Product Description

Creative's Live! Cam Optia combines highly sophisticated style with true plug and play simplicity. Its translucent white design complements modern LCD screens or notebook displays, and lifelike images are assured by the high-quality precision lens. Fast, smooth video is maintained by the high-speed connection to the PC.Installation couldn't be easier - the Live! Cam Optia simply plugs into a USB port, without requiring drivers! It supports video messaging with services such as Skype, MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Images are automatically adjusted for quality by the Auto Tuning feature. Each speaker is kept automatically at the heart of the video action with Smart Face Tracking. This stylish web cam also captures still images and mini-movies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22645 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: 73VF027000000
• Dimensions: 3.90" h x 8.40" w x 8.40" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• Video capture at up to 800x600 resolution
• Still image capture at up to 1.3 Megapixel resolutions
• True USB Video Class compliant webcam for Plug & Play setup
• Record smooth video at 30 frames per second using 640x480 resolution
• Live! View technology optimizes the light exposure, color balance and frame rates

From the Manufacturer
Small, stylish and packed with features

Experience true plug and play with Live! Cam Optia! Hook it up to a USB port and start video chatting right away! No drivers are needed for this USB Video Class webcam. Built for perfection, Live! Cam Optia uses Precision Lens to give you the best picture quality. Its stylish and ergonomic design means you can use it confidently anywhere on any laptop computer display or LCD monitor.

Get up and running in no time! Get all the convenience of plug and go with this USB Video Class webcam. The Live! Cam Optia does not require any driver installation at all.

Sharper image quality for clearer conversations Take clearer and sharper photos at up to 1.3 megapixel resolution with Live! Cam Optia's Precision Lens. There is no need to worry about adjusting your webcam, Live! View Auto Tuning technology automatically sets the best lighting and brightness levels for you.

Greater viewing flexibility Video chat with greater flexibility and convenience using the Live! Cam Optia. Its multi-axis swivel rotates to almost any viewing angle (270 degrees) and automatic image flip ensures the image is always upright when rotated more than 90 degrees. When the need for privacy arises, you don't need to manually unplug the USB connection; simply twist the camera downward to deactivate it.

Spice up your chats with fun video effects Have more fun by adding a wide range of special effects and backgrounds to your video chat with Advanced Video FX.

Be in the picture, always With Smart Face Tracking activated, the camera automatically follows you as you move about, so that you're always in the video. It even tracks multiple persons, so everyone can get in on the conversation.

Smooth videos, uninterrupted chats Experience smooth, full motion 30fps digital video streams and top quality images with High Speed USB 2.0 throughput. Live! Cam Optia is also backward compatible and works with any USB 1.1 connection.

Bundled Creative Handsfree Stereo Headset Chat away with greater ease and comfort with the included Handsfree Stereo Headset.

Say goodbye to mounting woes Live! Cam Optia fits easily to almost anything - notebook displays, CRT monitors and flat panel displays. Or simply let it rest comfortably on a table or other flat surface.

Edit, organize and create, for a complete photo experience Do more with Creative Live! Cam Suite! Edit and organize your photos easily, create fun photo calendars - the possibilities are virtually endless. Do all this and more with the included software suite.

Be your own director, producer and star! Create videos easily and quickly with the muvee autoProducer! Its fantastic video editing technology enables you to produce professional videos in an amazingly short period of time. Simply shoot it, muvee it and share it!

More than just a webcam Maximize your webcam experience with SightSpeed, included at no extra charge. Turn your PC into a video phone, make multi-party video calls, and even stream photos and videos to Web-enabled devices like laptops, PDAs and mobile phones.

Enhance your Instant Messaging with video! Works with Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and other compatible instant messaging services.

Customer Reviews

Great implementation, awful visual quality
First off, anyone tech-savvy these days knows what end-users go through when it comes to drivers -- especially with web cameras. There have been hundreds of problems, if not in the thousands, with webcam drivers from all sorts-of vendors. Driver incompatibilities and bizarro problems (such as Logitech's DLL injection problem, which causes X Windows under Cygwin to not function -- a flaw later admitted by Logitech and fixed) are a nightmare.

