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I have a reasonable camera on top of my Dell notebook (Windows 10 Pro). I cannot do much for lack of an app with features.

For an idea what I have liked on another OS: I can use my Android phone via USB-cable or Wifi to have a camera with features like "mirror", "rotate", "exposure", "zoom" etc. The tool is called DroidCam.

I need my inbuilt PC camera for many meetings and I cannot even zoom in or out. The "camera" or "Kamera" tool built into Windows 10 got a litter better, I can control exposure, but no zoom - unless I am just not seeing the features. Cropping would also be nice, when I travel and have limited bandwidth for meetings. Then I could crop-away parts of the background (maybe an ugly hotel room) where nothing is happening anyway.

I install and update all Dell drivers regularly through a Dell tool. They do not offer a special driver for the "Integrated Webcam", so I am running a regular Windows driver, which is fully up to date, but not offering much.

I use Skype and Zoom a lot. They cannot do zooming for my inbuilt camera.

Which software can add above mentioned features to my camera?

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  • Wouldn't those functionalities (zooming, cropping, ...) depend on the software you use for the meetings? If that software doesn't support it, how would you do it?
    – Mahm00d
    Jun 22, 2020 at 8:45
  • @Mahm00d Example: I use Skype and Zoom a lot. They cannot do zooming for my inbuilt camera. But if I use DroidCam I can tune the feed in detail and for Skype and Zoom the output looks like any normal camera. So I need a tool or "driver" for my inbult camera to get similar features.
    – Martin Zaske
    Jun 24, 2020 at 7:15
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    @ThomasWeller On my Dell notebook I install and update all Dell drivers regularly through a Dell tool. They do not offer a special driver for the "Integrated Webcam", so I am running a regular Windows driver, which is fully up to date, but not offering much.
    – Martin Zaske
    Jun 24, 2020 at 7:19
  • @MartinZaske: Thanks for providing the additional information.I have integrated your statements into the question, since comments may be deleted. Please review the question.
    – Thomas Weller
    Jun 24, 2020 at 7:55

1 Answer 1

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Since we have ruled out possibilities with the driver provided for your camera, I'll suggest another option:

Open Broadcaster Studio in combination with OBS Virtual Cam.

In OBS, you simply add your camera as an input source. You can change almost any aspect of it, either by editing the source directly or by adding filters.

Here's an example of me in front of a green screen, rotated by 20°.

Rotation 20°

OBS can

  • mirror horizontally and vertically
  • rotate by 90°, 180° or any custom angle
  • resize (zoom). Make sure you resize at least to the total screen size, otherwise there will be black in the output (like in the example above)
  • crop (Hold the Alt key and use the points around the camera). Obviously I will do that so that the board disappears and I have only green screen left.

Cropping would also be nice, when I travel and have limited bandwidth for meetings.

IMHO the quality of the stream is determined by the application. Some software has SD, HD and FullHD quality settings. Note that cropping in OBS will not affect the output size. However, some areas may appear pure black, so it has better compression and thus reduced bandwidth. For a new output size, you would create a new profile.

This is how it looks like when cropped. Note the green outline which indicates cropping.

Cropped

Using filters, you can change

  • gamma
  • contrast
  • brightness
  • saturation
  • hue shift
  • blur
  • sharpen

(and much more, typically not needed in video conferencing)

Color correction

VirtualCam then provides you with a new camera that you use instead of the original camera in order to stream whatever you have configured.

Potential downsides of this approach:

I am not sure how VirtualCam exactly responds to quality change requests. For example, if you have set up a scene at 1080p, I don't know whether VirtualCam will stream in 720p, if requested to do so. It might be necessary to set up a lot of profiles for different resolutions.

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  • Awesome answer, muchly appreciated. We are getting ready to move overseas so no time to test right now. Sadly stackexchange never pinged me on this answer, since we were holding several more zoom meetings. And each time I had to set up my old smartphone with a stand and usb-wire... Will test this asap - and if it works for me, you also get the green tick. Sorry for being late, this is a crazy year for us.
    – Martin Zaske
    Oct 17, 2020 at 11:16
  • Notice: obs-studio have officially provided virtual camera feature since version 26.0.0 , you can use it without installing this plugin
    – Martin Zaske
    Dec 4, 2020 at 12:14
  • Just installed the tool - and am very impressed. This looks promissing. Still hunting to find the inbuilt virtual camera, but will learn my ropes. Thank you for your detailed answer. You got my tick today.
    – Martin Zaske
    Dec 4, 2020 at 12:29
  • Nowadays, use Virtual Cam Filter: obsproject.com/forum/resources/virtual-cam-filter.1142
    – Thomas Weller
    Nov 24 at 20:03
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    Thank you for fresh input Thomas. I can report that ever since your answer in 2020 I am regularly using OBS-Studio when abroad and doing meetings with limited bandwidth. We got a proper webcam now and lights and still I use OBS, because it helps me be "presentable". I have a tiny stream of maybe "300 x 600" pixels and I can have a full HD flat color background and maybe even include a caption or message about my location or bandwidth. So far OBS has covered all my needs and more. It does real work, so my processor tends to heat up and really use the fan. Since I use an external mike, its fine.
    – Martin Zaske
    Nov 27 at 9:56

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