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In a marketplace thick with competition, any webcam that has a hope of making an impact has to not only do the basic video and still functions to the best of today's technological standard, but add in new features that might make you rethink how to use your camera. That seems to be the idea behind the Creative Live! Cam Optia AF, a 2.0 megapixel webcam that builds some unexpected features - like motion tracking and time lapse video - in the standard package. Do those secondary options make this camera worth your purchase? Today, we're going to find out.
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Webcams Creative Live! Cam Optia AF USB Webcam Review
Webcam Design
I appreciated the thoughtful design of the Optia AF from the moment I took the camera out of the box and saw how Creative had attached the Optia AF's body to a plastic mounting system via a ball and socket hinge, which has about ten degrees of lateral motion and 270 degrees of vertical motion, eliminating a lot of the positioning problems I've encountered elsewhere and giving the Optia AF an immediate edge in situations where versatility (like moving from a laptop screen to a desktop monitor) is the rule. As an added bonus, swiveling the camera down so it faces the camera mount disables the Optia AF without having to unplug it from the USB port. That versatility extends to the camera's body, too: matte plastic construction that doesn't hold fingerprints and gives the Optia AF a durable feel, coupled with a camera mount that's simultaneously secure and easy to use by incorporating a hinged flap for use on flatter screens with a U-shaped body for use on wider screens. There's also a blue in-use LED that rings the side of the body attached to the camera mount, coupled with two built-in adaptive array microphones and an auto-focus lens with a 4.36 mm maximum aperture and a 2.0 MP sensor.
A profile shot of the Optia AF; the camera a full 270 degrees on the mount's ball and socket connection.
Using the camera on an LCD monitor.
Using the camera on a laptop screen.
Although the Optia AF drivers include a piece of software called the Live! Cam Console that handles all of the camera's settings and adjustments, it's the Live! Cam Center program that handles the Optia AF's multitude of video and still options. Each of the Cam Center's six tabs fronts a different task - video recording, photo capture, motion detection, remote monitoring, time lapse video, and your collection of recordings - presented with some basic instructions and a large start button that makes you feel right at home with what are definitely some fairly advanced-sounding features. A settings button on the lower left-hand side of the window opens up a dialog box with more in-depth settings for each task, and the Cam Center calls up the Cam Console whenever necessary to fine tune any adjustments, creating a seamless package. I'll be demoing the Optia AF's image quality for both videos and stills below, but first let's talk about the other four available tasks.
Motion Detection
The Optia AF's motion detection feature acts like an alarm system for any objects moving within the camera's field of view, tracking and recording motion when the sensors notice something different. It's a cool little extra that might help you figure out which pet is jumping on your computer while you're at work or whether or not your coworkers are snooping around your desk while you're at lunch, and it has all kinds of customizations. You can choose to record either for a specified period of time or until the motion stops, play an alert sound when motion capture starts, have your computer send you a time- and date-stamped screenshot of the motion by email, see the gallery of saved WMV files from your captures, and even adjust the sensitivity and size of the sensor viewport. The motion capture is pretty effective, too; while the email setup will require a little bit of technical knowledge and access to your email system's outgoing settings, all of the features work as advertised, and the sensitivity settings include a built-in preview so you can see what will trip the alarm without having to run tests. The sensor's range is particularly impressive, running the gamut from detecting micro tremors in my stationary head to ignoring my wildly-waving hands and arms.
The settings screen for the motion capture feature.
Unlike motion detection, remote monitoring is an always-on visual security system that lets you watch the capture from the Optia AF through a combination of FTP upload and a web browser. There's another difference, too: remote monitoring only creates still images on a time delay basis (with a range of once a second to once every 121 hours), so you're not overloading your web server with full motion video captures. Like motion detection, remote monitoring adds a number of cool secondary applications to the Optia AF, ranging from the dot.com era "here's a feed from our office" to keeping an eye on a controlled science experiment. You can even customize the look of the feed's output page, adding a few differently-themed frames and some captions so that an observer knows what he or she is watching.
A sample web page created by the remote monitoring feature.
I appreciated the thoughtful design of the Optia AF from the moment I took the camera out of the box and saw how Creative had attached the Optia AF's body to a plastic mounting system via a ball and socket hinge, which has about ten degrees of lateral motion and 270 degrees of vertical motion, eliminating a lot of the positioning problems I've encountered elsewhere and giving the Optia AF an immediate edge in situations where versatility (like moving from a laptop screen to a desktop monitor) is the rule. As an added bonus, swiveling the camera down so it faces the camera mount disables the Optia AF without having to unplug it from the USB port. That versatility extends to the camera's body, too: matte plastic construction that doesn't hold fingerprints and gives the Optia AF a durable feel, coupled with a camera mount that's simultaneously secure and easy to use by incorporating a hinged flap for use on flatter screens with a U-shaped body for use on wider screens. There's also a blue in-use LED that rings the side of the body attached to the camera mount, coupled with two built-in adaptive array microphones and an auto-focus lens with a 4.36 mm maximum aperture and a 2.0 MP sensor.
A profile shot of the Optia AF; the camera a full 270 degrees on the mount's ball and socket connection.
Using the camera on an LCD monitor.
Using the camera on a laptop screen.
Although the Optia AF drivers include a piece of software called the Live! Cam Console that handles all of the camera's settings and adjustments, it's the Live! Cam Center program that handles the Optia AF's multitude of video and still options. Each of the Cam Center's six tabs fronts a different task - video recording, photo capture, motion detection, remote monitoring, time lapse video, and your collection of recordings - presented with some basic instructions and a large start button that makes you feel right at home with what are definitely some fairly advanced-sounding features. A settings button on the lower left-hand side of the window opens up a dialog box with more in-depth settings for each task, and the Cam Center calls up the Cam Console whenever necessary to fine tune any adjustments, creating a seamless package. I'll be demoing the Optia AF's image quality for both videos and stills below, but first let's talk about the other four available tasks.
Motion DetectionThe Optia AF's motion detection feature acts like an alarm system for any objects moving within the camera's field of view, tracking and recording motion when the sensors notice something different. It's a cool little extra that might help you figure out which pet is jumping on your computer while you're at work or whether or not your coworkers are snooping around your desk while you're at lunch, and it has all kinds of customizations. You can choose to record either for a specified period of time or until the motion stops, play an alert sound when motion capture starts, have your computer send you a time- and date-stamped screenshot of the motion by email, see the gallery of saved WMV files from your captures, and even adjust the sensitivity and size of the sensor viewport. The motion capture is pretty effective, too; while the email setup will require a little bit of technical knowledge and access to your email system's outgoing settings, all of the features work as advertised, and the sensitivity settings include a built-in preview so you can see what will trip the alarm without having to run tests. The sensor's range is particularly impressive, running the gamut from detecting micro tremors in my stationary head to ignoring my wildly-waving hands and arms.
The settings screen for the motion capture feature.
Unlike motion detection, remote monitoring is an always-on visual security system that lets you watch the capture from the Optia AF through a combination of FTP upload and a web browser. There's another difference, too: remote monitoring only creates still images on a time delay basis (with a range of once a second to once every 121 hours), so you're not overloading your web server with full motion video captures. Like motion detection, remote monitoring adds a number of cool secondary applications to the Optia AF, ranging from the dot.com era "here's a feed from our office" to keeping an eye on a controlled science experiment. You can even customize the look of the feed's output page, adding a few differently-themed frames and some captions so that an observer knows what he or she is watching.
A sample web page created by the remote monitoring feature.
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