Duct Tape Cam
Written: Mar 30 '04 (Updated Apr 09 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good frame rate (system dependent), decent clarity, web updating software actually works.
Cons: The stand does NOT clip to your flat panel display, directly contradicting package's claims.
The Bottom Line: Don't believe the packaging claims concerning the camera stand's clamping capabilities. It can barely stand up on a flat surface. Otherwise, it's an OK camera.
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| counsel's Full Review: Creative Technology Video Blaster NX PRO Web Cam |
Serious vanity issues prevail with an individual wanting to set up a personal web cam site, I thought. Who would want their face spread all over the Internet unless they thought their face was really worth looking at? I, virtuous and modest soul that I am, would never succumb to such shallow narcissism. Plus, my face isn’t that marketable if you know what I mean – and I think you do. And yet there I was, shopping at Best Buy for a web cam. What’s up with that?
I'd had a parallel-port-connected web cam ages ago when USB ports were for high-end big computer-spenders (i.e., not me). I was never able to set up a web cam site, having only a dial-up connection and no web host, and I didn’t get great pictures or frame rates with my clunky old system and weak video card. Plus, even then, there was the subject matter to contend with. Ahem. Anyway, the camera got crunched during a move and I forgot about it.
Last December, in an arrangement with my beloved spouse, I retired and took over childrearing and school duties on The Boy while she worked at the hospital and brought home the bacon. I thought she might like to look in on our progress while we were schooling, and, since I had used many and various means of subterfuge to entrap her in the first place, she was already used to my face – so that was not an issue. Among other luxuries, she has high-speed Internet in her hotel-room-like office, so I decided to set up a web cam site. And there we were; we just needed the hardware for the pictures, a web host, and software to upload the images to the site.
I hadn’t read any reviews on this product before I went shopping. If I had, I probably would not have bought the Creative Webcam NX Pro. Why is that, you are wondering (unless you’ve read the reviews, too).
First, the packaging for this product is a masterpiece of deceptive marketing. Creative has made its name, of course, with its range of Soundblaster computer audio products, and overall it deserves good marks for the quality of work and delivery of features as advertised on those particular products. Creative may do well as far as some of its other computer-related products are concerned, as far as I know. But on this web cam, it missed the mark.
The reason for that is simple: when you set up your web cam, you want it to be stable. You want to point it in a particular direction and you want it to stay pointed in that direction until you change it. You want it to stay where you place it until you move it. Clear pictures and high frame rates are all well and good, so long as the web cam is not wasting all that great performance taking pictures of your crotch or the dust-bunny-filled area behind your monitor. When it does that, you have a problem and your web cam site, in which you had placed so much hope, is now relegated to the third-class porn sites or the dust-bunny sites (a very small category in the overall Internet oeuvre).
Significantly, the package, which is very attractive and eye-catching, states in bold yellow print, “Revolutionary Base Accommodates CRTs, Flat Panel Displays and even Notebook PCs.” Well. Viola. Just what I needed, thinks I, and it’s only fifty bucks or so. I snatch the box off the shelf and head home, where I learn the horrid truth: the only thing this flimsy, unstable, awkward, non-gripping stand would “accommodate” is a quarter-pound of chewing gum, stuck to all its so-called gripping surfaces in order to get it to stay where I put it, and a strip of duct tape to hold the camera on to the stand. The USB wire connected to the camera is so thick and stiff that it turns the camera in directions you don’t want it to go – or, it pulls the camera off the stand altogether (my way of noting that the camera is not well-attached to the stand). I picked up the camera off the ground at least four times while I was attempting to get the stand to do what it said it could do: clip on to my flat-panel monitor. I did spend some time in waffling self-doubt, wondering whether I had not figured out the stand’s “secret gripping configuration” and was merely being three-thumbed about the whole thing. No more. At the moment, the camera is sitting on the table next to my monitor while I figure out where I left the duct tape, and whether I want to put duct tape on my monitor frame. The web cam site is active, and you can even see part of me and most of my kid, if you catch it at the right time. Ultimately, though, if there is a secret stand configuration, it shouldn’t be (1) secret or (2) this difficult to figure out.
