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| The Software | |
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Now here's the most critical
part when using the camera: It's the interface in which you use it to make
videos and grab all of your images. Luckily Creative Labs did this pretty
good, so you'll get no complaints from me. But here's the caveat: it's
definately a 1.0 version. And to make matters worse, it is very buggy and
sometimes downright frustrating to use.
First the software could never initially detect my camera without me loading the WebCam monitoring software. This is not what you are normally supposed to use. The WDM imaging device drivers does not even recognize the camera when it starts up. This is a serious flaw and needs to be addressed. Second, in order to get the primary WebCam Go Control software to even load the camera you have to load the legacy VFW software driver first. This will get the camera to start functioning, but you will no longer be able to access the camera's memory. You will then have to switch back into the WDM driver once you've got the camera working. But if you don't want to keep switching between device drivers, the legacy VFW driver works well, but it does not offer anywhere near the kind of capture and video modes that the WDM driver has. Unfortunately this is also the only current driver in which you can actually capture video--the WDM fails whenever you try to capture anything--another serious flaw. The camera's memory works quite well, and unlike the "Live Cam" section, I have not noticed any bugs. This is also where the software really shines. You can connect and disconnect the camera and the software can re-establish linkage with the camera to grab new images off the memory. Transfering images is quite smooth and thankfully the USB's speed is quite fast unlike parallel port connections. The photo album software works quite well and does not exibit any deficencies that the video software still has. |
Created by Jeremy Horne © 1998-2000
