How to Setup a Webcam

HOW TO SETUP A WEBCAM

How to setup a streaming web cam with Cambrosia Transmitter Technology.
Cambrosia provides FREE help to all.
On the surface, setting up a WebCam can be a very intimidating project. The learning curve is short and the whole project eventually becomes a lot of fun. You will quickly find people waving at your WebCam while talking on a cellular phone. This document is designed to help you setup your WebCam using Cambrosia Transmitter.

Fo examples of Webcams using our technology see the following page.

Before you do anything, you must first decide on placement of your WebCam. The camera should be pointed at a relatively interesting spot to keep your visitor entertained and at your site longer. The camera should not be pointing directly into the sun at any part of the day - this is an easy way to destroy it.

If you are going to place the camera outside, make sure you purchase a suitable protective housing designed for outdoor cameras. The housing should ideally have a heater and blower inside to keep the glass from fogging up. You can usually find these, and the cameras to go inside them, from companies that sell alarm equipment. A really nice touch to any WebCam is multiple cameras! Ask the video equipment store for a automatic switcher. You can then plug (usually) up to four cameras into the switcher and let them rotate every 20-30 seconds between different views. It really makes for a spectacular WebCam.

Quality really shows when it comes to optics. You definitely get what you pay for so do it right the first time! I strongly discourage those cheap cameras that you can buy in computer stores or are commonly advertised as some sort of web cam package. They usually don't have a nice lens or automatic aperture and are almost always a pile of junk with a flashy package. Their white balance is usually off, as well, providing for color that just looks terrible.

If the camera is pointing outside then you should also get a polarizing filter to attach on the lens. This will get rid of the glare and make the color saturation significantly better. You can get a polarizing filter from any camera shop. If your camera is moving (and auto-focusing), then get a circular polarizing filter.

If you are going to run an indoor camera, get yourself a nice home video camera. Before you purchase it, make sure it will stay on without any tape in it and without turning itself off. Many cameras turn off after about 15 minutes of idle time. Although not mandatory, your picture quality will be much nicer if the camera has an SVHS output. This will provide for a far superior signal being fed into your encoder. (garbage in / garbage out)

Another nice touch to an indoor camera is good lighting. If your scene is going to be inside then try and keep from mixing your light sources, if at all possible. Modern video cameras can usually do a fair job compensating for mixed light sources, but you can always see the quality in lighting that is done right. Fluorescents are a terrible light source, unless you buy the special ones at 5600K and set the camera to outdoor.

The next step is to decide what kind of audio content you want to provide. The sky is really the limit here. You can plug a microphone into a sound card and send live dialogue, put CD's into the encoder and play them, or find yourself a good radio tuner and send the radio stations feed to your visitors. Most radio stations won't have a problem with this as long as you cybercast their entire feed. That is, you can't cut out their commercials and put your own in. You can put your own commercials in front of the WebCam stream or maybe even at the end. (talk to your attorney)

Think of the audio equipment as a entirely separate setup from which you will require a line level mono output. This usually needs to plug into a mini jack on the back of the encoder. If you are going to do any sort of mixing, I strongly suggest plugging the mixer (Radio Shack makes a good one) into the encoder and all other devices into the mixer. Make sure you set zero on the audio meters of the mixer to match the meters on the encoder sound card software. Don't go over zero! Ever! You will clip your signal and make it sound really bad. Compressed audio does not have nearly the headroom as analog audio does, so make sure you do not go into the red on the audio meter.

You are now ready to setup a computer to act as an encoder. This encoder must be plugged into a broadband Internet connection with at least 150k reliable upstream bandwidth available. A static IP address is not required but desirable. You should also subscribe to either a business plan or one of the gaming plans that the cable and DSL companies offer these days. These types of plans nicely accommodate for the bandwidth requirements of the encoder.

Most any modern Windows PC will work as an encoder. However, the faster the computer, the busier the scene can be because the encoder will be able to process data more efficiently. Windows 2000 seems to run the best, NT/2000 will work just fine. Get yourself a decent audio card and a Happauge video card for the video capture. As this computer will be plugged into the network 24/7, I strongly recommend purchasing a cable/DSL router, such as Netgear or Linksys. These units have built-in firewalls, preventing unauthorized users from shutting down your encoder or using it as a zombie to levy DoS attacks on the net. This will also let you share the Internet circuit with other computers in the area.

You should also download and install the WinVNC software. WinVNC will let Cambrosia Support login to your computer during an emergency situation and configure Transmitter/Encoder setup if you are not around or having extraordinary problems. Cambrosia Support will give you a password to setup in the software.

MAKE SURE to configure the cable/DSL router so the port that you are using is mapped to the encoder an open to the Internet.