Having said all that, the camera’s technical capabilities are, overall, quite satisfactory. Installation was not too difficult, though it did not go quite as the manual indicated it would. I was instructed to load the driver software, along with any other software I wanted to use, before I connected the camera to the USB port. You have four applications you can load: the Creative PC-Cam Center, the WebCam Monitor (needed for my web cam site), ArcSoft’s PhotoImpression 4 (a photo editing and arrangement application), and ArcSoft’s Multimedia Email (gussies up your email with your pictures and fancy backgrounds, I presume). A microphone is included so you can do video and audio IMs on AIM or Yahoo IM. I picked the Cam Center and WebCam monitor, and started the install.
The software loaded (but not without giving me a “missing file” error, which I have yet to figure out since the product seems to be working OK without it), then instructed me to restart. After the restart, I connected the camera. It was detected, the driver wizard cranked up and I told it to look at the Creative CD to find the drivers (contrary to what the manual told me to expect - I thought drivers were already loaded when I first loaded the software, but whatever). It found the drivers, and wanted to restart once again, so I let it – not really having any choice in the matter. After I reloaded, the WebCam monitor started up and I hit the “Preferences” tab to see how to set up my web cam site.
There’s a complete manual in PDF format on one of the two included CDs. The paper manual included in the package is for startup purposes only; if you aren’t a hunt-and-click-and-experiment person like me, you should read the PDF manual to learn how to take advantage of the advanced features. So far I’ve used the WebCam Monitor, and that’s it. I noted that the WebCam Monitor included a few choices of web page templates that it automatically generates for your web cam site, an FTP setup section to send your images to your web host, and a few fields for you to enter a little text for the site. Naturally, to have a web cam site, you need your own web host already set up and you need to know the FTP information for that site. You fill in your FTP user name and password in the WebCam Monitor fields, and you then tell it how often you want it to upload new images for your site. You can schedule it to send images only during a certain part of the day, or you can simply start and stop the thing manually.
The web cam page works just fine, and my wife can see us schooling away whenever she wants from her office. She must refresh her page manually to see updated images. I know there’s some code somewhere I can stick in the HTML to get the page to refresh on its own; I just need to find it and do it. I used my own HTML editor and FTP program to throw in a counter and some other code. The software doesn’t seem to mind that I inserted changes into its generated page.
The camera can generate up to 640 by 480-sized video pictures, with frame rates up to 30 fps. That speed was a little herky-jerky for me; I stepped it down to 25 fps (close to what you see at the movies) and it seems quite smooth. I do take seriously the complaints I read on other reviews having to do with frame rates, but I also know that such things can be highly system-dependent. I am using the same Micron computer I reviewed earlier, but with an added 256 MB of memory and a fairly new PNY nVidia GForce FX 5200 128 MB video card. The added hardware can make all the difference when it comes to frame rates. You need a USB connection, at least 1.1 or greater. The package claims that the camera will also do still shots up to 1024 by 768 interpolated. Fine, but don’t believe it until you’ve tried it; the package claims have already let me down big-time once.
Minimum System Requirements are: Pentium or AMD CPU running at 266 MHz or higher; Win 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 or XP; 32 MB RAM (yeah, right); 250 MB free hard drive space; a USB 1.1 port; a CD-ROM drive; a display adapter capable of at least 16-bit color at 800 x 600; a Windows compatible sound card so you can use the microphone. The software also includes a copy of MS Netmeeting (not supported by XP, which has its own video IM system) and a copy of MS Internet Explorer 5.5.
So, we have our web cam page. Someday the camera angle will be just as I want it – once I find the duct tape. The cam site is there just for her. I can’t imagine anyone else wanting to see the thing, but should you find the desire to see my ugly mug irresistible, email me and I’ll send you the URL. You have been warned.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
counsel
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Dwight
Location: Houston
Reviews written: 117
Trusted by: 500 members
About Me:
If I smell flowers, I start looking around for a coffin.
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