Budget webcam recommendations

[Constantbee]

Anybody either teaching or taking music lessons online? I'm looking for a webcam for a 27" desktop monitor. Would probably be looking at Logitech but not at the moment. Grateful for any advice. Thanks.

[Dave2002]

Anybody either teaching or taking music lessons online? I'm looking for a webcam for a 27" desktop monitor. Would probably be looking at Logitech but not at the moment. Grateful for any advice. Thanks.

That's an interesting question. Looks as though there is a run on cameras and such kit right now - I was trying to order a camera just now - which I've had my eye on for some time - and now none are available - or else a few have leapt up in price.

Are you intending to use if for music, or for other purposes? If it's "just" to keep in touch, then probably some of the Logitech ones would do. Apple users with laptops and indeed desktops probably have one built in to their machines anyway. Also most tablets these days, or phones have cameras built in - stick them on stand of some sort and you're away.

If it's for music or something where quality matters, you probably want to have a reasonable webcam and a decent microphone system - with a decent reproduction system to match. Obviously you could spend quite a lot on that.

Nowadays many regular cameras can do webcam stuff too, or simply use an older camera, stick it on a tripod - preferably a decent enough one (say £20), and wire it in. If you want to broadcast (say podcast) to the world many people use modest cameras and something like a Blue Snowball microphone. Would you want stereo sound (or even surround - doubtful!)?

Really depends what you want it for. You did mention budget - so I'm guessing low end - say under £50.

Over to you.

[Rolmill]

I too am looking for a budget webcam (in my case for videoconferencing when working from home - I have a desktop but no laptop).

Sadly the recommendations are currently out of stock everywhere I look, obviously much in demand in the current situation. My research has led me to look particularly for the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 and the Logitech C270 (both around £30).

Since typing this I have just been able to order the Logitech direct from their website (£36 including postage) - they say it is in stock (4 - 7 days delivery), though I am slightly sceptical.

Hope you find one.

[Bryn]

Hmm. Having delved deeper, it is not exactly a budget option, even in terms of the Cam Link needed to make the connection.

[Constantbee]

Thanks all This is new territory for us and something I don’t find very easy to do at the best of times I was anticipating a run on webcams etc at the moment, so not surprised they’re selling out. Probably one of the safest businesses to be in right now.

One woodwind teacher friend is already offering lessons on Face Time, which she uses from a phone. Another (older generation) teacher is trying to get started using Zoom. These are people whose incomes are being seriously affected by losing pupils through distancing measure, btw.

I’m afraid this is likely to remain a theoretical exercise for the time being as we’re likely to feel the pinch before long, too, but it doesn’t do any harm to explore all the options and find out what works for other people. Some of the webcam arrangements I’ve seen suggested for online piano teachers have been really quite elaborate, eg not one but 2 top of the range webcams positioned for full coverage of the keyboard.

Another concern would be for the quality of the sound reproduction which becomes more important for teaching on smaller instruments.

[Dave2002]

There are some earlier Zoom (electronics company) models on eBay - such as the HQ2 HD see here - https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...order&_sacat=0 There's also an HQ3 model - one of which has an external input socket - but probably not available right now in the UK. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zoom-Q3HD...kAAOSwFwNePlBa There are variants - some are really quite good. The Blue one is different again - so need to check the specs depending on what you might want to do - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zoom-Q3-H...sAAOSwhaZeYJfq

They have fairly decent sound quality - though not great video - but should be good enough for webchats - and in fact perfectly OK for live recordings of concerts. The only issue is making sure that these function OK as webcams for use with Skype or Zoom - which I think they will, but I'd have to check one more time.

In the meantime we're exploring Zoom (the video comms networking site) as well as using Skype again.

[Bryn]

There are some earlier Zoom (electronics company) models on eBay - such as the HQ2 HD see here - https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...order&_sacat=0 There's also an HQ3 model - one of which has an external input socket - but probably not available right now in the UK. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zoom-Q3HD...kAAOSwFwNePlBa There are variants - some are really quite good.

They have fairly decent sound quality - though not great video - but good enough for webchats - and in fact perfectly OK for live recordings of concerts.

In the meantime we're exploring Zoom (the video comms networking site) as well as using Skype again.

Profiteering prices, there. My Q2n was priced at under £100. Admittedly that was when Maplin was shutting down, though.

[Dave2002]

Profiteering prices, there. My Q2n was priced at under £100. Admittedly that was when Maplin was shutting down, though.

In the current climate it's going to be difficult to argue - either with new or s/h kit. I only put those links up to show the devices - I'm not necessarily recommending the suppliers - some of whom are in Japan anyway, so it might not be possible to get stuff imported.

[Dave2002]

I can hardly believe it. I got my Zoom Q2 HD webcam/camcorder out, looked for the user manual, and got ready to roll. Looked as though it should do webcam with the USB cable. Downloaded the driver for MacOS from the Zoom site. Tried to install, but seemed to need a restart. The hardware works when powered up, but the drivers do need to be sorted.

