camera didnt' work in XP, alas.

I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
surplus stuff, and I think some of it really is. Last summer they had a
batch of portable AC's of 3 different brands, and if they weren't
surplus last summer, at least they were this summer when they sold the
ones they couldn't sell last year. And they have a very strange
collection of food.

The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
bought at a hamfest, so I thought I had a decent chance of tying it to a
long pole and inspecting my second floor gutters, but I'll do that next
summer.

However I did try to use it with XP and it didnt' work. Didnt' come
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

Alas, I only have one person I could video Skype with, my niece, 22, and
I found out just tonight that she's not talking to her father, that she
defriended his wife, and apparently defriended me, even though I didn't
do anything. She didn't reply to two of my emails either. She'll
probably get over this, but the big issue for me is, What good is my
camera now?


Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,
but if you know something else by heart, still appreciated. It's for my
organ donor card. I wrote them, "Why do I need a picture? If you get
the wrong guy and you take his organs when he didn't sign up, you're
ahead. And if I'm dead, it doesn't matter what I look like." The
answer was that if a next-of-kin sees the card with the picture on it,
he's less likely to say No. I guess the picture makes it like a
personal request. But my n-o-k lives 1000 miles away and won't see the
card anyhow. Maybe the card will help me cash checks.

(I've already aged out of giving bone marrow. Apparently you have to
be 60 or 62 or less. I don't get it. I thought bone marrow was hard to
match and it seems to work for me. Surely I've made some new blood
in the last 6 years.)

On 10/07/2015 02:43 AM, micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
surplus stuff, and I think some of it really is. Last summer they had a
batch of portable AC's of 3 different brands, and if they weren't
surplus last summer, at least they were this summer when they sold the
ones they couldn't sell last year. And they have a very strange
collection of food.

The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
bought at a hamfest, so I thought I had a decent chance of tying it to a
long pole and inspecting my second floor gutters, but I'll do that next
summer.

However I did try to use it with XP and it didnt' work. Didnt' come
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

Alas, I only have one person I could video Skype with, my niece, 22, and
I found out just tonight that she's not talking to her father, that she
defriended his wife, and apparently defriended me, even though I didn't
do anything. She didn't reply to two of my emails either. She'll
probably get over this, but the big issue for me is, What good is my
camera now?


Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,
but if you know something else by heart, still appreciated. It's for my
organ donor card. I wrote them, "Why do I need a picture? If you get
the wrong guy and you take his organs when he didn't sign up, you're
ahead. And if I'm dead, it doesn't matter what I look like." The
answer was that if a next-of-kin sees the card with the picture on it,
he's less likely to say No. I guess the picture makes it like a
personal request. But my n-o-k lives 1000 miles away and won't see the
card anyhow. Maybe the card will help me cash checks.

(I've already aged out of giving bone marrow. Apparently you have to
be 60 or 62 or less. I don't get it. I thought bone marrow was hard to
match and it seems to work for me. Surely I've made some new blood
in the last 6 years.)



I never ever just plug my camera into the computer...I always take the
card out and use a reader.

On Wed, 07 Oct 2015 03:43:45 -0400, micky
wrote:

I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
surplus stuff, and I think some of it really is. Last summer they had a
batch of portable AC's of 3 different brands, and if they weren't
surplus last summer, at least they were this summer when they sold the
ones they couldn't sell last year. And they have a very strange
collection of food.

The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
bought at a hamfest, so I thought I had a decent chance of tying it to a
long pole and inspecting my second floor gutters, but I'll do that next
summer.

However I did try to use it with XP and it didnt' work. Didnt' come
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

Alas, I only have one person I could video Skype with, my niece, 22, and
I found out just tonight that she's not talking to her father, that she
defriended his wife, and apparently defriended me, even though I didn't
do anything. She didn't reply to two of my emails either. She'll
probably get over this, but the big issue for me is, What good is my
camera now?


You probably just need the right XP software/driver to get it going
and Vista may have it built in. I have several of these web cams
laying around but I don't really use any of them. Are there any
numbers on it at all that you can google?

Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once.

Don't you have a digital still camera?

micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
surplus stuff, and I think some of it really is. Last summer they had a
batch of portable AC's of 3 different brands, and if they weren't
surplus last summer, at least they were this summer when they sold the
ones they couldn't sell last year. And they have a very strange
collection of food.

The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
bought at a hamfest, so I thought I had a decent chance of tying it to a
long pole and inspecting my second floor gutters, but I'll do that next
summer.

