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  • EnzoFX - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    Hope they bring that support to the C910 as well. Well @ 15fps I guess it's not worth it. Still, 720p could be better supported in my experiences.
  • ImSpartacus - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    If the encoding hardware is not present in the C910 (which I own), then it's not possible.

    But in all honesty, I'm not missing much. 720p is a huge improvement. 1080p is mostly just a bandwidth clogger at this point. If you've got the hardware and the connection for it, then great, but you're not missing much otherwise.
  • pixelstuff - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    The C910 can currently do 1080p recording just not live streaming. So theoretically it could do 1080p live streaming if your CPU is fast enough and upload bandwidth is high enough.
  • ganeshts - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    If there is no encoding hardware present, you are at the mercy of the USB 2.0 bandwidth (it is transferring raw video data). That is the reason why the frame rate is very low when recording at 1080p. I think no one will choose 1080p at 5 - 10 fps over 720p at 30 fps (720p30 is the acceptable limit for USB transfer without encoding)
  • piroroadkill - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    Really, how many could do an H.264 30fps stream justice. You need about 10Mbps to cut the mustard at 1080p using x264, I don't know what encoder they're using exactly, or what bitrate, but I guarantee most people buying this will not have the upload rate to cope with it, and you'll get a compressed mush going out that means you may as well have bought a regular 640x480 webcam with a good frame rate and less compression.

    I guess it's good for video conferencing in places that do have good connections, though!
  • prophet001 - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    exactly what I was thinking
  • ganeshts - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    We are comparing apples and oranges here. 1080p needs 10 Mbps for movies and other videos where there is lot of movement and scenes change rapidly. In a HD teleconferencing / video chat solution, there is almost always a static background and the movement is limited to a specific region in the usual use cases. Higher frame rate is needed for fluidity, but a good encoder can take advantage of the static regions to reduce the bandwidth requirements. I will be checking out a review unit of the C920 and will report back on the bitrate used / quality of the video after extensive testing.
  • MrMilli - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    You're linking to the wrong Creative webcam. The Creative Live! Cam InPerson HD Webcam has the HW encoder.
  • ganeshts - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    Thanks for pointing that out.. With a number of Creative webcam Amazon pages open in various tabs, there was a slip up (and all of those had similar bad reviews!). This has been fixed now.
  • Dreamwalker - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    is a Harmony remote, that can aslo be used for a HTPC out of the box (with a nano recevier), that has a smal QWERT backlit keyboard on the other side, and acts like a Logitech Air mouse.

    Harmony remote + Logitech Air mouse + backlit keyboard + nano receiver = the only thing I really need

    Of course for not more than 120€
  • Pessimism - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    This camera will have one large, buggy, bloated driver release of ten times the size it needs to be. It will nag you to check for updates constantly, but never find any. When Windows 8 is released, the camera will be declared obsolete and Logitech will remove all support for it from their driver package, rendering it a useless paperweight unless you
    A) run an old OS
    B) hunt through questionable websites to find an old copy of the driver package that DID work for the camera.
  • Mr Perfect - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    It's not actually said in the article, but the C920 is doing 30FPS at 1080p?
  • ganeshts - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    That is unknown at this point of time. I have asked Logitech for clarifications, and I will be checking out a review unit when one becomes available.
  • ganeshts - Friday, January 6, 2012 - link

    I have updated the piece to include what Logitech confirmed for me today (1080p at 30 fps is supported)
  • syxbit - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    If Google has their way, VP8 will be used by most video chat protocols very soon
    Skype already uses it, and Google's own video chat will start using it very soon
  • ganeshts - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    VP8 is good for YouTube videos. In video chatting, you require much better real time encoding capabilities (get maximum quality at low bitrates). The last time I checked, H.264 was faring much better in that respect:

    https://ritdml.rit.edu/handle/1850/14525


    At HD resolution (720p and above), H.264 is significantly better than VP8 due to its superior motion estimation and adaptive coding.


    Also, both Intel and AMD have put in H.264 encoding engines in their products and it is quite trivial to have a USB3 webcam send raw video data to that engine for encoding and use by the chat application.

    H.264 has more hardware momentum behind it. That said, I like what Google is doing with VP8 -- making the licensing entities realize that they were overcharging for H.264 (and it ought to be free for non-commercial / web use!)
  • Interesting - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    What good is this if Skype continues to use VP8, and why would Logitech mention Skyping in 1080p with an H264 encoder. Last time I checked, Skype has been using VP8 for sometime now. Is that about to change?
  • ganeshts - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    Nope, I have info from multiple sources that Skype HD video calling is H.264 based.

    We have this webcam, and also the TelyHD which was announced today. The TelyHD is not a webcam, but more of a TV video conferencing solution (camera sitting atop the TV, recording video in H.264 using Tegra 2 encoder and then pushing it out to Skype)
  • JonnyO - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link

    I have some lower-end machines (Zotac AD03BR) at work that a C910 is virtually unusable on and I was hoping that the C920's on-board encoder would help, but the testing today showed that the difference was minimal. This isn't necessarily a criticism of the camera, as this computer was not designed for such a task. But the moral of the story is not to expect the encoder to be a game-changer.
  • TheLostOne - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link

    How does this camera perform with live production or other video/web conference software?
    I suppose since it's doing hardware encoding most software will decode it and re-encode it again. This would probably cause a bit of delay and stress out the CPU more again.
  • zooter - Saturday, December 10, 2016 - link

    in case there is some error you can quick fix the webcam.. many people these days are encountering the same issue
    http://www.tech365today.com/2016/08/21/fix-windows...

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