Customer Reviews

Creative Webcam Live! Pro USB 2.0 WebCam

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I purchased this webcam to chat with my family, so the only requirements I had were that it give consistent good quality in bright light or low light. I use the webcam at night mostly, and this webcam doesn't work very well in nighttime lighting. When exposed to artificial light, it doesn't know how to handle the brightness well automatically, and you have to change some of the configurations, specifically in the brightness, to adjust to your indoor lighting. The webcam should do this for me but it doesn't do a good job of it. In the daytime, however, it works great and the transmission is a lot smoother than at night. With nighttime usage, I get a strange ghost trail from any movement, whereas in the daytime there is none of that at all. I do not use the facial autofocus very much or very often, but it does work well.

I think this is an excellent webcam. I can get it to work with Yahoo! Messenger in its super-webcam mode. My folks have also said that the images are great in MSN Messenger and even better in Skype Video.. Maybe it matters very little what software you use, its got to do a great deal with the webcam itself. So, I am very happy with my purchase of Creative Live! Pro webcam.

I was apprehensive of some of the mixed reviews out here. Then after using this webcam for abut 2 weeks, I have taken my time out to write this review, because for all you people out there who get to see your family once in a year or two, I think quality of images is a very sensitive factor in choosing a webcam as it was for me. Also, the night-time video quality is fairly acceptable ( I get good pics sitting with a single 40-watt bulb switched on in my room ) Some of the criticism seems a bit uncalled for. Every webcam is going to suffer if you sit with a candle to video chat.

My advise is to follow the instructions for setting up the cam as given in the manual.. It is mostly straight forward.

My experience is.. this is a great buy! Thanks for reading.

If you really get into Audio/Video chats, this camera is the one to get. You can use a wide variety of Webcams these days, but it's going to be hard to find a camera at this price with its features.

To save on bandwidth demands and optimize the quality of any picture on a camera, you're going to have to think about lighting. Crummy lighting is going to degrade your picture and even a DV hooked up to a firewire (IEEE1394) is not going to look right with poor lighting. However, DV cameras and a lot of popular Webcams are going to gobble up not only a good deal of bandwidth, they'll eat up your processor as well. You'll get freezes, jumps, jinks and jerks if your camera is pulling too much BW or processor power.

This camera gives a good picture and with good lighting, it gives a great one. However, whatever picture you get, you will get very little bandwidth/processor costs with this camera, and that's why it's the best one on the market. (I have about 7 webcams--love them all, but this one is the best for all-around use.) Besides providing a good A/V experience, instead of having a built-in microphone in the camera, it provides a lapel mic. This makes a lot of sense so you can get the mic close to your voice and turn down the volume to reduce ambient noises.

Finally, this camea comes with 2 drivers--one for a regular picture and one for a close-up. This gives you a sofware telephoto for up-close and personal shots or the ability to keep the camera further away from the subject and get a standard view. I don't know why all the cameras don't have this feature.

I tried another cam before this that was much cheaper. You get what you pay for. This cam installed very easily and fast on a Dell w/ WinXP Media Center and 528mem 40gb hd, usb2. The s/w it comes with can be used to take photos & video w/ the cam. It saves photos as jpeg & movies as avi. If you have the right lighting & distance from the cam, it has decent quality. For the price, don't expect the world of quality here, it is afterall a midrange priced web cam & not a million pixel digital camera. It worked fine with Yahoo Messenger, Hotmail, and couple other apps that I use it for. Others on the other end, said the quality was as good as most other webcams used for casual use...even with a 56k modem. The review about only good in daylight isn't 100% correct. You just need good lighting esp behind the cam lighting up what you what to appear. I haven't tried the motion detector functionality much but it seemed easy to use w/ the software provided w/ installation. I haven't tried the email feature in the software yet. With the software running I could easily use the button on top of the cam to take pics. All in all, this cam is worth the price. I did get a $20 rebate from the maker which made it all the better.

Ok first off this is the pro and not the basic model or the ultra some reviews have been for the basic models.Another thing is that this cam and many others do not work with all systems so do a google search before you buy...I rate this a 5 start because its wonderful I had a labtec and well it sucked. I was skeptical of purchasing this cam yes but I bought it and everyone says the quality is wonderful.Face trackign is by default off i wouldn't recommend you having it on cause it does get annoying but I have no reason to use it.The Mic that is included is also excellent in quality having been using a build in mic on my monitor this one actually sounds better than the one in my monitor.As for annoying features I don't think so lets get this right here.There are 2 cd's for it 1 is for the drivers and 1 is for an add on from arcsoft I have them both installed and I think they are nice.The webcam center can also be disabled if you want it to.I have been on a computer now for over 14 years and I will tell you that even tho this is my first creative webcam I really do like it I've had logitech and labtech and a few other brands but this one does the job really well.Also as for the reviewr who said something about bad night time images I use this is the day time and night time and I dont need to adjust the settings there is a box called auto in the cam settings that will adjust to the lights on it own.My opinion is if you want a cam get this but before you buy read about your operating system too this is compatible with 1.1 and 2.0 usb ports I am using 1.1 and the quality is excellent.Also remember if you buy this and you dont like the default settings you can change them however way you want them.ANd yes for those wondering if it will work for yahoo with people overseas it does my uk friends are amazed at the difference between this cam and labtech and a few other cams I've had and they agree creative is the best one ive had so far.So give this cam a try