However I did try to use it with XP and it didnt' work. Didnt' come
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

snip

USB webcams consist of two chips. A sensor chip (the one that takes
the picture), and a controller chip (the one that transmits the picture
to the PC in packets).

The webcam can be UVC compliant. That is a standard defined by usb.org
designed to make it easier to use webcams. The device declares its "class"
in a data field when the OS is probing the thing.

Other webcams don't support UVC. They are "custom" hardware devices,
and the USB configuration space info will say they're "other" and
not "UVC". Such webcams, even if they're $4, are only worth buying
if they come with the installer CD. I've seen such webcams for
sale on the 'net, without CDs, and all I can do is warn people
to stay away. I find the sites that claim to have drivers
for such things, there is a tendency for malware to be in
the driver. That's why you want the CD. And scan the CD contents
anyway.

Now, the observation that the camera works in Vista, suggests
it is UVC. And with most OSes, the trick is to "get it to appear"
when it is supposed to show up. If something is busted on an
OS that prevents automatic detection and installation, then you
will have trouble using it. On the WinXP machine, you'd check
Device Manager and see if any sort of new entry appears
when the camera is plugged in (while the OS is running).
Even hearing a sound effect from the computer speakers,
is some sorta diagnostic info...

On my hardware store webcam device, you actually have to
flip the "power switch" on it, before it will appear :-)

If you want to learn more about your USB camera, use USBTreeView.
The Microsoft version known as UVCView, is too hard to get
to. And this program is functionally equivalent. Download link
is 90% of the way down the page.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html

If you look at the screen shots, you'll see that
the output is "techie" output. If you wanted to share
something like that, see if you can save the output as
text, then upload it using pastebin.com (a site for
uploading text files). As taking screenshots just
won't work in this case - the output from a camera,
would require scrolling the window on the right,
many many times.

*******

This sample camera is UVC compliant (because it works without
a driver).

--- USB_composite_device --- video_device
--X (no microphone for audio)

Device Description : USB Composite Device
Device ID : USB\VID_0AC8&PID_3630\5&1153F663&0&3
Driver KeyName : {36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}\0066 (GUID_DEVCLASS_USB)
Driver : C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\usbccgp.sys (Version: 5.1.2600.6437 Date: 2001-07-01)
Driver Inf : c:\windows\inf\usb.inf
Legacy BusType : PNPBus
Class : USB
Service : usbccgp
Enumerator : USB
Location Info : Venus USB2.0 Camera

------- Video Control Interface Header Descriptor -----
bLength : 0x0D (13 bytes)
bDescriptorType : 0x24 (Video Control Interface)
bDescriptorSubtype : 0x01 (Video Control Header)
bcdUVC : 0x0100 (UVC Version 1.00)

And this next UVC compliant camera has both audio and video.
Because I installed some driver, you can see the "oem24"
entry signaling that a driver is present anyway. That driver
gives access to 1280 or 1600 width pictures. The UVC only
allowed resolutions up to 960 or so. (Older webcams only
did 640x480, so that wasn't a problem.) That was the reason
for installing a driver, so it would be possible to use
the native camera resolution.

--- USB_composite_device --- video_device
--- microphone for audio

Device Description : Logitech USB Camera (Pro 9000)
Device ID : USB\VID_046D&PID_0990\B4B16F1B
Driver KeyName : {36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}\0013 (GUID_DEVCLASS_USB)
Driver : C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\usbccgp.sys (Version: 5.1.2600.6437 Date: 2012-09-21)
Driver Inf : c:\windows\inf\oem24.inf
Legacy BusType : PNPBus
Class : USB
Service : usbccgp
Enumerator : USB
Location Info : USB Device

------- Video Control Interface Header Descriptor -----
bLength : 0x0D (13 bytes)
bDescriptorType : 0x24 (Video Control Interface)
bDescriptorSubtype : 0x01 (Video Control Header)
bcdUVC : 0x0100 (UVC Version 1.00)

------ Audio Control Interface Header Descriptor ------
bLength : 0x09 (9 bytes)
bDescriptorType : 0x24 (Audio Interface Descriptor)
bDescriptorSubtype : 0x01 (Header)
bcdADC : 0x0100

I don't think I have a webcam sample without UVC. I've had
enough crappy camera devices here, to keep me from buying
too many :-) I expect if you had a non-UVC camera, the
entry for it would be a lot shorter. For example, the
Logitech camera, the text output for it is 24KB.
A non-UVC camera, won't have all those video formats to
bore you with. As a custom driver will be needed to get
any additional information - USBTreeView cannot make
up info it cannot read. You would need driver code for
all possible non-UVC cameras to even attempt that (such
as you might find on Linux).

