Eventually, I found myself interested in the novelty of the on-board H.264 encoder so I acquired a sample of the little Freetalk Everyman Webcam from In-Store Solutions.
The Logitech webcam was one of the first of its kind to be capable of real HD, that is 720p (1280×720 pixels) Within a few months if its release there were a few more HD capable options, including Microsoft’s Lifecam. Engadget recently posted a great comparative review of several HD capable webcams, including the Freetalk Everyman Webcam and the latest from Logitech.
I’ve used the Freetalk Everyman Webcam with a number of Windows XP and Win 7 Pro systems. Using the recent Skype 5.0 beta for Windows I was able to have a three-way video call once, but multi-way calls do not support HD resolution.
In truth, the little Freetalk Everyman Webcam has mostly been connected to my HP Mini 5102 netbook. Superficially this makes little sense since the Mini 5102 has a built-in webcam, but that camera is not HD capable. The built-in webcam also serves as a nice baseline against which to compare the Freetalk Everyman Webcam for Skype.
There is a certain paradox inherent in the fact that netbooks were the first portable computers that tended to have built-in webcams. With their limited CPU and memory resources they are typically less than ideal host platforms for making high-quality video calls.
In general I find that the Freetalk Everyman Webcam does exactly what it claims. As webcams go it’s a fairly typical. It delivers decent, though not outstanding 720p video stream to Skype. It was completely plug-and-play.
For its part, Skype requires a dual-core CPU 1.8 Ghz or faster to even attempt HD video calls, in addition suitable internet bandwidth. My little Mini 5102, with a 1.8 Ghz dual-core Atom, just met this spec.
I found that using the built-in webcam the Mini 5102 was only capable of about 8-10 frame/sec at VGA resolution. In addition, as you can see in the screen shot (above) the video quality was pretty bad. This was entirely expected given the net-book’s hardware profile.
I expected more from the Freetalk webcam, given that the onboard H.264 encoder relieves the host platform of the burden of video encoding. I was not disappointed. In a test call with Jim Courtney I found that the Freetalk camera reliably delivered VGA sized (640×480) pictures at >20 fps, and occasionally delivered bone fide 720p HD video at the promised 22 fps.
The “occasionally” part of that last statement stems from the behavior of the Skype 5.0 beta for Windows, which was a little less impressive. It has a habit of reporting that it has adequate CPU and bandwidth for high-quality HD calls, but then not actually delivering HD video. Since there are no user adjustable controls as to the video size, quality or frame rate I could not force the video into 720p.
As we were on a call over the course of about 20 minutes we found that the frame size adjusted dynamically to the momentary network conditions. Both of us were on cable-modem-based internet connections that should have easily provided the 1 Mbit reportedly required in each direction, but the call toggled between VGA and 720p periodically.
Sadly, I was not able to take any screen shots of that first call with Jim. It was easy to see when the camera popped into 720p mode because that was the only time when the image changed to an easily recognizable 16:9 aspect ratio. In VGA mode it remain in the more commonplace 4:3 aspect ratio depicted in all of my screen captures.
The screen shot above was taken later on a call between two skype accounts on my desktop PC and netbook. The head and shoulders image of me is the Freetalk cameras while the lower image is the Logitech webcam.
Incidentally, I was concerned that my local wifi might constitute a problem for video calling, so I made all the test calls with a gigabit wired connection directly back to my switch. I also monitored the CPU status of the netbook during those initial test calls, finding that it varied from 80% to 100% of both CPU cores.
As a further experiment I put the Freetalk camera on my wife’s desktop PC and called from her Skype account to Skype on my desktop PC, which has the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 attached. The idea was to stage a call that was wholly contained on my local network so that bandwidth should not have been an issue.
Monitoring the traffic across my router I was able to confirm that the video stream was not leaving my home network.
Unfortunately, the Skype 5 Beta was less than cooperative. It somehow reached the conclusion that I didn’t have enough bandwidth for an HD call, so it would only pass VGA resolution video. This is the example screenshot that you see above.
In trying to record some of the cameras output I found that there is literally no software beyond Skype that will access the H.264 streams that it creates. I found a program called VODBurner that is specifically designed to record Skype video calls, so that is how I captured the following sample clip. This clip is an excerpt from a conversation with fellow voip- blogger Dave Michels.
For the moment the Freetalk camera seems to be a Skype-specific one trick pony. Nothing else that had on-hand, including the Adobe Production Bundle, could access the video from the Freetalk camera. This is a pity as there are other applications I use, like Dim Dim online presentations, that could benefit from access to the camera.
I’m told that the newly released SkypeKit includes access to the APIs that allow for integration with the Freetalk camera. Perhaps some developers will make use of this to make the Freetalk camera more generally useful with other applications.
The Freetalk Everyman Webcam makes notably better video than the HP Mini’s built-in webcam, but not as good as my existing Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. Since the Logitech camera costs twice as much as the Freetalk webcam I guess that’s to be expected.
In conclusion, the Freetalk Everyman Webcam for Skype does exactly what it promises. It delivers Skype a video stream at up to 720p and at reasonable frame rates. The video looks decent, although not outstanding.
The on-board video encoding eases the burden on the host system, making it possible to have better quality Skype video calls on relatively humble hardware. If Skype defines your sole need for a webcam then for the rather modest asking price of $50 the Freetalk Everyman Webcam is a reasonable choice.