5 ms·
To make a point, early webcams were USB 1.0, 12Mbps maximum, and it was enough for SD-quality video. USB 2.0 is 40x faster, which, assuming similar encoding (i.
by GuB-42 3y ago
To make a point, early webcams were USB 1.0, 12Mbps maximum, and it was enough for SD-quality video. USB 2.0 is 40x faster, which, assuming similar encoding (i.e. 20 year old tech), should be more than enough for 1080p video. It should be enough to best any laptop webcam, which are usually USB2 internally, but with worse optics and without the processing power of a smartphone behind it.
Using more fancy encoding, 4k should be no problem, even with a bit of headroom for on-device encoding and low latency.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>without the processing power of a smartphone behind it. Considering the cheapest of desktop/laptop CPUs and iGPUs are more powerful than the best mobile CPUs and GPUs, this is a problem with the encoders and video chat software involved.
- Retric 3y agoThe best cellphone CPU’s easily beat cheap laptops’s from a few years ago that used low end 10th gen Intel chips. They don’t have the terminal budget to quite beat today’s chips, but it’s much closer than you might expect. That might seem unfair, but many people replace their phones far more frequently than their computers.
- GuB-42 3y agoI meant the chip between the builtin laptop webcam and its internal USB2 connection, which is typically a tiny, dedicated IC. Smartphones cameras are not USB2, they are, I think, directly connected to a powerful SoC. The USB2 link is for sending data to the computer after the smartphone has processed it with all the might of its main processor.
- kccqzy 3y agoHave you been living under a rock? The encoders have been hardware based for more than a decade.