Disaster! Reboot hung up on restart. Couldn’t fix. Now crossing my fingers very hard.

Turns out I’d done a few backups using Time Machine over the last few days, and today I actually also made some significant improvements to the memory. Looked up how to fix from the TM backup. First booted into Disk Utility, and checked the integrity of the main drive. Took a long while - scary - but eventually returned an OK result. Then decided to risk doing the Restore from the penultimate backup. This erases the main drive - really scary. It’s been going for a few hours - supposed to finish in maybe another 30 - 60 minutes. I shall be delighted if this works, very sad if it doesn’t. That’ll teach me for not doing regular bootable backups.

I probably won’t lose any data - or none of significance - if it works, as I did copy a whole bunch of files to a separate SSD, but it is a real worry. Given the current situation it is pretty vital that I get this up and running again quickly. I have found that Zoom camcorder/microphone to be neat and useful in the past, but I never tried to use it as a webcam before. Zoom should fix the problems with the drivers for MacOS. I’ve never had such a catastrophic failure before.

Still trying to do Skype or Zoom (online meetings). After this problem I tried using the iPad Pro to play Scrabble remotely, which was better than using the laptop a few days ago. My cheap s/h iPhone would have been better, and easier to handle, but I still have to put Skype on that. The Zoom used as a webcam could have been very good, stuck on a tripod - but sadly, due to the software problems I’m still looking at other solutions.

[Dave2002]

Phew - back up and running. Probably not quite the same as before, but mostly seems to work, and I don't think I lost much data - if any.

Base on this sample of one, I can say that Time Machine does work - though that is not a statistical "proof". It just happened to work this time. I'm fairly sure it would have been quicker to restore from a recent bootable backup - if I had done one recently.

[Dave2002]

A year down the line. How have the webcams been? Anybody any views of good ones, or have most of us just used the inbuilt ones in our kit?

[Constantbee]

Missed this when you first posted it, Dave. Thanks for the following up. I've had LOTS of problems with the Logitech Streamcam webcam I eventually bought 12 moths ago. Hopefully your post will galvanise me into having another go at sorting it

Fitting it and getting it work on a desktop was no problem. Making recordings was no problem. Using it to contact someone else, even at home, was. I got a lot of reverb? feedback? - whatever the technical term is. There seemed to be a conflict with some existing speaker software that I wasn't aware of. What came out sounded like two people talking under water.

I spent half an hour with a music teacher friend already using Zoom with her online students. We got as far as identifying that I needed to:

- Disable a menu option called Suppress Intermittent Background Noise
- Disable a menu option called Suppress Persistant Background Noise
- Decheck a menu option called Automatically Adjust Volume

but as my software installation differed from hers we didn't get very far

In the mean time I'd managed to use Zoom quite happily on a tablet for a short course run on Skype by the local authority. I felt more confident because it was obvious that the course providers had the full support of our council's IT department. I began to wonder whether the Streamcam had been a waste of money. I'm still wondering. There it is, gathering dust in front of me ...

How to proceed? Any suggestions gratefully received.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for bumping this. Sorry you seem to have bought a moderately expensive webcam and had no good use of it.

Zoom can be a pain - and you are right that different people have different setups. There are at least three that I can identify - Windows, MacOS and iPad tablets. Zoom does take some getting used to - and one thing which had me stumped for a while was when screen sharing - which seemed straightforward. In some interfaces there are couple of extra boxes to tick - right down at the bottom - to allow the computer audio to be streamed (as well as the microphone input) and one to optimise the video.

For music I agree that you should uncheck the Automatically Adjust Volume option, and probably also set the noise reduction to low or none. You might have to use better microphones for those to work - though my experience suggests that the sound quality may very much depend on the computer or laptop you are using. I bought one of these microphones - currently a few pounds cheaper than when I bought it at £25.49 - and it's quite good. I was wondering whether to pay more and go for a Marantz or better microphone - costing around £50 or even up to £80 - but for the Zoom purpose the Victure seems perfectly adequate. Sadly though, I tried to compare the microphone with the inbuilt one in my iMac, and there's hardly any difference on speech that I can perceive. I've not got round to trying it with music - maybe that would show up differences.

One problem with live music and Zoom is that some instruments can easily overload the microphone and input amp - so a position which works for speech may cause problems with live music - something which we noted when we had a talk by a violinist.
Rather than the "You're still on Mute" notices which seem inevitable with Zoom - we also needed a "You're distorting - please move back 2 feet" card. Of course another source of problems - with for example the microphone I have posted - is that some have additional sensitivity controls, so they need to be set as well as the settings on the computer.

