ViewCam support for FaceTime, Continuity Camera, and USB cameras?
I discovered SecuritySpy which has a monitoring capability which is almost exactly what I need, but it is overly complicated.
Then I found ViewCam and thought "This is PERFECT" until I realized it did not support FaceTime, Continuity Camera, and USB cameras like SecuritySpy does.
Is there any reason why ViewCam can't support FaceTime, Continuity Camera, and USB cameras like the Anker C200?
Comments
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ViewCam is designed to work only with IP cameras - this is the purpose of the software.
Yes, SecuritySpy is much more complicated, but if you need to view FaceTime/USB cameras then SecuritySpy can do this for you. Simply ignore the features you don't need like recording, web etc. And, for live viewing only, you only need to purchase a 1-camera license of SecuritySpy, which isn't that much more expensive than ViewCam. The first camera will operate fully, and subsequent cameras will operate in view-only mode.
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Hi Ben,
Thank you for the quick reply.
"ViewCam is designed to work only with IP cameras - this is the purpose of the software."
Any reason that that must be the case? I mean, after all, you are the one who decides what its purpose is. And clearly, you already have the code written.
Would it (really?) cannibalize too many SecuritySpy sales?
BTW, the reason I am interested is I want to have something appropriate to recommend in a video for a YouTube channel I am starting, and the more complex interface will be harder to recommend to non-technical people.
It would be much easier for me to tell them "Use ViewCam for a multiple camera monitor" than to tell them "Use this Security Spy software designed for monitoring security cameras — yes the UI is very complex, and you will have to pay extra for things you don't need — but please trust me on this."
The latter is just too much to explain for most people's attention spans these days. BTW, I am using with ScreenFlow which does have multi-camera record but not a multi-camera monitor.
So I hope you will consider adding support for USB cameras to ViewCam. BTW, I will likely be buying a copy of Security Spy for my own use, assuming we can resolve the tech support issue I submitted.
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BTW, this is where I learned about your software (had you previously seen it?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NRz_ffr_KQ
Jeff's approach is dated for the current version of macOS — or at least I haven't figured out how to make it work — and it is way too cumbersome anyway.
But what works extremely well for multi-camera recording is ScreenFlow, except it doesn't have a multi-camera monitor. So I wanted to do a video about using ScreenFlow + ViewCam — if it supported USB cams — as a follow up to his video. #fwiw
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Thanks for your feedback. No, there is no reason why we can't add this (as you say, we have all the required source code already written). We weren't worried about cannibalising SecuritySpy's sales when we made this decision - it's more that we thought that not many users would want this particular feature in a software product that does viewing-only without capturing. Software that does viewing-only is clearly useful for IP cameras, where the user may have a large CCTV system with lots of cameras spread out over a building. But for USB/FaceTime cameras, recording rather than viewing would seem to be the primary use case.
But, we are open to adding this - especially if this will help you to promote ViewCam on your YouTube channel! Please give us a little time and we'll see what we can do. Feel free to email us for progress updates.
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Hi Ben,
Thank you so much for considering this.
Even if you decide not to do it I appreciate your winningness to comment on it and your consideration to potentially do so. Too many software vendors just ignore feature requests and don't even seek to understand the use case, unlike you.
BTW, let me make sure I did not oversell my potential to help promote it. I have yet to publish my first video YouTube — hence why I am here as I am getting all my "kit" worked out — and who knows how successful I will be at it.
Also, I have a long list of things to cover and I probably won't cover this multi-camera recording until I get enough subscribers that they will even care about my setup.
Really, I only mentioned so you would understand my motivation for asking, and not as a way to entice you to support the feature.
So I will appreciate if you add the support. And since you already have the code it does seem like a something that could benefit at least some of your users and not harm any of your users that do not need it.
That said, I will respect whatever you decide.
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Understood - thanks for the additional context. All feedback is important to us and we consider every feature request we receive. Sometimes we'll not consider it worthwhile, but I think in this case, since it won't require much development effort on our part, and it will likely be useful to at least some users, it seems like this would be a good feature to add. We'll see what we can do!
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Thanks!
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@mikeschinkel I'm pleased to confirm that this has now been added to ViewCam, in the latest 1.2 version available from the App Store. Please test and let me know your feedback. And, if you can add a nice rating/review for ViewCam on the App Store while you're there, this would be much appreciated :)
