Streaming Video from a Camcorder / DV Cam

I recently needed to stream video for presentations held inside a tent located in a parking lot. Webcams, even ones with good low light did not work. The best results I had were with the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000. Unfortunately, the ambient light reflected off the surface of the tent and made the lightness and darkness variance too extreme. The screen shots below are from the Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision.

In order to find another solution it had to meet the following conditions:

• Be recognized by Windows Media Encoder to broadcast the stream
• Stream at greater than 320 by 480
• Work good in low light conditions where the amount of light fluctuates
• Not turn off automatically

Potential solutions that I tried included:

• Camcorder / DV Cam from Sony, JVC, and Panasonic
• Surveillance Camcorder that uses USB
• Video Capture equipment such as Pinnacle Studio Moviebox Ultimate
• Software such as WebcamDV and DVDriver

After getting help from Vital Stream, Best Buy(not helpful), Circuit City, Fry’s(not helpful), and numerous sites/blogs, I finally have a solution:

• Dell Laptop running Win XP with Windows Media Encoder 9
• Firewire Card for a Dell Laptop
• Firewire cable
• Panasonic GS320
• VitalStream Project to host the web broadcast

The Panasonic GS320 has good low light (1 Lux) and is documented as Streaming over USB. It is not recognized automatically. I had taken my laptop to Circuit City and Fry’s and plugged in many camcorders. After installing the driver and setting the camcorder to the PC menu option, the USB stream worked nicely. Unfortunately, the camcorder only streams at 320 by 240 over USB (2.0).

Unlike most Sony camcorders, the Panasonic has both Firewire(iLink) and USB. I was going to try to use WebCamDV but first tried to see if Windows Media Encoder would auto detect the GS320 as a device. Fortunately, the GS320 was recognized by Windows Media Encoder and it streamed at 720 by 480. The GS320 does not shut down after a few minutes and has stayed on for over three hours during testing (and a couple of accidental drops).

The real trick to using a Camcorder / DV Cam as a Webcam is to make sure it has software feature that allow it to stream to the computer. I would caution about WebcamDV software because the un-install did not really uninstall and I had to remove keys from my registry.

Once you are streaming there are few things noteworthy in Windows Media Encoder.

• If you are not sure of the output size do a test using Full Screen Video as the Encoding Options setting for Video. It will show you the size in the Preview field in the upper right windows on the Media Encoder.
• If you need to get a custom size for the output stream from the Media Encoder, click on the properties button on the menu bar. Then click the Compression tab and then the Edit button. Click the tab with the correct Kbps and then change the video size. If you have it set to Full Screen you will need to uncheck the “Same as video input” checkbox.
• In order to have a version of the file to play on demand, check the “Archive a copy of the broadcast to file” button on the Archive File screen. If you did not do this, you can click on the Output tab after clicking on Properties. I then took the archive file into Camtasia to remove the unneeded beginning and ending video and to get a better compression ratio. I also saved the video into different formats so people could choose which size video they wished to watch.
• If you need to have a solution for high and low bandwidth, make sure to select multiple rates in the Windows Media Wizard.