Paul

In message , philo
writes:
On 10/07/2015 02:43 AM, micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
[]
The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
[]
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

(I think that just means the Microsoft driver worked.)
[]
Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,

Doesn't the Vista driver that it works with have a snapshot facility?
Failing that, PrtScr might work.
[]
I never ever just plug my camera into the computer...I always take the
card out and use a reader.

I think micky's $4 camera is a webcam - no card involved. (FWIW I do as
you do when using a camera that does use a card.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... four Oscars, and two further nominations ... On these criteria, he's
Britain's most successful film director." Powell or Pressburger? no; Richard
Attenborough? no; Nick Park!

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 07 Oct 2015 10:42:04
-0400, wrote:



You probably just need the right XP software/driver to get it going
and Vista may have it built in. I have several of these web cams
laying around but I don't really use any of them. Are there any
numbers on it at all that you can google?

I looked before, and No, but in dark grey on black I just noticed the
brand name Slick. Fancy website, very nice. Click on Support, get

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /support/ on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use
an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

LOL That's rubbing it in.

Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once.

Don't you have a digital still camera?

Good point.

I used Skype to take the picture but then I coudln't find it. But I had
just installed Search Everything, and it listed all the files that had
been updated. Well, almost. It didn't list the file but it did give a
higher level directory, and I found the pictures that way.

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 7 Oct 2015 20:18:45
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , philo
writes:
On 10/07/2015 02:43 AM, micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
[]
The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
[]
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

(I think that just means the Microsoft driver worked.)

Okay. ;-)
[]
Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,

Doesn't the Vista driver that it works with have a snapshot facility?

I don't know. It's called usbvideo.sys and Vista found it when I
plugged the camera in. I tried to run: usbvideo.sys, and it wouldn't
do anything.

Failing that, PrtScr might work.

That's a great idea. I can crop it with mspaint or Irfanview.

I never ever just plug my camera into the computer...I always take the
card out and use a reader.

I think micky's $4 camera is a webcam - no card involved.

Right.

(FWIW I do as
you do when using a camera that does use a card.)

On 10/7/2015 7:00 PM, micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 7 Oct 2015 20:18:45
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , philo
writes:
On 10/07/2015 02:43 AM, micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
[]
The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
[]
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

(I think that just means the Microsoft driver worked.)

Okay. ;-)
[]
Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,

Doesn't the Vista driver that it works with have a snapshot facility?

I don't know. It's called usbvideo.sys and Vista found it when I
plugged the camera in. I tried to run: usbvideo.sys, and it wouldn't
do anything.

Failing that, PrtScr might work.

That's a great idea. I can crop it with mspaint or Irfanview.

I never ever just plug my camera into the computer...I always take the
card out and use a reader.

I think micky's $4 camera is a webcam - no card involved.

Right.

(FWIW I do as
you do when using a camera that does use a card.)

Download this
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
and see if this will give you the vendor and product ID's for your camera
then plug that into google to see what it is and if drivers are available.

Same information is available in device manager, but I don't remember
whether xp device manager gives you info for devices that don't have
drivers installed. Worth a try tho.

ArcSoft Webcam companion will often work with cameras that install
windows drivers, like your vista system. The stock windows viewer
won't let you control anything. My 5MP webcam shows up as
640x480. Arcsoft lets me get the full resolution.
It's not free. I use a version that came with another camera.

Dorgem is a viewer that supports a wide range of cameras. Also worth
a shot.

Newer cameras don't have TWAIN drivers, so Irfanview probably won't help.

I expect you looked, but many cameras have a tag on the cable near the USB
plug that has the model number.

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Thu, 08 Oct 2015 01:45:06
-0700, mike wrote:

On 10/7/2015 7:00 PM, micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 7 Oct 2015 20:18:45
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , philo
writes:
On 10/07/2015 02:43 AM, micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
[]
The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
[]
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.

(I think that just means the Microsoft driver worked.)

Okay. ;-)
[]
Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,

Doesn't the Vista driver that it works with have a snapshot facility?

I don't know. It's called usbvideo.sys and Vista found it when I
plugged the camera in. I tried to run: usbvideo.sys, and it wouldn't
do anything.

