Product: QuickCam Pro 3000
Company: Logitech
Website: http://www.logitech.com/
Estimated Street Price: $99.95
Review By: Julien Jay

QuickCam Application

    The QuickCam application is a state of the art program that lets you perform a wide variety of activities. From this QuickCam center you’ll be able to take snapshots, send live video feedback on the web, monitor your room to alert if any intruders come in, and much much more. The software features a user friendly and intuitive interface with complete features. However it consumes a lot of system resources. Starting the snapshot module of QuickCam unveils a window divided in two. In the left part you see streaming video from the web cam while in the right area you can see the snapshots you have already created. Indeed a web cam isn’t just made to share video, it’s also very useful to create quick snapshots. Once you’ve created some snapshots, thanks to the fast QuickCam correctly integrated with Windows, all those snapshots are stored in a subfolder of the ‘My Pictures’ folder.

Logitech QuickCam Software (click to enlarge)

An interesting feature of the QuickCam software is the monitoring one powered by Digital Radar II: you can leave your room and let the computer & webcam on. If an intruder enters the room, if a cat passes in front of the camera, if an earthquake occurs, if something trembles the software will give the alert playing a siren sound (or the sound you want!). It’s interesting to monitor the kids sleeping for example. If you want to meet friends online or to speak with a colleague, nothing is more easy using Microsoft NetMeeting since the Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 device fully supports this software thanks to the provided Twain drivers. So you can speak with your colleague online while he sees you. The great and appreciable enhancement brings by this model is the built in microphone. You don’t need anymore to plug a micro on your sound card wiping away the troubles you may have before configuring NetMeeting! And best of all the built-in micro frees up your mind from speaking in front of a standard micro. But the major feature of the QuickCam software is the one that lets you send live videos on the internet for free! Using the dedicated ‘SpotLife.Com’ website, QuickCam users can send streaming audio & videos live and share them with friends or family. QuickCam software also lets you create video email!

SpotLife.Com Wizard (click to enlarge)

QuickCam Software in Web-Streaming Mode (click to enlarge)

From the application you can capture the video and attach it to an email as an *.exe file so the recipient will watch the video just by launching the file: he doesn’t need to worry about file compatibility issues, etc. Anyway we have noticed this feature doesn’t work with Microsoft Outlook 2000 SR1 if you have installed the attachments security update. QuickCam software is very complete: you can create an album that’ll contain snapshots or video footages you captured in order to publish it on a webpage. You’re guided through each step of the creation process so you won’t be lost. Like many people around the globe you may want to create a stupid web camera that displays for example the contents of your fridge, fishes in their tank, etc. If so, you’ll be glad to know the QuickCam software lets you setup a web camera defining the frequency when the picture should be refreshed on your webpage, etc. Finally every video, pictures you’ve captured using your QuickCam Pro 3000 web cam is listed in the QuickCam gallery area of the software. From this album you can remove, copy, paste files, define picture as wallpapers, send snapshots or videos through email, edit pictures and more!

Quality

    If the image quality provided by web cams has evolved other the years, it still remains low. Indeed most of the snapshots you’ll take, will contain lots of visible pixels making stairs effects on objects. But the Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 features a higher quality CCD sensor than the one of the old Pro model: this new CCD sensor can take snapshots in resolutions up to 640x480 for large pictures. It effectively results in better quality videos & snapshots but still remains incomparable to what today digital cameras can do. During our extensive tests of the camera we found the CCD sensor too be much too sensitive! At night, colors can turn to red if you light just a halogen lamp, but if the light becomes too strong the colors fade… Another thing you should know: with a normal camera you can avoid against the light effects by turning on the flash here you can’t so if behind the seat of your desktop there’s a window correctly exposed to the sun you can forget using the camera without drawing the curtains, etc. These problems are a bit irritating but for the price of the device you can’t ask too much! Sure the quality shouldn’t be too high neither, especially if you send videos over the Internet during an appointment using Microsoft NetMeeting since higher is the quality, the higher is the bandwidth required! The Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 drivers obviously lets you define the video quality level so you can adapt it depending on your internet connection type. 

 
One Shot made using the QuickCam Pro 3000 (click to display the full picture)