Video (Web cam) with quick response?

Posted by cadcoke4 on March 11, 2008, 9:24 am

I've noticed that your typical web camshas a delay between the actual
event and when you see it on screen. I am talking about 1/2 second of
a delay. I am uncertain where the delay is happening, is it in the
camera, the USB, or perhaps as my 1.2mhz computer works to display the
video.

I know this is an issue for video conferencing, since it prevents you
from having a truely fluid conversation over the internet (assuming
that the internet is not causing any delays). I imagine it is also an
issue for a telepresence robot as you attempt to steer it or control a
robot arm.

I spoke with one company that deals with web conferencing and they say
the systems without the delay have hardware compression in the camera,
and cost around $3,000. Definitely out of my budget!

Are there any low-cost systems that don't have as much a delay?

I am not hotly persuing this issue, so don't go to any trouble
researching this on my behalf.

Joe Dunfee

Posted by Gordon McComb on March 12, 2008, 12:50 am

cadcoke4 wrote:

> I spoke with one company that deals with web conferencing and they say
> the systems without the delay have hardware compression in the camera,
> and cost around $3,000. Definitely out of my budget!

Seems outrageous to me.

Check out Michael Owings' page at www.swampgas.com. He might have specs
on the video system he used.

From my own experience, I've had instant results when using a capture
card. Not sure what's available today, but the cards I used were from
outfits like Winnov, which also provided an SDK of sorts so that you
could write programs to interface with the cards. They require a PCI
slot, and have jacks for video (and audio, if they support on-board
audio rather than relying on your PC's sound card). Several of the
boards cost under $200, depending on features. Doesn't sound like you
need a lot.

If you stay away from USB you don't need to deal with the company's
proprietary driver to interface the camera. Or, if you can find a USB
camera that has an open SDK then you might be able to write something
yourself that lacks the delay, which is likely just in the preview
window, and not the file writing stream. If you work in VB.NET or C#
there's DirectShowLib. It is a wrapper to the Microsoft DirectShow
platform. Complicated stuff, but they have some ready-to-go samples that
will work with any camera that has a properly installed driver.

-- Gordon

Posted by on March 17, 2008, 1:00 am

On 3ÔÂ11ÈÕ, ÏÂÎç9Ê±24·Ö, cadcoke4 <cadco...@yahoo.co=

m> wrote:
> I've noticed that your typical web camshas a delay between the actual
> event and when you see it on screen. I am talking about 1/2 second of
> a delay. I am uncertain where the delay is happening, is it in the
> camera, the USB, or perhaps as my 1.2mhz computer works to display the
> video.
> I know this is an issue for video conferencing, since it prevents you
> from having a truely fluid conversation over the internet (assuming
> that the internet is not causing any delays). I imagine it is also an
> issue for a telepresence robot as you attempt to steer it or control a
> robot arm.
> I spoke with one company that deals with web conferencing and they say
> the systems without the delay have hardware compression in the camera,
> and cost around $3,000. Definitely out of my budget!
> Are there any low-cost systems that don't have as much a delay?
> I am not hotly persuing this issue, so don't go to any trouble
> researching this on my behalf.
> Joe Dunfee

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