• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Webcam Trouble: VERY SLOW .77FPS

D

DragonReborn

Senior member
Just bought this great webcam but I am having trouble using it. I have a fairly fast broadband setup (4.5mb/360kpbs recently tested at dslreports.com) but I cannot get a solid video from my webcam. It is VERY slow and using the stats on yahoo messenger it says I am getting less that 1 fps!

I can take video of myself offline perfectly, up to 4mp, so it has to be something with my internet or yahoo.

Any ideas?

Thanks! =)
 
Is it USB 2.0 or 1.1 on your motherboard? If you don't have the latest drivers for your motherboard, might want to update those. To be quite honest, I never seen a webcam that was actually good @ consistent FPS for video chat yet. I've owned a lot of Logi's at that.
 
i have usb 2.0 and it can take great video when it is offline. i recorded a really long, high resolution video and it looks great. so i don't think the bottleneck is b/t the computer and the webcam
 
would buying a program like ipsq help me out? it seems like i am getting a respectable upload speed of 360kpbs...shouldn't that be sufficient for video chat?
 
yep, he did. his video looked fairly smooth (much better than mine). he was using a mac with iChat AV, AIM, and yahoo (we tried all three). He was using the iSight as the webcam. I know the iSight uses firewire which is better than usb 2.0 but as said i get great video recording when I am offline so it must be the program I am using or something wrong with my connection (router settings, etc).

thanks for all the help
 
Was it firewire 400 (1394a) or firewire 800 (1394b)? Firewire 400 is only 400Mbps firewire 800 is 800Mbps. USB2.0 is 480Mbps.

I don't think there are any firewire 800 webcams yet.
 
both behind a firewall therefore nogotiationg is slowing everything down, have to go through a third party server probably

find the port numbers needed and open them up, only one of you has to do this
 
Originally posted by: DragonReborn
yep, he did. his video looked fairly smooth (much better than mine). he was using a mac with iChat AV, AIM, and yahoo (we tried all three). He was using the iSight as the webcam. I know the iSight uses firewire which is better than usb 2.0 but as said i get great video recording when I am offline so it must be the program I am using or something wrong with my connection (router settings, etc).

thanks for all the help
Click to expand...

firewire is not really better just supports more bandwidth but if the camera cant get up to that high of bandwidth its pointless kinda like sata2 🙂 and pci-e.

 
understood...yeah, well I am not sure where to find the ports to open better communication. There was a FAQ on DLINK on how to open the right ports for Yahoo, which I did, but do I have to do that with XP's firewall as well? Where would I find out which ports I need to open? Why isn't there more documentation from logitech about this? =

Thanks
 
Plug your computer directly into your modem, and see if it works that way. If it does, I'd try and find the ports AIM uses... google it. Then hook up your router again, and free up the ports AIM uses. I'm not too familiar with networking though. I suggest you post this in the networking forum.
 
Like Czar was saying, if both of you are behind a router (firewall), it will slow things down. Open up the port which Yahoo messenger is using. Also, your friend's webcam may look good because you have a decent connection. But what about HIS connection? Does he have broadband, or at least a good upload speed?
 
hey, i was playing with my webcam yet again, and wondering about the same thing ... how to get decent resolution, decent speed video. then something occured to me - my upload speed is, like yours, WAY slower than download. since i am uploading the video stream this will be the limiting factor on the size/speed of the video i can send. quick math:

360kbit/sec * 1byte/8bits = 45kbyte/sec

that's not much bandwidth for video. assuming 16-bit (2 byte) color and 320x240 resolution, more math:

2x320x240 = 153.6kbyte/frame

at that rate, you'd only be able to get approx. 3 sec/frame, and that's assuming NO overhead for ethernet or the various software services (ie, yahoo) that may be managing the data for you.

of course, the size of the data stream can be greatly reduced through various compression algorithms, but i'm under the impression that no compression is used - since this is all real-time, compressing/decompressing the data would just add latency and make things even worse. plus, we're not dealing with very sophiscated software here - in a lot of ways video serving hasn't changed in years.

bottom line - the interent still has a long way to go before decent high-res streaming video will be available to the average joe on their home computer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top