March 1998

Vista Imaging, Inc.
521 Taylor Way
Belmont, CA 94002
Ph: 650-802-9685;
Fx: 650-802-0322
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.vistaimaging.com

Price: $199.95

RATINGS (0-5)
Installation:  5
Documentation:  4
Features: 5
GUI:  5

ViCAM is a very fine camera with features you just don’t find in competing products. It has excellent color quality, extraordinary low-light capabilities, and an extremely fast frame rate. In addition, it supports much higher resolutions than many other cameras, and it includes the industry-leading MGI software package. All of these pluses make ViCAM a sure-fire winner.

INSTALLATION
We hooked up the hardware within three minutes. It was literally a snap. Well, to be precise, three snaps. We had been provided a nine-foot-long camera cable, one end of which was split into three connectors. (The other end of the cable ran into the camera, of course.) The first connector plugged into the parallel port. The second connector plugged into the keyboard port. The third connector (you guessed it) accommodated the keyboard plug. (This last plug, from our PS/2 keyboard, had to go somewhere.) Hardware installation took hardly three minutes. We needed only a couple more to install the software which accompanied the camera.

DOCUMENTATION
ViCAM users have three sources of documentation: a Quick Start Installation Guide, online help, and a CD-ROM. Overall, the documentation was very good. It was also very brief. Now, that isn’t necessarily a problem. It wasn’t in our case, since our installation was trouble-free. However, not every installation goes so smoothly, so the documentation might benefit from the addition of a troubleshooting page.

• No add-in capture card required.
• 16.8 million true color and 256 gray scale formats.
• A range of resolution options: 160x120, 176x144, 320x240, 352x288, 640x480, and 1280x960.
• Adjustable lens for close-up and normal views.
• Manual and automatic gain and shutter control.
• Automatic white balance with manual color balance and color saturation levels.
• Shutter controls from 1/4-second to 1/30,000-second.
• Optional lens pack for wide-angle and close-up applications.
• Provides bundled software, including ViCAM Viewer, MGI VideoWave, and MGI PhotoSuite SE.
• TWAIN and AVI drivers for compatibility with programs such as Adobe PhotoShop and Microsoft NetMeeting.
• 30 frames per second in full color.
• IEEE-1284-compatible passthrough parallel cable, which lets you keep your printer and camera attached simultaneously.
• No AC adapter required. Instead, you can use a PS/2 or five-pin keyboard port (ideal for laptops).
• Extra long cable (nine feet).
• Tilt and swivel stand with 360- degree swivel movement

OPERATIONAL TESTING
ViCAM Viewer The first thing we tried was the ViCAM Viewer program. We toyed with some of the various resolutions, frame rate quality settings, and color settings. We were able to make all our changes on-the-fly, since the program let us easily access the camera control panel.

Frame Rate
As we worked with the ViCAM Viewer program, we noticed that we weren’t getting the frame rate we expected. It was a bit slow. Since the product claims to deliver 30 frames per second (fps) in color, we decided to take a closer look, to see whether we could verify the ViCAM claim. ViCAM recommends a Pentium 200 computer to achieve the 30 fps rate. As luck would have it, that’s just the computer we were using. However, we weren’t getting our 30 fps, even when we had the camera set at the lowest resolution. Another ViCAM recommendation, from the manual, suggests that the user enable ECP on the parallel port to achieve the highest throughput. One of our staff remembered he had indeed enabled ECP in the BIOS about a month earlier, and he assumed his BIOS setting hadn’t been changed. But it was. Apparently, another staff member who used the same computer couldn’t resist tinkering with it. He was the culprit. Fortunately, the engineer testing the ViCAM camera knew something was strange with the frame-rate performance, so he double-checked the BIOS. Then, after he restored the BIOS to the optimal setting, the frame rate on the camera was blazingly fast! At the 128X96, 24 bit color, high-frame-rate setting, we got a 36.2 peak frame rate. We kept adjusting the resolution and other settings to see what would happen to frame rate.

Importance Of Processor Speed
Since no compression is accomplished on the camera itself, the entire video image must be transmitted through the serial port, and all the compression must be performed on the host processor. So, the faster your processor, the better your frame rate. However, even if you have a super-fast processor, your frame rate will drop dramatically when you go to 1280x960 and 24-bit color. On a Pentium 200 MMX, we got 1.1 fps.

Other Software
The ViCAM camera comes with excellent software, including MGI’s PhotoSuite SE and VideoWave SE, as well as a 30-day trial of Visionics FaceIt (facial recognition) software. The PhotoSuite and VideoWave applications let you perform complex video and picture editing. You can even apply special effects, use filters, or even compress a video clip using several supported codecs. Then, you can put the clip on your Web site. The camera also supports NetMeeting 2.1, which is also shipped on the CD-ROM.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
A compression chip on the camera, similar to Xirlink’s USB camera would boost performance and take some of the load off of the computer’s processor and improve overall performance. However, adding such a chip would undoubtedly increase manufacturing costs, which would increase the price tag, which could price the product out of its intended market, the general consumer and small-to-medium businesses.

CONCLUSION
All in all, ViCAM’s excellent performance, ease of installation, super feature set, and low price ($199.95) make this product an absolute steal. Another benefit in using this product is that similar to USB cameras, you will save on the cost and hassle of installing a video capture card. Of course, this product will demand a share of your computer’s host processing power, since the host processes the video. Thus, Vista Imaging’s camera is suitable for computers that have the horsepower to process the video coming into the parallel port. You might also consider using the ViCAM camera if you have an older PC, since older computers won’t have a USB port. That is, with an older PC, you might not have the option of hooking up a USB-compatible camera.