Rampa (9/21/2017)

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https://webcamoid.github.io
http://splitcamera.com
https://manycam.com
http://www.tucows.com/preview/615661/ManyCam-Virtual-Webcam

They are for video, not image sequences. But you really will be fine with standard def at 60 FPS. I just got my FW installed late last night, so hopefully today I'll manage it.

Turn your camera on it's side to better fit your face. That makes the best use of the video frame. The "head mounted" profile is optimized for vertical video, but either will work. I would test both. FW can rotate it back upright.

Rampa,

I've revisited your comments in that other thread because I think I *could* use a webcam emulator instead of loading a sequence -- most specifically, I think it might allow me to import the audio at the same time and record it (it might not, but I want to try).

But as I said in that other thread, I've yet to find a "free" (and I mean "free") emulator, and none of the links you provide ARE free.  They all have watermarks, as far as I can tell, and require a fee of some sort.  Now, I'm not against paying money for software, but I just dropped 7 big ones for something that ought to work right, and it's discouraging that I'll need to spend more money just to get the ability to load audio at the same time (and what good a sequence is without audio I have zero idea -- while you can manually try lining it up, it's almost impossible to get true sync and even then you have the issue of not being able to generate lips.

So I'll ask here (anyone) again: are there are free emulators out there?  Ones people have actually used?  Don't just do a web search, because you will be lied to.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Oh, and let me go through a few of the ones Rampa listed, just to show I was right the first time:

1) Webcamoid doesn't work.  No real surprise, as it hasn't been developed in five years, but it constantly just crashed on my system.
2) Splitcamera works (and frustratingly, since it proves the concept of what I want) but it won't do 60fps (no way to even choose framerate for broadcasting) as well as ads (i could live with the ads, though).
3) Manycam (which is listed twice): payware.  It will show a watermark (I didn't even install it to try it, but I may to see if it's worth what they want -- however, I'm skeptical it will do 60fps).

Again, what I want is software *like* these, but with the ability to do 60fps and preferably free (at this point I may well pay a reasonable fee for something that works, but I'm convinced there is nothing free out there that will).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Let me update this a bit further.

I downloaded and installed Manycam.  It's supposedly the best, and has an annual fee for any version to use HD.  Luckily HD is NOT what I want here.  Just using the free version I was able to set it to 60fps and my first pass at using it with iClone and the FW plugin as a webcam source was... bleh.  It couldn't keep up with the frame rate, so the capture didn't look very good.

I had optimization turned on (that turns things down to 640x320) but my experience with loading in 60fps sequences told me that this doesn't work well, and you are better off resizing your stuff prior to importing.  So I did that, brought my video into Premiere and resized it to 640x320 (but kept the frame rate at 60) and used that instead.  Voila!

The advantage of doing this (using a virtual webcam instead of importing a sequence) is you can select the audio from the virtual webcam and thus have it synced as well as record the lip visemes.  So win-win (plus it's a lot easier to control in terms of starting and stopping -- I was able to freeze frame the video source to get my reference shot).  It does bring up my biggest gripe with iClone the way it works with FW, though -- when you do the lip viseme thing (so that it records audio at the same time) it lays down the audio track with no way other than a manual delete to get rid of that track if you want to re-record it (a PITA IMHO -- just like there is a checkbox on "blend" there ought to be a "keep previous audio" or some such when you checkmark the "record audio for viseme").

This workflow is *really* important to me, and I'm glad I was able to get it functioning, even if I did have to install every single one on Rampa's list (so thanks, I guess, Rampa :>.  My talent will, by and large, not be in studio, so being able to get the video into FW along with audio is very important (just for the full workflow, I don't intend to use the audio from the video track in most cases, as my talent will be using higher quality microphones attached to recording devices, but I'll sync this up automatically with the audio from iClone using Premiere tools for this).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Good thing you stuck with it to figure it out.

I have been using Splitcam, but only get about 24 FPS throughput in FW. Webcamoid crashed sometimes/ran sometimes for me. Not quite a good enough success rate to keep it.

I'll have to play with Manycam some more, I guess.

Splitcam max is 30fps, so you won't get much more than what you're doing.

I can consistently get 59-60fps after resizing the video, so I'm happy (and I don't have to pay for it -- although I'm not sure where the "watermark" is supposed to be, or if it will pop up sometime down the road.  I'm hoping either it only shows when you are using an actual webcam, or actually broadcasting, but even if it does eventually show it might not interfere with the FW process.  Or I'll have to bite the bullet and pay the $20 per year to get rid of it).

I'm pretty persistent -- the funny thing is I had already uninstalled Manycam once, after being unable to get to 60.  And then I remembered the problems I had had with an image sequence, so I reinstalled and tried again.  While in general I have a lot of patience the fact that I'm running out of time in my life causes me to lose it sometimes, and not want to waste too much time that I had when I was so much younger.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I just tried all the emulators I could find and none of them truly worked well. And so far my record button has remained greyed out since the start...

You tried Manycam?  It worked fine for me, once I resampled the video down to 640x320.  I got 60fps in Faceware AND iClone, and everything recorded just fine.

Where are you experiencing issues?  Tell me *exactly* how you are proceeding (you did start Manycam first before you started anything else, and loaded up your video file) and what is going wrong.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Oh, just one more (well, two more) things:

1) The free version of Manycam IS watermarked.  Silly me -- I never noticed it.  It's in the lower right corner, and it doesn't interfere at all with the capture process (so no need to buy anything).

2) Splitcam is pernicious.  Even after you uninstall it it will remain installed and a service running in the background.  Make sure you completely delete the directory out of your Programs.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

using a smartphone isnt hard, change a setting and download a app
2 sec google search.
plus you can also use the flashlight at the same time and get even lighting


.

A phone is a great capture device. If you have a phone with a bit of oomph, you can record 60 FPS. I have a no-name phone that is reasonably powerful that I use just as a small tablet, because it is obsolete 3G. But it is a perfect carry-with-you facial capture device. Just load the video to your computer and use Manycam to send it through Faceware.

Use this awesome app. It is open-source, and so add-free. It can record up to 120 FPS, so it'll do the trick.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sourceforge.opencamera&hl=en