Technical Reviews and Geek Toys

I recently purchased a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 to try out video conferencing, recording videos, etc. Since I run Windows XP on a virtual server on my Kubuntu AMD 64 PC I thought I would be able to use whatever software that was available. I guess my expectations were too high as I was definitely disappointed. The software that came with the QuickCam was a Windows application (of course). I switched over to the virtual XP and installed the software. I plugged in the camera to the USB port and activated the device in the virtual server and it looked like the camera was recognized it with no problem. When I ran the software though all I got was a black screen for video and no audio. I deactivated the device in the virtual server and switched screens and looked to see what video software was available in Linux. I found a couple of applications that looked like they might work and installed them. Again I had video but no audio out of the camera. Actually, even if I had audio it doesn't look like the applications that I found would record audio. I messed with it a couple of weeks searching for other users who might be having the same problem. It looked like everyone else was experiencing the same thing that I am. There seems to be something up with the VirtualBox virtual server as the video is not displaying. I tried everything I could come up with with no success. Since I am running 64 bit Kubuntu Skype was not an option (it wasn't compiled for the 64 bit OS) so I couldn't check it. I tried the video application inside of MySpace and it didn't work either.

My goal was to do video conferencing with video and audio and I came up short. My solution was to pull a PC out of storage that has XP on it and install the QuickCam Pro 9000 on it. The software works fine. I was introduced to ooVoo.com which installed and recognized the camera's video and audio with no problem. In fact we just had a very pleasant visit with video and audio using ooVoo. It is nice to sort of visit face to face even though we live 7 hours drive apart. The only downside was that since we use satellite Internet the latency was a little confusing. We could say something and actually see the response that they heard what we said around 3 seconds later.

I think if you ask anyone who runs Linux they will confess that not everything works all of the time. It is hard to compete with the number of applications that are being written for the Windows machine. I'm not giving up though. The only reason I run Windows is because there are applications that require it. That's ok though.