Hi all
On the 31st May I did another comparison of the ToUcam vs the V-Talk Tracer CCD webcam.
For those that came late to class, I've got a V-Gear TalkCam Tracer CCD on loan from GDBInternational. It's a true USB2 CCD webcam with the same chip as the ToUcam.
Here's a comparison on Saturn I did a few months ago.
Unfortunately the seeing wasn't the best (in fact it was very average), but the comparison still highlighted a few things.
I tried 3 capture programs with the TalkCam Tracer CCD:
1. K3CCDTools.
Not successful. Massive amount of dropped frames and the driver wouldn't allow me to modify the exposure, so the image is horribly overexposed in teh centre.
2. VirtualDub
At 640x480 and 800x600 I got lots of dropped frames. It did give the best colour though, because the driver doesn't allow any manual white balance settings. At 320x240 it proved ok (less dropped frames), and looks fairly sharp thanks to the reduction size.
Also got about 10 frames of plain white when you press "capture" before you'd see it actually see what you're capturing.
No live adjustment mode - that is, you see a preview screen, but if you want to adjust settings, you can't see the result of that until you close the dialog and wait a second or two before it refreshes with the new settings.
3. PCCAM (same as AMCAP) (came with the camera)
Best in terms of capturing without dropping frames. Was able to capture at 10fps uncompressed without dropping frames. The capture program itself is absolutely shocking though - it's as basic as you can get. Doesn't rename files with each capture, no live adjustment preview, etc.
Also absolutely horrible colour (very red colour cast). it took quite a bit of work in post processing to get it to look like it does.
All in all, the ToUcam still wins hands down. I think the TalkCam has potential, but the problems are all in the driver.
You get differences if you use WDM vs VFW, colour is horrible, trying to adjust exposure and gain is horrible, the capture software is horrible.
I still need to do a few more tests to verify what settings are different and see if I can find the right capture program that might iron out some of the problems with it.
I imagine a better driver might sort some of these problems out, but apparently they're not redeveloping the driver anymore. I guess I could ask for the source code or something, but I don't know what my chances will be
