Use a webcam to chat over a video link

It is not all that long ago that webcams were regarded as something of a luxury, and had large price tags associated with them. These days, though, webcams are available at pocket-money prices, you needn’t pay much more than around £20, even for a good one.

Once installed, a webcam can be used to record footage, but also as a means of keeping in touch with people. The simple addition of a webcam makes it possible for people you chat with online to see you and this kind of video chat is a great way of keeping in contact with friends and family you can’t meet up with very often. Obviously you will need a webcam and a microphone, but many webcams have a microphone built in. Here’s how to do it.

Online chat options
The internet has become an indispensable tool for communication. The advent of email changed the way in which friends, family and colleagues stay in touch with each other, making it possible to exchange messages almost instantly. But if ‘almost instant’ was not fast enough, it did not take long for the first batch of instant-messaging (IM) programs to appear, and these provided a means of chatting with contacts in real time.

Over time, instant-messaging tools developed and the option of conducting voice chats with a microphone was added. It was now possible to hear the person you were chatting with rather than just reading messages they had typed. This idea was taken to the next level by the likes of Skype, a company that quickly cottoned on to the fact that internet users were keen on saving money by making web-based phone calls rather than using the more traditional, and expensive, landline option.

Adding video to the mix
More recently still, video chat has become a common addition to instant-messaging tools and services. The popular Google Mail service, for instance, now has both text and video chat modes.

A Google Mail account is needed. If you don’t already have one then pay a visit to the Google Mail website and click the ‘Create an account’ button to set up a new one. Otherwise, just sign in.

In the chat box to the left of the page should be a link labelled ‘Try video chat. Click this to access the download page’, but if the link is not visible, just visit http://mail.google.com/video instead. Click the ‘Install voice and video chat’ button and save the file that is offered for download to the Windows Desktop.

Once the download is complete, double-click the file named GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe to start the installation. There will be a short pause while additional required components are downloaded and, once this has been done, a web browser restart is required. Click the button to restart and then revisit the Google Mail website before signing back in to your account if you have been signed out.

Setting up
To the left-hand side of the page, look in the Chat box beneath the list of folders, expanding it if necessary by clicking the ‘+’ button. Click the Options link that appears at the bottom of the Chat box and select ‘Chat settings’ from the menu that is displayed. The chat settings screen will be displayed in the right-hand portion of the page, with a number of options. At this point it is important to make sure that a webcam is connected.

Click the ‘+’ button next to the ‘Verify your settings’ label if a video window is not already visible. If the currently connected webcam has been detected, the video window should display what the camera
sees. If this is not the case, it is possible that the wrong input device has been detected as a webcam. This
can happen if a TV tuner card is installed, for example. If the box appears black, click the Camera dropdown menu beneath this section of the settings page and make sure that the correct webcam is selected from the list.