As one of these users, and as a software developer who's familiar with USB classes and protocols, I was delighted to hear that Creative had come out with a camera that was driverless. The instant the camera was released in the United States, I picked one up.

The camera does in fact live up to it's driverless name -- you simply plug it into your PC, and Windows XP will find it as a standard USB Video Camera. You do not need to install control applications or any drivers -- it just *works*. By default, you can control exposure (automatic or manual), brightness, contrast, hue, gamma, sharpness, saturation, and a couple other features. Focus on this camera is done manually, via an adjustable ring around the lens.

If you want more control over the camera, such as face tracking and some additional features, you can install Creative's Optia Driver program from their website (it's about 1MByte in size). This makes the camera show up under Windows XP as a "Creative Live! Optia", and provides a pretty decent control application (not memory or CPU hungry, either). It sounds like a fantastic camera, does it not?

Yeah... until you actually examine the image quality. Visually, this camera is *awful*. I am surprised it's using a CMOS image sensor, because the camera looks horrible. Under absurdly bright lighting conditions, you get a semi-decent picture, with a lot of mosaic and anti-aliasing around the edges of objects. Adjusting the sharpness slider does not help. Under low light conditions (or even normal bedroom lighting), you get a washed-out look to your picture, and all focused objects appear almost pitch black. CMOS isn't great, but it's normally not this bad either.

Aside from the visual atrocity this camera results in, another complaint I have is with the hinge-based clip which allows the camera to sit on top of any monitor (CRT, LCD, or laptop). The hinge spring is too strong, thus if sitting on top of an LCD with a curved back (which is completly normal), the camera literally falls forward due to the strength of the spring in the clip, and falls off your monitor. I can't imagine this working on a CRT or an LCD, but a laptop it would work perfect on.

Finally, back on the positive train, the camera has fantastic swivel capabilities (even left to right), and the base of the clip has rubber on it so that it stays stable if you place it on a desk or a flat surface.

In general this camera gets 4 out of 5 stars for being driverless and living up to that claim, but gets 1 out of 5 stars for its awful visual quality. If you're looking for a camera that gives you great imaging, avoid the Optia. If you want something driverless that should work w/out any fuss (or use FreeBSD, Linux, etc.) and are willing to sacrifice quality, get this camera ASAP.

Optia
I purchased this webcam based on past positive history with Creative products, and because of the lure of the "driverless" USB video class design. Despite initial installation problems, I am pleased with the product.

My initial install attempts failed due to....oops..."corrupt drivers". After several fruitless exchanges with Creative support, I found a couple smartie users in the Creative customer forums who had experienced and diagnosed the same problem. Apparently previous Logitech camera installs left behind some dreck in the Windows registry which interfered with the Creative install; a simple regedit corrected this issue. If you have not previously installed a Logitech cam, you should be OK on the install; I tested on a spare laptop and it worked fine.

After working thru the install, I have been very pleased with this camera. It is small, about two inches long by two inches high, and the included attachment gizmo works effectively to mount the camera on my IBM Thinkpad. Creative includes a carry bag and the unit would likely be useful for travelers. Also included is an inexpensive headset such that the unit could be used for video or audio chat.

The software for the unit worked fine. It includes fancy video effects which are good for a few minutes diversion but did not seem particularly useful.

Video clarity was good. Images were sharp and the light adjustment seemed adequate. I used it with Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger and both worked fine; the face tracking software worked OK but seemed to occassionally get confused and focus on the wall behind me. The camera swivels in the horizontal and vertical planes so I had no difficulty positioning the camera and getting a good angle.

For the current price of $69, I think this cam is a good deal. In theory, the USB video class design should mean this camera will also be compatible with both Linux and Windows Vista (I did not test either of these).

We love it
i do not have anything to compare this web cam to, but so far, we love this thing...

we recently move 3 states away from our family and friends. So we decided to try out the web cam (along with Skype). So far we have had no problems with it at all. We even have it hooked up to a laptop via a wireless dsl connection. the image is pretty clean, although i think it would be better if we had it plugged in directly.

i haven't used it for anything other than video calls with other skype users, but it comes bundled with software that looks fun.

I would recommend this cam to anyone based solely on the video chat feature...