Hi all,
Is there a way when using a webcam with no manual focus or other adjustments to keep from getting the glare from center table basically overpowering the image? Maybe a filter like used for cameras cut out to fit the webcam (but that may cause issues with focusing I'm thinking).
I was setting up a test stream for a league in a room and while the image was pretty clear, the balls were blurred out a lot by the large hot white spot on the table.
Do we need more lights around the table to even out the lighting? A hood over the webcam?
The webcam is a Logitech Life Cam which is one of the top ones out there.
Without knowing more about your complete broadcasting setup, it sounds as if your suffering small image sensor blues.The sensor in a webcam is very small. While it can still deliver a high resolution, it's kind of faking it in some ways. Now a dedicated video camera has a much larger sensor and lens to accommodate it for various needs and usually perform much better in low/unusual lighting situations. Quality cost money, how good do you want it to look?.
With all that said and out of the way, all is not lost! You can still do what your trying to achieve with what you have, you will just have to sacrifice a few luxuries. You mentioned Logitech cameras, I have two of them. Both use the same Logitech driver/software package. Assuming you're on a Windows PC and have the updated & Official drivers and software for your camera from logitech, you can simply go to your "programs folder" and find the "Logitech" folder. Under it your will find "Logitech Webcam Software", simply click on it to launch it. Once that window is open on the bottom select "Webcam Controller". At the bottom of that window click on "webcam options", once that expands downwards click "Advanced Settings" (this is the window you are looking for).
Under the "Webcam Control" tab you can adjust zoom (zooming in just kills the image quality so best left zoomed all the way out). I remove the check from "Rightsound" as it fouls up the audio clarity (makes it sound robot like at times as it noise cancels). Under auto focus you can either leave it on auto focus, or set it manually. For pool streaming I would set it to manual as the distance never changes from the subject and viewers wont suffer auto focus blitz every so often.
Next tab over is "Advanced Settings", click on it. First remove the check from "Rightlight" and then remove the check from "Auto" just to the right of the "Gain" slider. Now you have full manual control over your webcams Exposure, Gain, Brightness, Contrast, Color Intensity & White balance. I also uncheck "auto" next to white balance and set it manually. Now here is the tricky part to these little finicky cameras, finding an acceptable balance of exposure, gain and brightness. if you take the "exposure" slider much past half way, the image looks bright but the frame rate starts to suffer as the image sensor just cant keep up. If you move the "gain" above 30-40%, it starts to introduce a lot of video noise making your picture look like crud. Problem here is the best settings leave the video image looking to dark, so you have to play with brightness and contrast to make up for the cameras physical limitations which can easily screw up your picture quality. Finding an acceptable balance between all settings will drive a person mad.
The bad news now is after all this camera adjusting, you've finally found an acceptable picture to broadcast and proceed to do so successfully. Upon a system reboot and launching your camera to stream, you fatally realize your camera is either overly dark or over bright and ask yourself why all the manual adjustments you made have changed and are not as they were before your last reboot. Well you see, the wonderful developers at Logitech decided it would be hilarious for anyone wanting to use their products to go through hell every time they have a system reboot and not save all camera setting changes permanently. But they do build a nice little webcam.
I Wish you luck and success.
Dopc.
