Thursday, August 5, 2010

How to use Fake/Virtual webcam to enjoy more interesting IM video chat with MSN, Skype, AIM, etc

Recently, most popular IM software such as MSN Messenger, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, AIM Messenger, etc. support real time video chat. But if you don’t have a camera, or you want to make your webcam image more interesting, you may try fake webcam or virtual webcam. Fake webcam works just like a real webcam and could support most IM tools like Live Messenger, Skype, ICQ, etc..
Camersoft Fake Webcam is a professional virtual webcam software. It could not only enable you to share some pictures or play movies on your web cam, but also could change your webcam effects, add more effects to your web cam during video chatting. In addition, it could capture webcam video and save as AVI, so you could record the video on your PC. If you already have a webcam, you can use it too. It can be installed on Windows system, such as: windows 7, windows XP, windows NT/2000/2003.
In this article, I would show you how to use the fake webcam to enjoy your video chatting with more magical webcam effects.

Part 1 You may free download the setup file on Camersoft Studio official website:
http://www.camersoft.com/fake-webcam.html
And run the setup to complete the installation. We suggest you to exit your IM software before install. After installation, you need to change your IM webcam settings to set the fake webcam work. as current working webcam device.

Select webcam device in Skype:
Please restart your Skype firstly and Click “Tools” menu on the top of UI and select “Options”.
Then, Select: Video Setting ->Set up your webcam. You could see several webcam options in the list, also the real webcam is included. Please select “Camersoft Fake Webcam” and Click “Save” button. Now, you can use the virtual webcam as your webcam device during your Skype Video chat.

Select webcam device in MSN, Windows Live Messenger:
It is similar to Skype, open “Tool” menu and select “Set up Audio and Video” option.
And select “Camersoft Fake Webcam”. Then click “Finish” button. Now you could use Fake Webcam to add many of fantastic effects to webcam during your MSN Video Chat.

Part 2: What Camersoft Fake Webcam could do for you?
Please startup the software and the Main UI is like below:
Then main functions of Camersoft Fake Webcam:
Select different image source:
The first three buttons are for you to select an image source; you could select a real webcam device or play a video to webcam image during the video call. It support most video formats such as AVI, MP4, WMV, MOV, etc. Also, you could just set a picture to show to your friends on the webcam.

Webcam Recorder:
This fake webcam tool also provides the webcam capture and webcam recorder functions.
Click “Record” button to start recording and the black box on the bottom of UI will show the recorded time. After a while, click “Stop” button and you could see the recorded video file displayed in the list.
After recording, you could replay the video files with your video player software, like Windows Media Player or other players installed on your PC. Click the “Open folder” button you could find the video files. And if you want to set another folder to save the recorded videos, just click the “Change Folder” button and select a new directory you want.
Tips: If you like the current image when preview video, you can use the “Snapshot” option. Just click the “Snapshot” button, the current webcam image will be saved as BMP files in the same folder of the recorded video files.

Advanced functions: add interesting effects to your webcam:
Compared with other fake webcam tools, Camersoft Fake Webcam provides an interesting function for you and enable you change your webcam image appearance or add some special effects on the image. On the left of the main UI is the Categories List and the Effects list, first click one category and all the effects of this group will displayed in the Effects list, and just click one effect picture it could show on the current webcam image. For example:

“Animations”: you could add some animations on the webcam image, such as
a dog, a cat, a butterfly and so on.
“Scenes”: If you select a scene effect, you could find that it seems to put you into a new environment, really very interesting.
“Distortions”: make your image fatter, thinner, and more…
“Faces”: this is most fantastic; it could detect your face automatically and add the effect on your image, all will be showed to your chat partner.

If you want to delete some effects, you may select one and click “Delete” button or Click “Clear All” button to clear all of effects.

Click the “Paint” button and you could doodle on the webcam freely.

If you have any issue, feature request or suggestion, please visit the Camersoft Studio website: http://www.camersoft.com/, and feel free to contact us via the e-mail address: support@camersoft.com. We will reply as soon as possible.