Video Cameras for Conferencing

Typical good conferencing cameras have a single 1/4" CCD cameras with 380,000 effective pixels (768Hx494V), a horizontal resolution of 450 lines and a vertical resolution of 350 TV lines. Typical SNR is 46 dB. Modern professional TV cameras (such as the VHS and 8 mm tapes deliver about 200 lines of horizontal resolution, S/VHS and Hi8 have a resolution of 400-420 lines, while DV can record about 500 lines.

Modern digital video (DV) cameras use IEEE 1394 (FireWire) to transmit compressed video.

Firewire cameras produce 640x480 pixels:

• Fire-i
• Fire-i400
• Sony 1.4 Mp
• Point Grey Research: Dragonfly camera module and other firewire cameras
• Sony, Imaging source, up to 1280x960 resolution

Some digital still cameras can also be used as video cameras, for example, the Mustek VDC 300 (review). Image Acquire compares a number of cameras.

The Gigascale Silicon Research Center provides an overview of video use, including capture of PowerPoint slides.

• Comparison of some video cameras (Wolfgang Schell)
• Winnov: frame grabber for PCI and ISA, camera
• Imperx high-resolution (megapixel) video cameras, PCMCIA frame grabbers
• SMaL video camera and still camera
• Palmvid small security cameras
• VideoLabs has ceiling-mounted document cameras
• Connectix
• Pixera small video cameras
• CCD lenses
• Howard Enterprises

  model	CCD	pixels	lines	SNR (dB)
  HA6300	1/3"	410k	450	45

• The Imaging Source
• Picturephone Direct (distributor for Canon, Howard Enterprises, Philips, Sony, Toshiba cameras)
• Toshiba
• 7E correspondent video phone, with H.263, self-contained.

USB

USB takes much less CPU than parallel port cameras and produces much better quality. The best quality and performance is achieved with a real grabber card. Peter Parnes experience is that that the CPU load can vary a lot with different USB-WDM drivers (for Win98, he recommends service pack 1, DirectX6.1 and DirectMedia6.0 as they all seem to affect USB grabbing).

• Intel PC Camera (Windows 95/98 only, not Windows 2000 or NT)
• iREZ USB MicroCam
• Logitech makes a range of USB cameras, including a laptop version (QuickCam for Notebooks)

Cameras with Network (Ethernet) Interfaces

These are often used for web cams, so many currently only support retrieval by HTTP.

• Elphel high-resolution camera
• Tom's Hardware overview
• eCAMit
• Axis 200+ web camera, with HTTP access
• JVC VNC3WU with pan/tilt, VNC30U streaming media
• Trango Systems: wireless systems for cameras
• IQinvision (high-res)
• Baxall IP camera
• StarDot network camera
• InetCam
• D-Link wireless Internet camera with built-in web server
• Pentax VersaCam (Vadem VG330 processor)
• Panasonic KX-HCM8 and KX-HCM10 (motorized pan) web cameras, with SMTP or HTTP delivery
• JVC is developping a camera with MPEG1 compression. Contact:

  Takuya Tsushima
  Video System Development Laboratories
  Victor Company of Japan, Limited
  12, 3-chome, Moriya-cho, Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama,
  Kanagawa 221, Japan
  
  Phone: +81 45 450 2458
  Fax: +81 45 450 2469
  EMail: tsushima@krhm.jvc-victor.co.jp
  

Motorized pan and tilt

• Videobotics (also remote control for videodecks)
• micCommand positions camera based on input from automatic mixer
• TrackerCam: USB-controlled pan-tilt platform
• Directed Perception: serial-port controllable platform
• Telemetrics PTZ Serial Control Panel (Canon)
• Telemetrics control panel for PTZ cameras
• Personal Robots SPY-CYE camera-equipped robot
• CamMotion PTB
• Trippy, motorized pan-tilt
• Panja AXB-PT10 RS-232
• Panasonic KX-DP702
• Canon VC-C3, single 1/4" CCD with 380 kpixels (450 lines horizontal, 350 lines vertical resolution), with RS-232 zoom, pan and tilt control, which can track people, be preset via switches to different positions or faces. Note: Rotation limited to +/- 50 degrees, tilt to +/- 20 degrees.
• Sony EVID30, 12x zoom, 768(H)x492(V) pixels, ± 100 degrees horizonal, ± 25 degrees vertical
• Human movement tracking technology: resources
• Millibots use ultrasound localization, aided by a radio pulse
• RobotStore has Polaroid ranging kits, e.g., for Basic Stamps
• ParkerVision CameraMan system; also has a student system that focuses on the student pressing a button
• Automatic camera tracking system
• Telemetrics
• American Dynamics
• Vicon
• Molynx
• Bescor MP-101 motorized pan head
• Pelco
• Overview of pan/tilt devices suitable for robotics
• Fujinon

The MASH toolkit has client/server controls for the Sony EVID30/EVID31 and Canon VCC1/VCC3 (and some other RS232-connected devices). The current camera-client user interface handles tilt, pan, zoom, and shared presets. (Todd Hodes). Another, stand-alone, camera control application is available from LBL.