As anyone who has ever tried to plug in a webcam to Linux knows (including yours truly), it’s a pain in the butt.

However I came across an article written about an app called Cheese.

In short: Cheese is cool. It’s easy to get (especially for Ubuntu users), easy to run, has Flickr support and F-Spot support (the photo manager you may have seen in Ubuntu) in it. You can read up on a quick tutorial about Cheese here. And if you’d like to give it a try, download it from their web site.

I have yet to try this but will be doing so on my Ubuntu 8 installation shortly. Hopefully this app will take the pain out of using a webcam in Linux (fingers crossed).

We have had the ability to post video comments here on PCMech and over at DavidRisley.com for a couple weeks now. I never officially announced it, however, which may be why nobody has bothered to use it.

So, our video comments will be using Seesmic. Seesmic is really onto something when it comes to allowing video comments on blogs.

To use it, all you need is a webcam with the Flash plug-in installed on your browser. When you go to post a comment, you will need to tell Flash it is OK to access your webcam. From there, just hit the Enter button to record and the Enter button to stop recording. You will have the ability to preview your comment before you save it, so you can have do-overs.

I hope you enjoy and use this new feature. We’ll see how well it works out here.

{seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/l74sApLLt4_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Video Comments on PCMech and DavidRisley.com ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/7UDemGH42h”}}}

On the live stream I periodically get asked what webcam I use and how I get the image to look at good as it does.

I inform that yes I use a Microsoft Lifecam VX-3000. It does the job and does it well for live streaming.

However I will be the first to admit it’s not perfect. There are drawbacks to webcams, such as:

Tiny lens

The itty bitty lens only allows for the bare minimum of focal length. In layman’s terms that means anything over 10 feet away will most likely be out of focus. If you’re sitting in front of your computer, you’re good to go. If it’s far away.. well.. don’t expect a perfect picture.

Light overcompensation

Aside from the manual focus ring on most webcams, all functions of the webcam are software based. While this is convenient it is at the same time very frustrating.

The single largest complaint of anyone who uses a webcam is that “static” appears when the light is too low. What the webcam tries to do at that point is “grab” light from anywhere in the frame, and if it finds none it will literally fabricate pseudo-light which appears to the eye as static.

Minimal data transfer

Your webcam is most likely connected via USB 2.0 spec. As anyone knows, USB is great but not exactly fast concerning transfer speed. Your best bet is to stick to 320×240 resolution. Some webcams do 640×480 (and even 800×600 for some), but the end result is that you’re pushing thru USB 2.0.

If you ever wondered “Why does my video look so much better at a low frame rate compared to high?”, it’s because the lower frame rates allow for higher bigger-data frames at the expense of frame rate.

The advantages of using a camcorder

Big lens with true optical focus

The larger lens makes a huge difference, and additionally has true optical focus. Even if you were standing 50 feet away from the camera, you would still be in focus.

Auto-focus

The vast majority of webcams don’t have auto-focus. Camcorders do and they adjust very quickly.

Colors that look more “real”

Again this is from the larger lens; it’s able to capture more of what the true image looks like and the difference can be seen easily.

Firewire

Firewire (IEEE 1394) is obviously superior to USB in every way. You can transfer much more data over the wire.

Vastly superior microphone

The on-board microphone on almost all camcorders have built-in noise reduction and compression. If you’re right next to the cam it’s almost the same as speaking into a vocal microphone.

It’s sadly true that on even the most expensive webcams the microphones are absolute junk. Not so on camcorders.

Any disadvantages?

There are two.

The camcorder is bulky and usually requires to be mounted on a tripod. If you can deal with the bulky-ness of the camcorder, go for it.

Connecting devices over Firewire, while great, may sometimes cause your computer and/or software to “think” about it more because of the high data transfer rate. USB 2.0 never has this problem. While it’s true you can run a Firewire-based webcam and still multitask without issue, periodically you may encounter a software lock-up (usually your camera software). This happens no matter what OS you’re using, be it Windows or OS X.

PCMech LIVE is our new live show that we are doing via Ustream.Tv. While we are live streaming pretty much 24/7, our scheduled show time is 8 PM EST on Wednesday evenings.

We’ve had a LOT of people ask how we put together the feed. I have prepared a video for you which shows how I run the stream out of my home office. Here are links to the hardware and software that I am using, then you can watch the video to see how it is done.

• Apple Mac Mini
• Blue Snowball microphone
• Panasonic PV-GS85
• Logitech webcam
• CamTwist
• Ventrilo
• LineIn
• SoundFlower
• Colloquy