerCam really tracks motion and lets you experience a new degree of freedom with your static WebCam. Note thought that
it will require some good light sources and a nice camera quality to achieve the best performance.
You can reach the nirvana if you set up TrackerCam so any other user in the Internet can move your own camera remotely and track
whatever they really want to see! This will indeed boost up your site traffic with tons of happy returning visitors! ;)
Summarizing
TrackerCam is a nice, fully-featured, piece of software you can use for FREE (for a limited time? who knows!). You can get the most
of it when used in conjunction with special pan/tilt unit TrackerPod but it also allows you to create a
small WebCam server and get some extra features for a really, really, affordable low price ;)
Availability
TrackerCam WebCam software package is available for FREE from Eagletron Inc.
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