Well i am pretty statisfied with the webcam, althought the performance is not the best in low light but i think its the same case with all webcams in this price range.
the Face Tracking and Motion Detection feature is real nice and works pretty good. The webcam clips nicely to any laptop or desktop screen.
U must install the software that comes with this webcam to see an image that is good in brightness and contrast by adjusting the brightness and contrast in the software otherwise the image would be dark.
Overall a nice webcam.

I was looking for a good webcam and settled on this.
If there is any con, it is only that it cant be used on a mac.
Other than that, the install is very easy. Just plug it onto ur notebook screen, push in the USB connector, and install the drivers when XP asks for it.
The quality of the image even in the fastest speed mode is photoquality when made large size. No dots or noise visible. At night, quality does go down, however only if there is not enough light. If its a well lit room, you will not have visible distortion at all.
A really worthy and great buy.

Install and sets up easily. However the supplied lapel mic is not sensitive enough. You must hold it up to your mouth or nobody hears you.

While no consumer level webcam will ever deliver the quality of a professional grade cam or even use of surveillance cameras, the Live! Pro USB 2.0 flavor of Creative's webcam does remarkably well for itself. Several different recording resolutions for the camera and use of stillshots with fairly high resolution option is excellent to have if you want to take snapshots. Installation of the webcam was a simple and quick task. Overall, I would recommend this over most other webcams on the market at this time.

This is a very disappointing webcam, even at a low price, for the following reasons:

- VERY POOR LIGHT SENSITIVITY. The camera is pretty much useless in ambient room lighting. If you plan to use the camera by anything other than sunlight or bright office lighting, your frame rate will drop to the 5-10 frames per second range and the image will be very red and blurry. In order to get anything close to 30 fps, you need very bright light, such as a photographic spot light or direct sunlight. This camera is simply not suitable for indoor in-home use.

- DUSTY SENSOR. The image from my camera contains numerous static white specks, probably caused by dust on the sensor, including two very annoying specks in the center of the image field. While cameras do sometimes get dust on their sensors after time, it's very unusual to see this on a brand-new, fixed-lens camera. It's suggestive of very poor quality control.

- BUGGY SOFTWARE. I installed the Creative software, which allows you to take time-lapse or motion-triggered images or movies and to transfer them automatically via a website or email. From that moment on, my computer kept freezing up and crashing until I uninstalled the software. When I did uninstall it, it apparently also uninstalled Creative files needed by my SoundBlaster sound card, because I lost all but the most basic sound functionality afterwards, forcing me to reinstall my sound card drivers and software. Major pain.

- NO LENS CAP OR PRIVACY SCREEN. I guess I'm paranoid, but I fear the possibility of getting some sort of virus that would send pictures from my webcam without my knowledge, or that I might accidentally activate the camera myself. Since there's no mechanical cover on this webcam, your only options for privacy and security are to unplug the camera when not in use or to cover it with masking tape or a sock. (You can't just turn it toward the wall either because of the one-way design of the monitor attachment.)

- INSECURE BASE. The camera's base may look like a clamp that would secure it to the monitor, but it's actually just a little tripod-like stand. It sits on the top of the display, but the only thing holding it there is its own weight. It doesn't clamp, so when you adjust the camera, it easily moves or falls.

- FACE TRACKING IS A GIMMICK THAT DIDN'T WORK FOR ME. The face tracking is implemented by having the camera follow an area of "skin tones," as the manual describes it. The instructions actually say that face tracking won't work well if you wear short sleeves, because the camera won't be able to tell the difference between your face and your arms! In my case, it also apparently could not tell the difference between my face and my tan walls. (That makes me wonder how well this design will work with people whose skin tones don't happen to match my tan walls.)

- NO BUILT-IN MIC. The box includes a cheap-o little microphone that plugs directly into your sound card, meaning you have to activate it separately each time you want to use it. Because there's a slight delay in the video stream from the webcam (~1/4 sec, depending on the lighting conditions) but no delay in the audio stream from the sound card, the audio and video are a bit out of sync.

- IMPOLITE INSTALLATION. Without asking permission, the setup program litters your computer with AOL and Yahoo promotions, including adding bookmarks and shortcuts.

I had bought this camera to replace a very outdated Intel PC Camera Pro from 5 or 6 years ago. I was hoping for a huge improvement, given the old camera's USB 1.1 connection and its age. Disappointingly, the old camera actually performs better than this camera in room lighting, giving much better color and a faster frame rate!

I am returning this camera and would strongly recommend against it.