Dell Webcam Central Software

oldbie

Hi there-

Have a Dell Latitude 5330 with built in webcam. All the correct device drivers are installed as it works with skype. Problem is I don't have any software installed to use the webcam itself.

Obviously I googled and found that I "need" Dell webcam central 2.0 or whatever. Which led me to this site page and the link in the first post.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19448019.aspx

The problem is I get a "Cannot verify publisher warning".

I'd prefer to be downloading and installing something that didn't return such a warning, especially when overwrites device drivers.

Does anyone know where legitimate downloads of this software can be aquired or perhaps of a better, reliable, well worn bit of freeware? Just want to be able to capture images without having to change my profile picture every time using skype!

yoyo

oldbie wrote: »

Hi there-

Have a Dell Latitude 5330 with built in webcam. All the correct device drivers are installed as it works with skype. Problem is I don't have any software installed to use the webcam itself.

Obviously I googled and found that I "need" Dell webcam central 2.0 or whatever. Which led me to this site page and the link in the first post.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19448019.aspx

The problem is I get a "Cannot verify publisher warning".

I'd prefer to be downloading and installing something that didn't return such a warning, especially when overwrites device drivers.

Does anyone know where legitimate downloads of this software can be aquired or perhaps of a better, reliable, well worn bit of freeware? Just want to be able to capture images without having to change my profile picture every time using skype!

If it's on the Dell website chances are it should be fine. It's quite possible Dell never digitally signed the installation package, I've noticed this with many of their drivers.
The Webcam software probably won't touch the drivers anyway, just interact with them. Download the file and throw it on www.virustotal.com to check it against multiple anti virus scanners

Nick

oldbie

Cheers for the reply Nick.

Unfortunately the file (144mb) exceeds the max for the virus checker (64Mb). The fact that it's such a huge installation file also put me off.

Think I might have to just bite the bullet

oldbie

I installed it. Seems to be working perfectly. The sky didn't fall.

Still it's a bit ridiculous that they didn't sign the installation package.

It's fair enough to be receiving "cannot verify publisher" messages from cracked or dubious never been rated download.com software. you know you're talking your chances. But how do they expect people to take these messages seriously if you need to ignore it to install their own software!

yoyo

oldbie wrote: »

I installed it. Seems to be working perfectly. The sky didn't fall.

Still it's a bit ridiculous that they didn't sign the installation package.

It's fair enough to be receiving "cannot verify publisher" messages from cracked or dubious never been rated download.com software. you know you're talking your chances. But how do they expect people to take these messages seriously if you need to ignore it to install their own software!

Plenty of free software isn't signed but would be trustworthy. Even these days many devs do not go through the effort of doing so. I'm not sure if there is a cost to developers to have their applications/installers digitally signed, there possibly is.
I know I've installed some Dell drivers which havn't been signed. Most Dell drivers extract the setup created by the manufacturer (this is generally signed) to a Dell driver folder on the computer

Nick

Cuddlesworth

Its costs a fortune to distally sign every single little piece of software.

oldbie

Fair enough...but I guess it kinda renders the publisher warning pretty meaningless.

oldbie

Update: Software works fine however the default video files are HUGE!!!! 144 MB for 39 secs. You can change the frame size in the settings but you have to go very small to start getting reasonable MB/secs ratios and even those are hefty enough for what you're getting. I haven't much experience with video capture so I don't know if this is normal.....but the files do seem to me to be unnecessarily large

bonzodog2

Thats not big. You dont say what size frame that is but 39s at 25fps only gets about 147k per frame

edit: I have the same software,don't know about the camera. I took a still picture with it, its 640x480, it made an 80kB JPG

yoyo

oldbie wrote: »

Update: Software works fine however the default video files are HUGE!!!! 144 MB for 39 secs. You can change the frame size in the settings but you have to go very small to start getting reasonable MB/secs ratios and even those are hefty enough for what you're getting. I haven't much experience with video capture so I don't know if this is normal.....but the files do seem to me to be unnecessarily large

About normal for uncompressed video footage at a HD resolution. You can compress the files to something like xvid or h264 which will reduce the file size by a good bit

Nick

oldbie

Cheers bonzodog2

Not sure what the default fps setting is on this. There doesn't seem to be an option to change it.

The largest frame size and format was .avi at 720X1280. This delivered a 39 second clip at 122MB (3 MB/sec 125Kb/frame) (it's a pity the default is somewhere in the middle instead of set to the largest size.

At the lowest frame size 120x160 (tiny), 59 secs was delivered at 1.09 MB. (18kb/sec less than 1kb/frame)

TBH, like most things I should have played around with the options a bit more. If you select the lower frame sizes you can actually set face tracking to auto zoom in and out saving you alot of wasted space. The webcam I have has quite a wide angle and since I wasn't using the options properly that left me with alot of wasted space. Smaller frame sizes are more usable and practical now that I've discovered the zoom option :P

Tell me how

Bumpty Bump


Have Latitude 5570

Dell Webcam Software is no longer available. Am going to be doing Web interviews in coming weeks so would like to practise ahead of schedule. Skype is partially useful but not ideal as can't record and also it shows a mirror image.

Any ideas on solutions? Am a nit wary of using online webcam test sites or am I being too cautious?

Thanks

yoyo

Tell me how wrote: »

Bumpty Bump


Have Latitude 5570

Dell Webcam Software is no longer available. Am going to be doing Web interviews in coming weeks so would like to practise ahead of schedule. Skype is partially useful but not ideal as can't record and also it shows a mirror image.

Any ideas on solutions? Am a nit wary of using online webcam test sites or am I being too cautious?

Thanks

If you have Windows 10, type camera into the start menu and open the app. Should do the trick

Nick

Tell me how

yoyo wrote: »

If you have Windows 10, type camera into the start menu and open the app. Should do the trick

Nick

Thanks Nick (yoyo)

Should have said earlier, using windows 7. That trick doesn't work.

yoyo

Tell me how wrote: »

Thanks Nick (yoyo)

Should have said earlier, using windows 7. That trick doesn't work.

I've not tried it myself, but looks like Webcamoid should do the trick for you

Tell me how

yoyo wrote: »

I've not tried it myself, but looks like Webcamoid should do the trick for you

Thanks. I'll investigate a bit. Just wary that installing something will potentially hijack the camera or have me streamed live somewhere continuously.
Maybe someone else here has experience of that software (positively or negatively).

Curious how Dell discontinued their webcam software without a replacement.

Thanks for input.

bonzodog2

You might look for programs called amcap or rscap. The second is by Realtek. I beleive both can do it.

yoyo

Tell me how wrote: »

Thanks. I'll investigate a bit. Just wary that installing something will potentially hijack the camera or have me streamed live somewhere continuously.
Maybe someone else here has experience of that software (positively or negatively).

Curious how Dell discontinued their webcam software without a replacement.

Thanks for input.

It's Open Source software which is why I suggested it! https://github.com/webcamoid/webcamoid

If there was anything untoward about it should be easy to find out using Google as the source code is fully available,

Johnboy1951

webcamoid

vlc

both record video camera here.

VLC is probably simpler to operate