You’ve just bought your new Logitech webcam and very anxiously wanting to have a video conference with your family which is few thousand meters away from you. It’s so much cheaper to use the internet to talk via mic, hearing via speakers and watching via webcam. You’ve connected your webcam, installed the drivers and everything worked well.

You start up your MSN Messenger and started video conferencing with your family without problems. You then start up your Logitech Quickcapture program to take a few pretty snaps of yourself. Weirdly, you get an error message saying “Camera is in use by another application. Stop the application that is using the camera and then press the Reconnect button.”

After you stop your video conferencing from your MSN Messenger and click on the Reconnect button, you are now able to take snapshot from your webcam using Logitech Quickcapture program.
Then you tried the other way round. Open Logitech Quickcapture program first, and then start video conferencing from MSN Messenger. Logitech Quickcapture works but you couldn’t start the video conferencing from MSN Messenger. It only display the picture below instead of the streaming video from webcam.

Weirdly, you can’t use your webcam simultaneously. Isn’t it frustrating that you paid a couple of hundred bucks for a webcam that couldn’t multitask?

This is actually caused by the video capture drivers itself. I can say most of the video capture drivers are not programmed to support multiple programs at a time. Thank God there is a third-party software+driver that enables you to use your webcam or any video capturing hardware all at the same time!

SplitCamera is a freeware virtual video clone and split video capture driver for connecting several applications to a single video capture source. Usually, if you have a web camera or video camera connected to your computer, you cannot use it in more than one application at the same time, and there is no standard Windows options that makes it possible. Split Camera driver allows you to easily multiply your web-camera (any models), video cameras ( any model: analog or digital : VHS, DV, TV-IN or TV-tuner ) in video chat or video conference software like ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype Video, Camfrog, AOL AIM, Pal Talk, or whatever… and to broadcast it to many users at a time. With SplitCam you can connect up to 64 clients to a single video source. In a few words: Split Cam does just what its name says: it splits the video stream coming from the video source and tunnels it to numerous other client applications.

You can as well use splitcam to send your home videos at the same time to many video conference programs, for example your friend using MSN messenger can see your home video or your favorite DVD disk live and other friend uses Yahoo messenger want to see it too so how can you at the same time to send it to both of them and to see it on your computer as well? splitcam allow this operation to happen, you can watch the video file and at the same time to send it over the internet to any video chat or video conferencing software, we are the only software on the net that allow it.

Usually after installing a video capture device, like USB web camera, dv camera, TV tuner, or a TV-IN video card, you can only connect to it from one Windows application. If you start another application and try to use the same video source you’ll get an error message complaining about the device being already in use. In this case you have no choice but to wait for the first application to finish its work, or quit the thought of using the second application at all. Sometimes it may be absolutely necessary or most advisable to use, say, your web-camera in more than one client application at the same time. What if you want to conduct a video conference with several people independently? Or you want to record your video-chat or video conference using your favorite video capture software?

That’s where SplitCam can become of great help! All you have to do is just install the Split Camera software on your computer, connect it to a video source like: ( video camera, USB web camera, video file or image file ), and connect other applications like: ( video chat , video conference any messenger or video applications ) to the Split Cam virtual capture device. It will look exactly like you have 64 independent video source plugged in to your computer!

Still didn’t get it? The picture below will give you a better idea of webcam splitting.

Main features
• Choose almost any video source as a primary video capture device.
• Digital zoom.
• Digital pan 180°.
• Select a desirable frame rate from 5 to 30 fps. Usually you use 15 fps for videoconferencing.
• Set up base video options directly from the main SplitCam window.
• Bring up a manufacture provided options for fine tuning the physical video source.
• Use any of the wide range of resolutions in client applications: 160×120, 320×240, 640×480, etc.
• Every application can have its own video resolution.
• You can disable unused video resolutions to lower the processor load.
• Auto-update will ensure that you always have the latest version of the software.
• Capturing photo images and providing them as a video source to client applications.
• Basic photo editing of photo images before sending them to client applications.
• Change the appearance of the SplitCam interface by using “skins” developed by other users, or make your own interface “skin” with the help of the skin builder.

Under development
• Sound splitting.
• Support for more video codec.
• Adding Text or Picture as second layer over the main video stream.

System requirements
• Operating system: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or newer.
• Processor: Intel Pentium or better.
• RAM: 128Mb, more highly recommended.
• Additional requirements: DirectX 9 or later.

SplitCam installation
• Download the installation package file and save it on your hard drive.
• Run the installation package by double clicking it with your mouse.
• When you run SplitCam for the first time you will be prompted to install a driver for the virtual video camera. Answer “Yes” to all questions during driver installation.

[ Download SPLITCAM v3.27, Driver v3.21 | SplitCam Website ]

Note: After SplitCam installation, make sure you configure your other software to use “SplitCam Capture” source. Oh, and it’s FREE :D

[tags]webcam, video, driver, share, split, share, conference, logitech[/tags]