Bill Tabor
EF5
The Microsoft Lifecam Cinema HD may be one of the better choices for streaming - I have one and sometimes use it, but one of it's major weaknesses is it's lack of zoom capabilities. Since it is a fairly wide field lense / image to begin with the camera will only allow 4x digital zoom which is practically nothing. Compare that with various actual camcorders that may have 40x optical and 720x digital zoom. That means about the only way you can get a big zoomed in image of a tornado is to be right on top of it. This makes me not want to use it, but it is tough to find a better alternative.
I also have a Samsung camcorder that has streaming web cam ability via USB, decent low light, and a built in flash memory card. I thought that was the solution because it had huge amounts of zoom, but when it is in webcam mode you can't control focus, or exposure, etc - although you can zoom. It also won't save video to the internal card when streaming. What a pain! I did use this last April 22nd to stream the Goodnight tornado - seen on TWC however I noticed the video it produced killed almost all the color. It looked like black and white video. My Hd camcorder captured great greens, greys, and whites.
I have used a VX2000 which is extremely good in low light. It connects via firewire. It did everything great except it requires the REC button be pushed every 3 minutes or so else the camcorder turns off. It also uses mini-dv to record and I'm trying to get away from that format. Besides that it is too large and heavy to really use well as a dashcam.
Previous to that I used a JVC mini-dv (firewire) that actually did well except it eventually wore out and I don't want to use mini-dv. It was also heavy enough that the camera would shake and vibrate a lot on my dash cam mount which was very annoying.
Firewire is a high quality convenient format for streaming. The problem is camcorders have all moved to USB2 and it's a bit difficult to find notebook computers nowadays that have firewire (1394) ports.
So, that is where I am... still trying to find the ultimate solution. Probably the HD Lifecam would be if it could zoom although I prefer the ability to save simultaneously to the camcorders media. Problem not doing it this way is your HD Lifecam webcam probably has the stream dialed down in framerate, BPS, etc for lower bandwidth. That is the stream you would be archiving to the hard drive. Preferably you would want to archive locally in the highest quality / bandwidth possible with your dashcam and stream simultaneously with whatever quality / rate required based on your internet connection speed.
I also have a Samsung camcorder that has streaming web cam ability via USB, decent low light, and a built in flash memory card. I thought that was the solution because it had huge amounts of zoom, but when it is in webcam mode you can't control focus, or exposure, etc - although you can zoom. It also won't save video to the internal card when streaming. What a pain! I did use this last April 22nd to stream the Goodnight tornado - seen on TWC however I noticed the video it produced killed almost all the color. It looked like black and white video. My Hd camcorder captured great greens, greys, and whites.
I have used a VX2000 which is extremely good in low light. It connects via firewire. It did everything great except it requires the REC button be pushed every 3 minutes or so else the camcorder turns off. It also uses mini-dv to record and I'm trying to get away from that format. Besides that it is too large and heavy to really use well as a dashcam.
Previous to that I used a JVC mini-dv (firewire) that actually did well except it eventually wore out and I don't want to use mini-dv. It was also heavy enough that the camera would shake and vibrate a lot on my dash cam mount which was very annoying.
Firewire is a high quality convenient format for streaming. The problem is camcorders have all moved to USB2 and it's a bit difficult to find notebook computers nowadays that have firewire (1394) ports.
So, that is where I am... still trying to find the ultimate solution. Probably the HD Lifecam would be if it could zoom although I prefer the ability to save simultaneously to the camcorders media. Problem not doing it this way is your HD Lifecam webcam probably has the stream dialed down in framerate, BPS, etc for lower bandwidth. That is the stream you would be archiving to the hard drive. Preferably you would want to archive locally in the highest quality / bandwidth possible with your dashcam and stream simultaneously with whatever quality / rate required based on your internet connection speed.
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