EvoCam - A powerful and easy to use webcam app

Apr 29, '03 02:00:00AM

Contributed by: robg

EvoCam iconThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[0 to 10 lights; 10 = perfect!]

Ever had an interest in running a webcam for any reason? If so, I highly recommend you take a look at EvoCam from Evological. Working through a simple one-window (four tab) interface, you configure the camera, the options you want on your webcam display (graphics overlays, time/date stamp, text captions, even QuickTime special effects), and then choose how you'd like to serve your webcam images. Accessed through the Server tab, the program includes a built-in streaming web server, or you can elect to upload images via FTP or even email them out!

On the Options tab, you can create a motion detection camera, set image quality, schedule dates and times for the camera to be active, and choose between various archiving and uploading options. The Status tab shows you information on the current frame, and the Items tab is where you add all the neat features mentioned earlier. You can even impose multiple video streams (if you have multiple sources) in one webcam window.

Once you've set everything up, you just enable the server, and your webcam is up and running. Any video source that's visible to QuickTime should work fine; I used our Sony digital camera and it worked flawlessly. I even tested it on our iBook, and sent the images via the wireless Airport connection to create a truly portable webcam setup.

From the time I installed this until the time I had a streaming video picture (outbound via a cable modem connection) was no more than a minute or two, and that included the time necessary to figure out how to configure the web server on another port (File -> Built-in Web Server). I had people view the streams from overseas, the east coast, and the west coast, and all had reasonable frame rates (one or two frames per second), given my somewhat limited upload speed. The amazing thing about this, though, is that I continued to use my Mac as I usually do, and made no concessions to the fact that there was a streaming video server running in the background. I couldn't tell that it was running, other than noticing the preview window updating on screen in real time. A quick look at 'top' revealed that it was using anywhere from 15% to 35% of my (G4/733), which left the machine very usable for my normal tasks.

All in all, for $20, EvoCam is an amazing little application, and worth checking out if you're looking for such a solution. It even comes with a no-limits 15 day trial just so you can make sure it meets your needs before purchasing.

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