[PD] Webcam recommendations (linux/osx)

[Antoine Villeret]

with pd on linux, camera support depends on installed video backend
and i think you can find a backend for almost all cameras from cheap
USB (USB camera are mostly v4l2 compliant) to Gige industrial camera
(for the driver is quite experimental, but prove that works)
so i think, it's better to find out a camera which fit your
requirements and then plug it in pd

here is a list of cam i've use and what i've done with :
- old composite security camera (from 20 to 200 €) with video
digitizer (start at 10€) to track people (not performer), pros :
reliable for many years of use, long and cheap cable, could easily see
in near IR  - cons : PAL or NTSC resolution / framerate are quite low,
digitizer could
- USB cam like PSEye or logitech (don't remember equivalent model to
PSEye but it exists) : pros : could have good image quality, framerate
and resolution, cons : cable lenght limitation, mostly fixed lens and
sometimes fixed focus
- industrial IIDC camera -- AVT Guppy, Sony XCD (firewire, USB not
tested but should work (at least usb 2)) : pros : reliable, good
framerate, image quatlity, resolution and very low latency, changeable
lens -- cons : price, cable length,
NB : it seems that Guppy Pro from this summer suffer from a firmware
bug that print small dots on the image and make it unusable, AVT
support can't do anything and doesn't understand the bug, it doesn't
happend always, so it could be hard to reproduce, but have been saw
under Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows with pd, coriander, and
manufacturer software
- IP cameras : pros : cable length, accessible through wide network,
-- cons : latency (which depends on codec)

hope this helps

a
--
do it yourself
http://antoine.villeret.free.fr


2012/12/20 Dario Pedrioli <dariopedrioli at gmail.com>:
> We use too PS3-eye webcams on Linux for various IR input management (we
> don't output the input image)
> For our installation we have modified the lens part:removed original lens
> and replaced with a new one M12x0.5 lens mount + a set of cheap M12 for
> various distance.
> Image quality is not the best you can have but you have a great camera for
> less than 100 euro (including modifications) considering high framerate -
> very important for us.
>
> Ciao
> Dario
>
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