Ames100's Full Review: Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 Web Cam
The Lifecam VX-3000 is functional basic webcam, somewhat let down by a weak microphone and a bloated software package that could use some work. It’s worth the $20 I paid for it, but I think it's overpriced at anything near the full retail price.
The VX-3000 features: - VGA resolution: 640 x 480 - Acceptable color, contrast, and exposure for a webcam – not the equal of a good digital camera used as a webcam, but certainly better than the really cheap ones - Works well enough in typical room lighting, although photo captures look pretty noisy when blown up - Flexible mounting base supports mounting on a flat surface or the top edge of LCD panels of varying thickness - Camera angle can be manually adjusted on two axes for accurate pointing - Manual focus ring - Automatic face tracking software - Built-in microphone - Green camera-on LED - Attached 6 ft. USB cable
Some additional features appearing prominently on the box are mostly marketing hype: - "1.3 megapixel resolution" (that’s interpolated resolution, the physical image sensor is 0.3 megapixels) - “Zoom, pan, and tilt controls” – Just to be clear, this camera does not have any optical zoom, nor does it have any pan and tilt other than what you apply by hand (Microsoft is using a bit of poetic license to describe a feature of their Lifecam software that can digitally zoom the picture and then pan within the zoomed picture)
This webcam achieves a reasonably smooth 30 frames/sec at 640 x 480 resolution, but at that rate it’s a real USB bandwidth hog. It doesn’t like sharing a USB connection with anything else on a hub. If you try it causes a lot of mutual interference (e.g., mouse cursor jumping around the screen). There’s an option in the camera settings to turn down the USB bandwidth used, but it’s tricky to adjust manually (it keeps adjusting itself upward automatically), and reducing bandwidth severely impacts video quality. The camera works much better on its own dedicated USB port. Microsoft describes a number of known USB bugs in their Readme.txt file, but other than bandwidth problems on a shared hub, I didn’t run into any of them. Good thing, since Microsoft’s primary troubleshooting advice seems to be “upgrade to the latest version of Windows”. The software CD included with my unit was version 1.3, so I may have avoided some of the problems encountered by users of earlier versions. The software installed and ran fine on both my WinXP SP1 desktop machine and my SP2 laptop, although it takes quite a while to install.
The lens is fairly wide angle, but fortunately you can use the digital zoom/pan and automatic face tracking during a webcam call to make the image a bit bigger. When the software is properly installed and initialized, the Dashboard system tray application will start automatically with the webcam, allowing you to control the camera during the call. It works with Skype, so I presume it will work with most other web chat applications as well. Obviously some resolution is lost when the camera is zoomed digitally, but that's not usually a big problem for webcam calls. The automatic face tracking using the digital zoom and pan can be slow to react, and it sometimes zooms in and out disconcertingly, but overall it works and it can be a useful feature.
There’s a microphone on the front of the webcam, but the microphone volume is unfortunately very low even when cranked up to maximum (a common complaint of other users, I see). Sound quality is hollow and noisy with the volume set at maximum, making Microsoft's description of "crystal clear" quite an exaggeration. Many users have also complained about a loud background buzzing sound on the VX-3000 microphone input. This is a common problem with USB audio devices that have poor electrical filtering, as the USB power line tends to be pretty noisy on a lot of computers. I did get some background buzzing noise from the VX-3000 microphone on my desktop computer, but this computer has also proved to be noisy with other USB audio devices. I tried some of the user suggestions here: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread66561.html on how to open up the VX-3000 and move the microphone connectors around to reduce the buzzing noise, and it did help. It's pretty clear that Microsoft has a manufacturing quality control problem with the microphone, so I suggest that you test yours immediately after purchase and exchange it promptly if your unit has problems.
There’s a button on the top of the webcam intended to pop up the Windows Live Messenger chat application, but it only works if you keep the Microsoft driver running in the background all the time. Microsoft seems determined to promote Live Messenger, to the point of not providing any option to change the button function, but you can hack into it by substituting your own application for IcePick.exe in the LifeCam program directory if you want.
