answers to poor camera quality?

[Bret Busby]

On 03/09/2020, Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/09/2020, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2020-09-03 at 16:57 +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote:
>>> Am Donnerstag, den 03.09.2020, 22:16 +1000 schrieb Karl Auer:
>>> > So my question to you or anyone else: What's a good external camera
>>> > that works well with Linux and v4l2?
>>> if you want to actually invest (beacuse you have daily video
>>> conferences and whatot), i dont think there is anything better than
>>> the logitech BRIO currently. it allows zooming/resolution changes,
>>> focus/aperture adjustments, can go up to 4k and comes with a builtin
>>> stereo mic ...
>>>
>>> ...but it has its price ...
>>
>> Ouch, it certainly does.
>>
>>> beyond that i guess any 720p and upwards USB camera is just fine, the
>>> majority of them should be supported by the uvcvideo driver and
>>> should just work OOTB.
>>
>> ... except that this is what got us here. The camera in my laptop is
>> "any 720p USB camera", and it doesn't work (well) OOTB. Hence my
>> request for someone to recommend one that is *known* to work well with
>> Linux...
>>
>>> ... and if you want something really exotic:
>>>
>>> https://ograblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/
>>
>> Cool :-)
>>
>> Regards, K.
>>
>> --
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
>> http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
>>
>
> Logitech C270 ?
>
> 78AUD in Australia
>
> 720p video
>
> Amazon Australia and Officeworks have them advertised for that price,
> and Harvey Norman have the advertised (I do not know for what price).
>
> My previous experience (I haven't made videocalls since about 2013),
> was that Logitech USB cameras worked well with Linux.
>
>
> --
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> ..............
>

One significant issue with this - what is your data transmission speed like?

With a whizzbang 4G modem/router, that is Cat6 - dual frequency 4G in
parallel, I can get up to 8-9MB/s download speed; 64-72Mb/s (I haven't
yet done a speedtest on it - I keep forgetting to do that), via my 4G
cellphone, up to about 6MB/s, and before we dumped the NBN, up to
about 1.5MB/s, on the odd occasions that it worked.

The problem with higher resolution video cameras, for videocalling, is
that, depending on the colour depth, the fluency of the video, may not
be good, if the needed data transmission speeds are not high enough.

For example, for the 12MP camera, if it has 24 bit colour depth, that
means each frame is 288MB, so, you won't get many of them transmitted,
in a second, in Australia. From what I understand, in the USA, whilst
it has a neolithic president - a bit like Barnaby Joyce and the
Christensen twerp, they have data transmission speeds in the gigabytes
per second, and, some technologically advanced countries (which
automatically excludes Australia), also have data transmission speeds
in the gigabytes per second.

720p; 1290x720 -> 921600; for only 8 bit colour depth, that is
7372800; about 7MB per frame, so, also, depending on your available
data transmission speeds, maybe not too many frames in each second.

Of course, this does not take into account, compression, but, it gives
a rough idea of the issue.

-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............