Failing that, PrtScr might work.

That's a great idea. I can crop it with mspaint or Irfanview.

I never ever just plug my camera into the computer...I always take the
card out and use a reader.

I think micky's $4 camera is a webcam - no card involved.

Right.

(FWIW I do as
you do when using a camera that does use a card.)

Download this
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
and see if this will give you the vendor and product ID's for your camera
then plug that into google to see what it is and if drivers are available.

Hey, I love it. Thanks a lot.

What's good goes beyond the camera I'm fiddling with. It's that it
lists everything that's ever been plugged into the USB port. All the
USB hard drives. Obviously there's a record for every one of them.
This accounts for how Vista, and maybe XP, is able to remember whether
to display photos or play music for a USB drive, and probably accounts
for how it can remember what drive letter a USB HDD gets, which XP does
remember.

BTW, it says you have to download the list of manufacturers separately,
and I had to do that twice because just saving the displayed file ran
everything together. Copying and pasting into Notepad worked fine.

Also, lots of other free software there too. I have to go over the list
slowly, to see if I can use any. Great page.

Same information is available in device manager, but I don't remember
whether xp device manager gives you info for devices that don't have
drivers installed. Worth a try tho.

It gave a lot more info that device manager, including the manufacturer
of the camera, Genesys Logic. No model number, interestingly, and The
Genesys Log page doesn't mention cameras, only camera controllers. And
it suggests that Windows includes the drivers.

However, googling for drivers found me two quite different versions of
drivers for a Genesys camera, with a model number a few numbers lower
than anything on the Genesys webpage. In other word, it really was
surplus, and that's why it's only 4 dollars. (BTW, it has a microphone

I realize now that I hadn't read farther than the line above, and I
haven't looked into Arcsoft or Dorgem yet.

ArcSoft Webcam companion will often work with cameras that install
windows drivers, like your vista system. The stock windows viewer
won't let you control anything. My 5MP webcam shows up as
640x480. Arcsoft lets me get the full resolution.
It's not free. I use a version that came with another camera.

Dorgem is a viewer that supports a wide range of cameras. Also worth
a shot.

Newer cameras don't have TWAIN drivers, so Irfanview probably won't help.

That was just to crop the picture, if it does that. I can't remember.

I expect you looked, but many cameras have a tag on the cable near the USB
plug that has the model number.

I don't think so, but what's good is that I just remembered it has a
microphone too, and it's working where my other microphone hasn't been.
Pretty good for $4. (Not very good picture, fuzzy, but I'll tell people
it's my artistry.)

micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Thu, 08 Oct 2015 01:45:06
-0700, mike wrote:

On 10/7/2015 7:00 PM, micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 7 Oct 2015 20:18:45
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , philo
writes:
On 10/07/2015 02:43 AM, micky wrote:
I'll answer Paul's recent post in a day or two, but wanted to give this
tidbit.

I bought a PC camera at Ollies, an east-coast US chain of allegedly
[]
The PC camera was only 4 dollars, and it wasn't spherical like the one I
[]
with any software either, or a brand name. But tried it tonight in
Vista, and it is working. Plug 'n' Play. Device Manager claims the
manurfacturer is MS but I think it's confused.
(I think that just means the Microsoft driver worked.)
Okay. ;-)
[]
Oh, I need to take a still picture for an ID card. They want me to
email it to them. Any software recommendations? Free, I guess, since
I'm only going to use it once. Hmmm. It seems Skype will do this,
Doesn't the Vista driver that it works with have a snapshot facility?
I don't know. It's called usbvideo.sys and Vista found it when I
plugged the camera in. I tried to run: usbvideo.sys, and it wouldn't
do anything.

Failing that, PrtScr might work.
That's a great idea. I can crop it with mspaint or Irfanview.
I never ever just plug my camera into the computer...I always take the
card out and use a reader.
I think micky's $4 camera is a webcam - no card involved.
Right.

(FWIW I do as
you do when using a camera that does use a card.)
Download this
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
and see if this will give you the vendor and product ID's for your camera
then plug that into google to see what it is and if drivers are available.

Hey, I love it. Thanks a lot.

What's good goes beyond the camera I'm fiddling with. It's that it
lists everything that's ever been plugged into the USB port. All the
USB hard drives. Obviously there's a record for every one of them.
This accounts for how Vista, and maybe XP, is able to remember whether
to display photos or play music for a USB drive, and probably accounts
for how it can remember what drive letter a USB HDD gets, which XP does
remember.

