Sorry it has taken so long to get this blog post out. However, I wanted to get plenty of screenshots of a very unique program that I found when Tanya and I decided to start podcasting again.

Many podcasters use ustream.tv to do a live video broadcast of their show when they record. I, being a video geek, feel that a static webcam view is not the most professional looking thing in the world. In fact, it is quite boring.

So I began searching the interwebs for a program that would allow you to switch between multiple webcams. There is CamTwist for the Mac but, I have a PC, so I continued my search and I found this awesome program called WebCamMax at http://www.webcammax.com .

It will let you switch between multiple sources and much, much, much more! Did I mention it can do a ton of other great stuff?

Anyway, here’s the way this program works.

The overall design of the program is simple. It again has the brushed-metal look that I like and shows you exactly what buttons do what when you initially start the program. You can select sources, effects or doodling. It will automatically show the default webcam for your PC as the main display.

So, lets start with exploring some of the sources you have available to you in WebCamMax.

WebCamMax lets you select from a variety of sources. You can select “webcam” and you get a dropdown list of all the webcameras attached to your computer. It allows you to freely switch between any of these cameras at any time. However, depending on your camera there may be an adjustment period from black to full color/brightness when you switch. I think this is a camera activation issue and has nothing to do with the program itself.

The next option we will explore is the screen option. This will allow you to capture your screen live, which is helpful for presentations, tutorials and other stuff of that nature. The default option is to follow your cursor or mouse in a zoomed-in view. However, you can also tell the program to watch a portion of the screen, the whole screen or, a specific window. This feature works great with the picture in picture feature of the program.

The picture in picture feature is one of the most valuable features of this program. it allows you to set your background source, say, your screen, and use a webcamera or other video/image as a secondary source. This way, people can still see who is presenting the material. Again, this would be invaluable for meetings, presentations, etc. It also is fun to do for multiple angles with multiple cameras.

There are other source options including the ability to play movie files, show pictures or even just to have a colored background. I didn’t really play around with these too much yet. All I can say is that from the source options given alone, this program is worth over the low cost that they charge. I found a couple of other programs that have source options like this but they start around $100.

Onto the effects section of the program.

There are a huge variety of effects and effect types bundled with WebCamMax, plus near 1000 that you can download from their site. You can also create your own overlays and effects to produce a professional looking feed.

The effect above is an animated shooting star effect. There are also “masks” like sunglasses or funny hair that will follow you on camera. You can also add backgrounds to the video, which works with a rudimentary blue-screen type of technology. My suggestion, only use a solid background…

There are also funny animated emoticons and computer-generated cartoons that make for some amusing add-ons. They are more fun than anything else.

The text module allows you to add pre-made text overlays onto the screen. However, as mentioned earlier, you can create your own. Eventually, I am going to create a 1/3 overlay for the bottom of the screen which has the Life on Fire show episode and hosts.

The only warning I will mention about the effects is that some of them are very memory/processor intensive. I had my computer freeze several times when trying to use the masks. So, make sure that you close down any idle processes on your machine if you are planning on using them.

The last feature of WebCamMax is the doodle feature.

This feature allows you to do a tellistrator style overlay on top of all the other videos and effects. You can fill the whole screen with a color and then erase it so that only your head or a part of the screen is showing. If you want to play sports clips and cover the game ESPN style, this would be the way to do it.

So in terms of features, this program is “maxed”-out. However, there are some minor drawbacks. Again, the program can be memory and processor intensive, and occasionally I had to use ctrl-alt-delete to close it because of this. The majority of the time, it works fine though.

I also want to add the disclaimer that if you plan on broadcasting video files over ustream.tv or some other streaming services, that you have the rights to the video you are streaming. You wouldn’t want the MPAA knocking down your door demanding millions in broadcast rights, would you?

Overall WebCamMax is an excellent program. It has tons of effects, source options and an interesting doodle feature that you probably can’t find anywhere else. It creates a virtual webcamera that works on ustream.tv, Yahoo messenger, AIM and a variety of other sources. It is currently available for Windows PC and there is an alpha version that works for Vista 64bit.

You can download a free 30-day trial of the program from http://www.webcammax.com . The trial disables certain effect downloads and adds a banner to the video feed. The registration costs vary but are all very reasonable. You can choose from a 6 month, 1 year, 2 year or lifetime license. The lifetime license, including unlimited upgrades to future versions, is only $49.95, which totally blows the competition out of the water!

The people at WebCamMax are also always open to new ideas to add into the program. They also have a growing library of effects and overlays at your disposal.

We haven’t actually gotten to do a live ustream of an episode, due to the untimely death of our main recording computer. Once the motherboard has been replaced, rest assured that you will see a WebCamMax feed to ustream.tv . This program is easily worth hundreds of dollars and you will not find a solution like it anywhere else. Trust me, I looked. Again, check them out at http://www.webcammax.com .