Another problem can arise if you use more than one device - even if they are quite well separated. You may not do that, but if, for example you use an iPad (or a mobile phone) as well as a computer in the same Zoom session, then it's pretty important that these are isolated, preferably acoustically, but also electrically. If both can output audible sound, then even with just one microphone active a feedback situation can arise. Sometimes this gives a very unpleasant effect, while other times it "merely" contributes some extra echo. Some people take to using headphones to minimise that kind of problem. It is possible that you have experienced that if you got a lot of reverb. You can even get that with just one computer and one microphone - and in that case the microphone and output settings need to be adjusted carefully on the computer. You need to set the volume levels high enough on the computer so that speech or any other wanted sounds are audible, yet also not have the microphone settings so high that there will be feedback.

I have wondered whether Lavalier type microphones help to avoid that kind of issue, though they are probably not very good for music. Switching between microphones might also make sense, but trying to do that quickly might be too much for most of us, and the hardware and software which most of us probably use doesn't really make that easy - though a recording or radio/TV studio should find that trivial.

I would be interested to know if anyone does have good success with external videocams - and if so - what did they use. It's been more than a year now that some of us have been using video cameras for various purposes - and I know that some people are now finding a need for more than one so as to improve their interactions in live sessions.

[Constantbee]

Thanks, Dave. Great advice as usual.

Yes, Zoom can be tricky. We've used on a laptop to join remote meetings. It took several goes to get it right.

Yes, it did occur to me that I might get better results if using a microphone, but I'm wary about buying yet another gadget to myself out of a problem

Yes, the quality of the sound production may well depend on the instrument you're using. My teacher friend is a specialist recorder teacher. She's very fussy about optimising the acoustics. She needs to be able to hear her pupils better.

Are we using more than one device at the same time? Yes, I think you might be on to something here, but we'd need some help troubleshooting the problem, and experts are literally few and far between here. I read somewhere that a physical cable connection rather than wi-fi is worth trying.

Oh well, keep trying. I can always sell it, I suppose. There'll be better supported webcams appearing in the market soon enough.

[Dave2002]

Re the microphone quality - possibly the microphone in your laptop isn't going to give the best results. The audio via Zoom and similar can be tricky - but you should check what your microphone sounds like without Zoom. If you think it's acceptable then perhaps getting a "better" one won't really make much difference, and will simply cost you extra money. Try making some recordings on your laptop and assess the quality. If you have Audacity (free) it should be quite easy to make some test recordings. There are other tools as well - but Audacity is good because it's free and also very comprehensive. Though the features can be daunting - but for just making a quick recording and playing it back it's very simple.

I doubt that using a physical cable rather than WiFi is going to make much difference - but that also very much depends.

If you are using more than one device with Zoom at a time - which can happen, possibly deliberately, maybe accidentally - then it is really important to make sure that they are all decoupled acoustically - otherwise feedback can occur. I have noted that even in devices which are far apart - a small amount of noise can set up a horrible ringing or high pitched sound - you don't want that.

Even with just one device there could be problems. Typically you'll want the audio loud enough so that you can hear it, and you'll want the microphone sensitivity high enough so that people can hear you. If the levels of the sensitivity and the volume are too high, then even with just the one connection, there can be a feedback loop - which will introduce a reverberation effect or in the worst cases a rapid onset of a loud and unpleasant noise. Zoom has features to try to minimise those effects, but they do interfere with music. Zoom also uses the level of sound to trigger the channels - it effectively switches to the loudest active source - which is sometimes useful in a conference situation (though not always, as some participants may not be able to gain attention, and others will always be triggering an interaction ..) - and again that is going to mess up the music. There are other technical fixes which can be used to reduce problems, but again, unfortunately, these might make music worse. One is to frequency shift the input signals so that even if there is feedback, the feedback is not reinforcing the input signal. This techique is sometimes used on PA systems, and may be acceptable for speech - though obviously the voices are not raised or lowered in pitch by very much - but could really mess up music.

If you really want to overcome some of the issues you may need a more directional microphone placed so that it picks up the sound of an instrument or speaker, but does not pick up the sound from the inbuilt speaker to any great extent.
I don't know what the characteristics of inbuilt microphones are - but conventionally most microphones have one of (a) an omnidirectional response, (b) a cardiod response or (c) a figure of 8 response. There are refinements, but essentially an omni will pick up sounds roughly equally from everywhere, whereas a cardiod should have a much stronger response at the front than at the back. A figure of 8 will give an output from the Left or Right but not at 90 degrees - but clearly those can be rotated so that they give a response from the front and back - but not at the sides. How they are used depends on the situation.

The Victure microphone I bought has a cardioid response - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Victure-Mic...nference-1080P, though as I already wrote, I can't tell much difference between using that and the inbuilt iMac microphone. They are both pretty much equally good - or bad - depending on how you perceive them. Some microphones have switchable characteristics, but they tend to be more expensive.