Can You Suggest A Webcam Capture Software?

by Josi

Question: My HP Mini came equipped with a webcam, but no capture software. Do you have a suggestion for some minimalistic and free software? I'd like to be able to record video off my webcam and capture it onto my PC.

Answer: Hi Josi, that's a great question. I know exactly where you're coming from. Personally I've also struggled to find a good piece of webcam capture software.

I've done some research on this before and here are some free products which I think are pretty good. Let's look at them here.

1. Yawcam
Yawcam is a pretty common piece of webcam capture software. You can download it for free here. It only supports Windows but it contains a whole host of features. Besides capturing video off your webcam, you can even set automatic FTP uploading, emailing, or just saving captured images to your hard drive. You can also set a schedule for when Yawcam is enabled to capture images. To me, it's a very nice and minimalistic program. Download Yawcam here.

2. Fwink
Fwink is a free and open source webcam application for Windows. It takes still images from your camera at timed intervals and puts them on your web site with FTP. You can add effects like text messages, time stamps and an overlay image.
You cannot not make live video calls - for that, you may want to try Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc.

One nice thing is that you can superimpose a logo, or any image you want, on top of your webcam image. The JPEG, GIF , PNG, BMP, TIFF and WMF image formats are supported. You can download Fwink here.

3. Chat Software
Programs like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc. are all free for download and are also excellent webcam capture software programs. You might want to give them a look.

Oh, there's also a list of free webcam capture software that you might want to check out.

I hope the above gives you what you need, do let me know if you have more questions. Good luck!