"best" USB webcam for Jitter available now?

bart at max (previously BITter)'s icon

Hello

What's the "best" USB webcam for Jitter available now?
To use mainly for head and body tracking with Jitter.

depending on:
# image quality / compression
# frame rate
# constant focus
# performance

Regards

woyteg's icon

I got the logitech one and I am happy with it.
One thing that's a big caveat (edspecially when we talk about the "best") is the fact that one can't really screw e.g. an IR filter onto it.
It's simply just a consumer product.

dtr's icon

I might also be getting 2 webcams for a project soon. From prior experience with webcams it makes a big difference how much manual control you get in the cams software drivers. Full auto with no manual tweaking is a big pain. And this driver support differs between windows and mac. Any comments on the proposed or other models in that respect?

dtr's icon

Did some googling on the driver subject. If you're on Mac and your cam relies on OSX's built-in UVC driver then you're out of luck for manual controls, unless you wanna roll your own:
http://www.paranoid-media.de/blog/?p=18
http://phoboslab.org/log/2009/07/uvc-camera-control-for-mac-os-x

There is the universal macam driver for mac though I wonder how up to date that is : http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/cameras/index.php?orderBy=controller

Then there's uvc-ctrl, alpha released in snow leopard times but some replies from 2013 at the bottom of the page... http://www.dm9.se/?p=793

Sorry if I'm taking this thread off topic. Please tell me if I should start a separate OSX webcam control thread.

bart at max (previously BITter)'s icon

@woyteg

IR filter is still possible, you can make your own "big" one from an photo slide film.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26887294@N05/4467541455/

@dtr

Logitech has maked a MacOS X "Logitech Camera Settings" app.
See in the Mac app store:
https://itunes.apple.com/be/app/logitech-camera-settings/id638332853?mt=12
and also this one:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/webcam-settings/id533696630?mt=12

But i don't think there will be a possibility to change the settings direct in Max/Jitter.

dtr's icon

Lousy f#ckers! A payed app... (edit: now I see it's not by logitech, not so strange then)

For me it wouldn't be a problem if it can run alongside max. A comment on the app store recommends this instead though: http://www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses/

woyteg's icon

I am running the Logitech one on windows and have full manual control there with the standard drivers. I don't know about OSX.

IR filter is still possible, you can make your own “big” one from an photo slide film.

Sure, but if I would like to buy a new cam I would try to find something that has the possibility to screw different filters or lenses on it.(if there is something like that, but there must be something..)

dtr's icon

there's industrial stuff like http://www.theimagingsource.com

bart at max (previously BITter)'s icon

@woyteg: the fire-i from Unibrain is a small fire-wire camera with possibility for different lenses. I have used this with IR lens a lot.
But fire-wire cable is to stiff to use for my project. And this cameras has a certain latency.
Years ago the fire-i cameras were very good.

@dtr: I know this, but to heavy for my project.

bart at max (previously BITter)'s icon

@woyteg: the fire-i from Unibrain is a small fire-wire camera with possibility for different lenses. I have used this with IR lens a lot. http://www.unibrain.com/products/fire-i-board-camera/
But fire-wire cable is to stiff to use for my project. And this cameras has a certain latency and are heavy on the CPU. I have to test the new ones.

@dtr: I know this, but to heavy for my project.

woyteg's icon

Great stuff!