News :: 15MR: WebcamMax v3.2.1.5
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is WebcamMax version 3.2.1.5 by Yewsoft Inc.—A fun application for adding effects to your webcam.
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“Add videos, screen, pictures, flash and effects to virtual or real Webcam and broadcast on all messengers. For all Webcam programs (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Camfrog, Skype, Paltalk, Yahoo, ANYwebcam, Stickam). Enable Video Play List, Photo Slides, and Picture in Picture. Magic Mask Effects move automatically with your head. Customize effects or modify effects by mouse.”
Quick Pros
- Lots of fun to play with
- Effects selection is great (Want more? They offer more here too!)
- Lots of possibilities with PiP: Could be used for quick conferences and consulting too
Quick Cons
- CPU hog majorly—Sits at 60% CPU usage on a Athlon 64 X2 3800+ usage
- Masks could position themselves a bit better
Expansion
This application is a lot of fun for sure. With tons of effects and also the ability to build your own effects, it is one of those fun applications that if you chat a lot with your webcam, you’ll find it comes in useful for many aspects. Rather than pausing, put up a BRB image. Do themes for your mood or season. There is a lot to do with it. You can get even more effects (I believe the current count is greater than 1200) by going to their website here and getting the full package as well.
On the flipside, my issue is the CPU hog; don’t plan on doing much more besides chatting while using this application. It runs at 60% on my system; an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with 2GB memory. The plus is that this application does support threading (Read: multi-core/multi-processor support) so it doesn’t ding you as badly. If you want to isolate it to one processor, you can by setting it’s Affinity in the Task Manager.
My only other quip would be the mask positioning; you can’t control where it interprets your head, and with myself it tends to sit many of the masks too low on my face and no way to correct it easily.
Final Verdict
If you chat a lot with your webcam, you may fall in love with this application. For free, it is definitely worth trying it out. Even for $29.95, if you are a webcam-aholic, you may find this is worthwhile too for the added ‘fun’ to your chatting experience. Even though it is a CPU hog, many people tend to only be chatting, or chatting and limited other processings (Web browser, word processing, etc.) and likely not find the CPU usage an inconvienience.
Posted by BladedThoth on Saturday, March 24, 2007
