JeevesBond — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:53:34 +0000

fifeclub wrote: Please tell me it only streams when somebody "connects".

Yup. Think about it like this: if it were streaming all day long, where the heck would it be streaming to?

The only bad news is that if multiple people connect to your webcam, then you'll be sending out multiple streams, increasing the amount of bandwidth being used. If lots of people connect the webcam will seem slow and surfing for you might become difficult.

fifeclub wrote: My guess is that the webcam is not transmitting any video or still images at all until somebody hits that particular webpage, which triggers a single request to transmit one single still image? Then refreshing the page refreshes the image. But no bandwidth is being used at all until somebody hits that webpage. Is this all correct or do I have it all wrong?

It will probably work something like that. I think a lot of webcams work with animated gifs, when someone connects it sends them a gif, although the gif never finishes downloading: the webcam just keeps adding frames.

Unless you have a weird setup (like streaming to a server, then people connecting to that: proxy style) it shouldn't use any bandwidth unless someone connects to the camera. Naturally am not a webcam expert, and all cams may differ, best thing to do is hook it all up, then see how it works.