unforum

[Drer'Ahv]

Distortion on live webcam

[agent967]

prerecord the whole webcast.

if you want to answer questions from the chat room, do that part actually live(with no distortion) and then after youre done, switch it up to the prerecorded footage.

[UberTaco]

If your webcam is a Logitech, there are a few effects in their bundled Windows driver software (which is actually not just bloatware!) that may work for color/pixelation distortion. Other than that, I'm not sure off-hand. Then again, I'm no expert by any means.

[zbeeblebrox]

Even though it requires a ton of logistics and setup, agent967's suggestion is the easiest solution.

If you really want to do it in realtime, and don't have after-hours access to a TV News station (...but if you do that's awesome), remember that the weakest link in any system is the wires. I could explain some easy ways to screw up audio cables, but chances are, everything is running from the webcam to the computer through a USB cable. I have no idea how those work. Even after seeing that TTA video. So none of my suggestions can help you there.

As long as you can move the webcam safely away from your computer, you could try experimenting with magnetic interference. Although I doubt that'll have an effect on any cam built after like '95.

[Cougar Draven]

I have a thought which might work. Let me look at it.

ETA: Never mind, that won't work.

[Jsor]

If you use some sort of software like VAC (virtual audio cable), you could have a soundboard rigged to hotkeys on your computer, and then have that in turn feed into the livestream input along with your microphone line. That way you can get audio distortion. The trick with this is you pretty much HAVE to rehearse it, so that it looks natural, otherwise people will instantly catch on that you hit a hotkey because people are smart like that.

I'm sure there's probably a way to do this dynamically with a virtual audio mixer, where you feed the line into a mixer program and have a hotkey bound to settings that distort the actual sound input (instead of laying a prerecorded sound effect over your voice).

For video distortions there may be similar ways, but I suspect that it'd be very time consuming and infuriating trying to get it to work in a way that doesn't look like shit, especially if you want to minimize input lag (especially video/audio synch).

ETA: If you're worried about it being obvious you're pressing keys, you can have the webcam away from your computer, and get a friend to press the hotkey at an agreed upon time (i.e. at 8:30, hit it), but if it's going to be a long webcast, it may be hard to get someone to stick around in a chair waiting to hit a button for that long.

[Lumine]

Since I plan on doing a live webcam show soon I was thinking of using manycam. Manycam has several layers and what-not but no heavy distortion kind of stuff.