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iFive Webcam
Review
Hands On Review: iFive Webcam
by Julie Strietelmeier
Last date revised: 03/25/99
Program Requirements:
Desktop:
Windows 98
Free USB port
The iFive WebCam by AIMS is one of the first USB webcams available.
This WebCam comes with a nice bundle of software including Howdy,
VDOPhone, and M@X.
iFive camera specs:
Optical system : ¼" CCD
Active pixels CCD : 512 (H) x 582 (V)
Output resolutions : CIF 352x288 pixels, 15 frames per second
QCIF 176x144 pixels, 24 frames per second
Sub-QCIF 128x96 pixels, 24 frames per second
White balance : Automatic/Fixed mode (Selectable via software)
Microphone : Electret
Signal to noise ratio : > 48 dB
Gamma : 0.45
Gain control : Automatic
Iris control : Electronic
Synchronization : Internal free running
Video output : Digital via USB compliant with H263 and H261
Power supply : 5VDC/<2.5W
Control : Camera functions and frame rate are controllable via
software
Viewing angle : 51x39 degree
Lens mount : Integrated, 3.8mm F3.0
Dimensions : 77 (W) x 62 (H) x 84 (D) mm
Interface : One USB cable (2 meters)
 
The iFive has just one cable coming out of it and that is the
USB cable. You don't have to worry about power as it gets this
from the USB port. Installing the drivers was pretty easy and
thorough instructions were included. I REALLY like USB. In my
opinion, it's the best thing to happen to PC's in a very long
time. No more IRQ conflicts! Just plug and play.
The camera is small and compact. It sits on a removable rubber
base that lets you easily adjust the angle and direction that
the camera is in. The front of the camera has a green LED that
lights up when the camera is plugged into the computer. There
is also a small microphone on the front of the camera. I found
this microphone work great. It was able to pick up my voice just
fine. The lens on the camera can be adjusted by unscrewing it.
This allows you to focus very close to the lens (even as close
as an inch or so away). The lens can also be removed by completely
unscrewing it.
The software package that comes with the iFive will let you do
video conferencing, video email and multimedia postcards. VDOPhone
is the video conferencing software package. It is similar to Microsoft
NetMeeting (which it is also compatible with). With iFive and
the VDOPhone you can create a virtual business card that includes
your photo, your name, your email address and a brief description.
These Virtual Business Cards will be displayed with each incoming
call, for screening purposes. You can also build up a photo album
of your friends so that dialing is just as simple as clicking
on their picture. As with Microsoft NetMeeting, the software requires
that you log into a server in order to talk with people. I found
that the VDOPhone server was much easier to get connected to than
the NetMeeting servers. The VDOPhone server is separated into
'clubs'. This is supposed to help keep children more safe in the
video chat areas. Some of the clubs are: Friends and Family, Ham
Radio, and Movie Fans. Unfortunately, even in Friends and Family
you run into perverts. While I was testing the cam and software,
I had a shirtless guy want to show me his 'body' <sigh>...
Other than that, the VDOPhone software is easy to use and setup.
The M@X software package is included for sending video email
messages. This package boasts of having 250kb per minute compression
rates. This software lets you set the compression rate has high
or low as you wish. It saves the video files with a .AVM suffix.
It also (I found this out by accident) saves the file in your
root directory as a standard .AVI file. The .AVI files it creates
are very large (7meg or so for less than 10 secs of video). I
created 3 videos with M@X set at different compression rates.
You can download the files below and check out the quality of
the video.
M@XMail-big.avm - 89k Set at the lowest compression rate (biggest
file size).
M@XMail-med.avm - 31k Set at the medium compression rate.
M@XMail-sm.avm - 27k Set at the highest compression rate (smallest
file size).
maxplayer.zip - 147k .ZIP file.
Once you create the video, you can then email it using either
a MAPI email program or the built in email program. I could not
get the built in program to work but once I set Outlook Express
as my default simple MAPI device, it worked great.
The other software package that is included with the iFive camera
is Howdy. Howdy lets you create multimedia postcards that you
can email to people. You can pick background pictures and frames
that you place an image and/or video on top of. You can also add
audio and text to your postcard.
This program is ok... but I doubt if I would really use it that
much. For one thing, the file size for a postcard that has a short
video, music, image and some text is about a meg. It's about 150k
smaller if you don't include the player with the file. You do
have the option to save it to a disk, email it or even create
a webpage out of it (this just sends the postcard to Howdy's webserver
so that the person you're sending it to can get it from there
instead of through email).
All in all, this is a decent little camera for the money. It's
easy to set up. The Video quality is adequate and the software
bundle is nice. The best part of the whole package is that it's
USB and is easy to set up.
Price: $149.95
Pros:
USB
Nice software bundle
Cons:
I never did figure out how to take a still image shot.
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