Help with Dell 2.0mp camera

I got a1420 with the 2.0 camera hoping to use it to see some friends on line. Every time I tried to use it the screen image has a lag time of 20 seconds. I thought it would be real time. I tried playing with the camera settings but I`m not sure if this is just the way the camera works. My question : is it possiblle to get a real time image with the camera or is this just the way they work?
Thanks guys

 

i havent seen any lag with the camera as you point out .Which application is giving you this lag ?? did u try the supplied "dell webcam center" ??. try lowering the resolution from this .... 20 second lag is very bad.......

 

It shouldn't lag, mine doesn't anyways. Just out of curiosity are you running anything else at the time, and how are you connecting to the internet?

 

I`m using yahoo messenger and there is nothing else open. I considered contacting Dell , but I wasn`t sure if the camera was suppose to be like this. I`ll try playing around some more with web cam manager, now that I know that real time is possible. Thanks for the responses.

 

Maybe try and see if the problem has something to do with your internet connection or if it also happens offline.

 

did u try the webcam center..... is there lag on that one too ???

 

Most likely any lag is from your ISP. Are you on a sattellite connection by any chance? If you can test your latency to the other end your are connecting to that might yield some usefull info.

 

hi, just to point out that i used to use yahoo messenger -all- the time, the webcam functions in it aren't all that great.

have you tried using a different messenger? such as MSN or AIM?

alternatively, try going into yahoo messenger settings, somewhere in the webcam settings within yahoo messenger is a switch called "super webcam", or "enhanced webcam", having that turned on might give you a performance increase.

given, it's been about a year since i last used yahoo messenger, but one of the reasons i switched was because it's webcam support is relatively poor.

if when you say "20 second lag" you mean that the pictures it shows are simpley being delayed by 20 seconds or so ( but the quality is constant / there aren't any jumps etc), it does sound more of a software problem, when the problem is your internet connection, things tend to stutter and freeze / blur alot.

 

I think I`ll try a different messenger. By lag time I meant a frozen and then jerking motion. Almost like stop action. I`ll just have to keep at it. thanks to all for the suggestions.