A Web Cam is a great way to make your website more dynamic and interesting, and to attract more visitors to your establishment.

The term “webcam” is often used as the generic term for any camera system used to view a remote image. We think that this can be a bit confusing when used in the context of a visitor centre. Webcams are primarly found on the internet, and are designed to provide a small scale image in a small amount of bandwidth. This means that the image is heavily compressed and reduced in size to say 320 x 240 pixels. The optics and sensors on a webcam are usually low cost and low specification, so image quality is relatively poor. This type of image is acceptable when viewed as part of a webpage, but if this was shown full screen on a PLASMA screen or projector it would look awful.

Outersight’s remote observation systems can easily be used as webcams by the addition of an internet enabled video server. This takes the high quality signal from the cameras and then converts it to a low bandwidth form using advanced encoding hardware, giving the best quality images for web viewing but maintaining the near broadcast quality at the main viewing location, which looks great on a PLASMA display or large projection screen.

The simplest system simply uploads a digitised still every few minutes or seconds, but the more advanced version of our webcams offers remote control of the cameras and streaming multicast video.

We also offer fast hosting of webcam pages as part of the package; this avoids excess internet traffic costs being incurred for a busy page.

Click the link below to see some of our webcams in action

Scottish Seabird Centre

http://www.southendrspb.co.uk/serspbcam/webcam.htm