Price: FREE
Platform: PC
O.S.: Win9x/NT/2000
Click for Camarades!
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Truetech WebCam PE (v2.2)
TrueTech Webcam PE is an easy-to-use WebCam server designed for home users.
It lets you set up a personal video WebCam and includes free hosting of a homepage at
Camarades.com.
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Review by:
Bob Prangnell,
WebCam Developer
| Plus: |
| It's FREE |
| Easy setup & use |
| Minus: |
| Requires bandwith! |
| Limited features |
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Full Review
Installing TrueTech WebCam is a breeze. If you have a camera connected to your PC you can have a working WebCam,
complete with home page, set up within minutes. The software works on all 32-bit versions of Windows (95,98,ME, NT and 2000).
In most cases your camera will be automatically recognized and will not need further configuration, but in some cases you will
need to click the "Driver", "Format" and "Source" buttons to select your preferences.
When you first run the program, clicking the "View Home Page" button will take you to your own
WebCam page within the Camarades WebCam Community. This is initially a basic page, but you can customize this later. The
first time that you run the program you get only a quarter of your WebCam's field of view shown (to minimize load on your connection)
but you can change this to the whole field of view if you have a fast enough connection.
Initially a homepage similar to the one shown on the left is created. You can click the "Edit Home Page"
button to take you to a web-based homepage editor. Using this you can change the way your page looks, and add details about your
cam and yourself. To make it easier for people to find you, you can add keywords to your cam. Other features include the ability
to have "offline" shots (pictures that are shown when your cam is offline) and a Guest Book that lets people comment on
your cam.
Camarades operates a number of cam communities - from Dog Lovers to Harley riders, there's a wide range. You can
join one or more of these communities, and get together with like-minded people.
You can also join the Camarades Elite service (cost $9.95 per month) that gives you access to additional
services.
Operation
The display is attractive and easy to use. There are three main parts : The Control Buttons are on the
right; the Website link buttons are at the bottom; and there is a tab-box for various options like Monitor, Configure, etc.
When the program is running and you are connected to the internet, your webcam is online. No further
configuration is necessary. However you can customize many aspects of your webcam, for example you can adjust the image
size, and which part of your camera’s view you want to be visible. You can also configure various video parameters that
affect the image; quality, framerate, etc.
Because of the way the software works, these settings can be very important. See the next section for more details.
To let you know when you are being watched, you can set up different warning sounds that are played when the
first connection is made (somebody is there!) and the last connection is broken (everybody has gone). And you can click on a map of the world to let
Camarades know where in the world you are. Other users can then search by country. While your webcam is running you can use the
"Status" tab to monitor connections. This shows how many people are connected (watching your camera), what frame rate
they are getting and how much bandwidth they are using.
If you need help, there is a good online help facility, including answers to a lot of frequently asked questions.
The Effects tab lets you do some advanced things with a scripting language. However, this is poorly documented - the helpfile is confusing and incomplete - so the
powerful features hinted at (for example, the ability to record and play back video on demand files) are likely to be beyond most people.
How it works
When somebody is viewing your webcam, images are streamed directly from your PC to their PC. This gives a good
framerate and response.
If several people are watching your webcam then your PC has to send each viewer a stream of images. If you have a
slow link this can quickly use up your bandwidth. However, with careful tuning you can get a good compromise between speed and quality:
Firstly you need to consider how many people are going to be watching your camera at any time; a modem link
will only support a few connections. You can set the maximum number on the Configure page.
Secondly is the amount of data that is sent to webcam watchers. This depends on several things:
- the image size; if you are only showing a quarter of the camera's field of view then each frame is going to be smaller
- the quality setting (on the Configure page). This sets the amount of JPEG compression used - the better the quality the larger the frame size
- the framerate (also on the Configure page). More frames per second equals more data to send.
Depending on your WebCam, you can tune these settings to achieve the best compromise (for example if you have
an outdoor webcam then maybe you don't need such a high frame rate as one that is pointed at a live person).
This scheme works best for small-scale webcams, where you only expect a few simultaneous viewers – the free
version is limited to 10 users anyway. For more users there Professional and Commercial versions available.
TrueTech Webcam PE available from Truetech.com and
Camarades.com.
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