Getting a Webcam online?

[origamiship]

Hi there!
A friend of mine wants me to put together a website for her, and she wants a webcam (or three!) on the home page. I can put together a site in Dreamweaver and have some minimal knowledge of HTML, but I have no idea where to begin with a webcam. Does the site need to be created on the same computer that is connected to the webcam? What kind of coding do I need to add to the site to get it to function? Can I insert the webcam image into a DIV? I imagine I need to download some kind of external plug-in or something... as you can see I'm feeling a bit lost. Is it really as hard as it seems?
Any help would be very much appreciated!
Thanks

Emilia

 

[TechAsh]

There are a couple of ways to do it, you can either get the webcam to take photos every minute or so then upload them, or you could download the software here that allows you to have a live stream, you just need to install it on the computer that has the webcam connected and set it up.

I can't really help you with the setting up because I don't have a webcam, but another user may be able to right a tutorial if you need one.

 

[origamiship]

Thanks, that's really helpful advice. She will probably want to go with the live stream plan as it's for a video art piece. I take it I will be able to design and build the homepage on my computer but have the video streaming from hers?

 

[TechAsh]

Yes you will. You can build the website on your computer then upload it to your x10Hosting account, and do whatever needs to be done to link her computer's stream to the website.

 

[origamiship]

Brill. Looking forward to trying it already!

Thanks,
Emilia

 

[TechAsh]

Glad I could be of assistance.

If you need any more help just ask.

 

[dotaloc]

i did this a few years back...well, I set up a live stream. i had to use very minimal software. i only set it up on my local network, due to horrible upload bandwidth, but i remember being able to go to that computer (on my network) and a specified port (in windows media player or any other player that supported streaming, i'm sure) and it coming right up.

i just did a google search and came up with nothing promising.

once you are streaming the video from your machine, I don't think embedding it would be very difficult. it's pretty easy to embed video (not as easy as embedding a flash movie, I'd wager) in a site and I think that connecting the embedded player to a video stream wouldn't be much different than specifying a source file.

this software seems like it may work (free for private use, I think)
http://www.webcamxp.com/home.aspx

good luck. my curiosity is peeked...so I may try to hook up my new miniDV camcorder and see if I can stream from that. if I have any luck, I'll try to check in see how you are progressing.