BTW, it says you have to download the list of manufacturers separately,
and I had to do that twice because just saving the displayed file ran
everything together. Copying and pasting into Notepad worked fine.

Also, lots of other free software there too. I have to go over the list
slowly, to see if I can use any. Great page.

Same information is available in device manager, but I don't remember
whether xp device manager gives you info for devices that don't have
drivers installed. Worth a try tho.

It gave a lot more info that device manager, including the manufacturer
of the camera, Genesys Logic. No model number, interestingly, and The
Genesys Log page doesn't mention cameras, only camera controllers. And
it suggests that Windows includes the drivers.

However, googling for drivers found me two quite different versions of
drivers for a Genesys camera, with a model number a few numbers lower
than anything on the Genesys webpage. In other word, it really was
surplus, and that's why it's only 4 dollars. (BTW, it has a microphone

I realize now that I hadn't read farther than the line above, and I
haven't looked into Arcsoft or Dorgem yet.

ArcSoft Webcam companion will often work with cameras that install
windows drivers, like your vista system. The stock windows viewer
won't let you control anything. My 5MP webcam shows up as
640x480. Arcsoft lets me get the full resolution.
It's not free. I use a version that came with another camera.

Dorgem is a viewer that supports a wide range of cameras. Also worth
a shot.

Newer cameras don't have TWAIN drivers, so Irfanview probably won't help.

That was just to crop the picture, if it does that. I can't remember.
I expect you looked, but many cameras have a tag on the cable near the USB
plug that has the model number.

I don't think so, but what's good is that I just remembered it has a
microphone too, and it's working where my other microphone hasn't been.
Pretty good for $4. (Not very good picture, fuzzy, but I'll tell people
it's my artistry.)

Genesys is the controller chip maker.

Sensor ---- Controller ----- USB data&power

And you'd still need to figure out whether it was UVC compliant
or a custom driver. It is probably UVC, because Vista found it.

I don't know when UVC was added to WinXP. It probably wasn't there
with the initial release, but if you patched WinXP up to SP3, I would
expect it to work.

The sensor is not 5 mega pixels. Maybe via a very bad extrapolation,
but not actual pixels in the sensor. I could find one comment (maybe
Amazon???) that said it was a plain 640x480 sensor. Which is a lot
less than 5 mega, no matter what the Bayer layout or imaginative math.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter

307200 user pixels, even if multiplied by 4 for the Bayer pattern,
doesn't get us to 5 mega. So the 5 mega value is by extrapolation.
And in my opinion, you're only fooling yourself when
you accept extrapolation from a camera. I never turn
my camera up like that. It's "native" or lower.

Another point. In case you were feeling "cheated",
is that USB2 does a nice job of 640x480 @ 30FPS. It
doesn't seem to have a problem keeping up. For whatever
reason, modern cameras, if they do 1600x1200 perhaps,
they manage around 5FPS over USB2. Which sucks in a Skype
call. So if all you got was an honest 640x480 @ 30FPS
you're actually doing very well. A $100 webcam could
probably take a nicer still photo, but for a Skype call,
the common denominator of 640x480 @ 30FPS is more
likely to be quite common. Especially if you don't
have a lot of upload bandwidth on your ADSL connection.
Mine is so crappy, I could only do a voice call, not
any sort of video.

*******

If I was on WinXP, I would use AMCAP for testing. AMCAP was
originally a "demo" application with source code from Microsoft.
Mostly unusable in its original state. People have taken that
code and "made stuff" out of it. The result, is one person is
selling his copy of AMCAP. Which is reasonably full featured,
but I wouldn't spend money on it.

You have to be careful, because not every copy of AMCAP might
be safe.

This is the copy I use. It is part of the BTWinCap package,
which operates WinTV tuner cards. But it also includes
a fixed up copy of AMCAP. You look through the unzipped download,
for amcap.exe .

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/b...3.zip?download

amcap.exe 143360 bytes
//
// File Checksum Integrity Verifier version 2.05.
//
MD5 SHA-1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
88d25636842554451cf131159020c7a3 c8895cb894eca17e7469959f90f933ea73964515 amcap.exe

Note - at first it will throw a couple error dialogs.
Relax. Go to the menu where webcams are listed, and
re-select your device. The window should turn black
when AMCAP connects to the device, and then the
light level should come up for you.

Both my UVC cameras work with that, on WinXP SP3.

Paul