Microsoft’s TWAIN driver for the VX3000 interacts somehow with ATI’s Rage Theatre TWAIN driver on my system, so that Acquire from the VX3000 with any photo program always triggers ATI Rage Theatre capture instead of the VX3000 software. However, I can then select VX3000 in the Rage Theatre application and proceed to capture from the camera, so that's ok. According to Microsoft's Readme file there’s some other known conflicts some ATI Radeon models, but I didn’t encounter any other conflicts with my ATI software or graphics card.
LifeCam is the main application program provided for the camera. It's a fairly simple app that shows the camera live picture and allows you to capture photos or videos or sound recordings. You can access the camera settings dialog box, the same one that pops up in other applications like Skype when you select camera settings for the VX-3000. The camera settings include color and exposure adjustments, and USB bandwith adjustments. Oh, and there's a Dashboard button that lets you bring up the Dashboard application to apply funny special effects to video recordings like having animated ladybugs crawl around the frame (don't ask me why - maybe Microsoft thought it would be popular with the "Hello Kitty" crowd).
Overall the software package is a bit of a shambles: it’s huge (thanks mainly to the inclusion of DirectX 9.0c), it’s slow to install, and it installs a lot of useless and unnecessary junk intended for other Microsoft webcam models. Seldom have I seen so much installed to accomplish so little! Plus they really, really want you to install and use Windows Live Messenger - but fortunately one can successfully opt out. Trying to pare down the excess a little, I did some testing to see what could be eliminated. The Setup installed two programs to start with Windows: vVX3000.exe, which appears to be responsible for responding to the button on the cam to launch the program IcePick.exe, and LifeExp.exe, function unknown but it doesn’t stay running. Setup also installs an additional Windows service MSCam32.exe, which appears to be responsible for applying the funny-but-useless video special effects in LifeCam. Terminating these programs and removing them from the auto-start list had no apparent ill effects beyond removing those unneeded functions, except that LifeCam occasionally tries to re-install something when I click the Dashboard button (just Cancel to bypass). I think it would have been better to integrate functions like digital zoom, pan, and face tracking into the camera settings dialog box rather than making them part of the separate Dashboard application with the funny video effects, but at least they're available. Overall I think Microsoft needs to concentrate more on getting the basic usability right in the software package, and put less emphasis on frills and promoting Microsoft services.
Users of this camera should also be aware that installing the Microsoft LifeCam software opens up a security hole in your system. By default the LifeCam software opens an incoming internet port and acts as a server without telling you (unless you have a firewall like ZoneAlarm that notifies you). Since the camera lacks a lens cover, in theory an outsider could access your web cam without your knowledge.
The documentation is just plain bad. Beyond the Readme file and the superficial Lifecam program Help file, there is little other documentation included, either on paper or on the CD. Nowhere is there a description of the camera features, or a user guide for the software. There’s an illustrated Quick Start guide in the box that gives new meaning to the word “austere” – it basically tells you to install the software from CD and then plug the webcam cable in to a USB port. There’s a 31-page booklet entitled “Microsoft Product Guide” that begins with the topic “Getting Started” – but it consists entirely of legal safety warnings in several different languages. Has Microsoft been seeing a high number of webcam-related injuries? Good heavens, I didn’t even realize there was a laser in this camera! :-)
I did attempt to contact Microsoft Support by email in the faint hope that they might have some advice to offer about the low microphone volume, but I quickly got sidetracked in their support gateway that won't let you through unless you have a "Product ID". It didn't accept any of the numbers on the LifeCam box, and their "where to find the product ID" apparently doesn't apply to webcams. When I switched from using Firefox to Internet Explorer to access the support site, I was offered the choice of letting Microsoft download an application to my PC to find the product ID and "gather other information to send to Microsoft". Since the "other information" was unspecified, I declined. I note that their free product support is only good for 90 days - if you could access it. Microsoft does not appear to have any online product support forums for webcams.
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