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eCam Desktop
Video Camera
Webcam Review
Hands On Review: eCam Desktop Video Camera
by Don Damiani
Last date revised: 03/15/1999
Program Requirements:
Desktop:
Windows 95
System Configuration:
Pentium 75mhz or faster
Bi-directional Parallel Port, (ECP for optimal performance)
16MB RAM min.
Sound card, microphone, speakers.
Enough free disk space to store your videos.
The eCam from Newcom Inc. is a desktop digital video camera that
you can use to take videos, and email them to others. The idea
sounded great. A camera small enough to stash in the laptop case,
and all the hardware cables were included. Here are the actual
hardware specs:
508 x 492 pixel resolution color CCD
Fast f/2.0 aperture, 3.5 mm lens with 48 degree view
Variable focus lens with focus range of 0.5 inches to infinity
Auto brightness and hue controls
Software control of saturation, white and black levels
Video input to any Windows 95 PC with a Bi-directional Parallel
Port
Live video preview and capture at up to 16.7 million colors
Supports video resolutions of 320 x 240, 240 x 180 and 160 x 120
Video capture frame rates up to 30 frames per second
24 bit still image capture at resolutions of 1600 x 1200, 1024
x 768, 640 x 480, and 320 x 240
6 foot Parallel Port connection cable with separate pass through
keyboard power adapter no external power adapter required
Designed to sit on the desktop or on top of your monitor
Non-slip weighted base for easy aiming and focus adjustments
Standard tripod mount
Video for Windows driver works with popular video editing and
video conferencing software
Real time video compression hardware supporting the proprietary
VGPixel video compression algorithm
IEEE1284 level 2 compliant with Nibble and ECP support
Unfortunately, performance was not what I expected. First of all,
I should mention that although the ECam web site has driver for
Windows NT 4.0, their technical support told me that "the
ECam will not work on the NT platform.". This was good to
know, since I spent days trying to get it working on my NT system.
(I thought, since I found an NT driver on their web site, that
it was supported.)
So, we went and loaded the drivers on a Windows95, 400mhz machine.
ECam worked, but the quality of the video was not that good. The
screen display of the live camera picture was grainy, and it stopped
and started often. When I made a little video recording, it was't
smooth at all. Also, while running the software, mouse movement
wasn't smooth either... it was choppy. The software saved the
video clips with an .AVI extension but I couldn't get them to
play in the regular Windows Media player.
For the price, there are probably better cameras and software
out there.
Price: $99.95
Pros:
Cons:
Slowed the whole system down while recording video.
Grainy video.
Wouldn't work with NT.
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