Comment on Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, 1080p Widescreen Video Calling and Recording (960-000764) Reviews by J. Hawkes.
This is an awesome Webcam for use with Skype,
This is an awesome Webcam for use with Skype(I have not used it with other Video Conference Software).
The new mount is better than the C910(Not that I had a problem with that one anyway). It now has a tripod mount. I found it works very well on a 25″ LCD Monitor, Laptop and a 42″ rear Projection TV.
Bandwidth usage Information(tested on Skype 5.8 with an i5-2500K Desktop and Lenovo T410 i5 Vpro laptop with 1Gb/s Lan connectivity)
1980 by 1080 by 30 FPS peaked out at about 8Mb/s (C920 on Desktop and C920 on laptop)
1280 by 720 by 30 FPS peaked out at about 3-4Mb/s
640 by 480 by 30 FPS peaked out at about 1.4Mb/s(I also got this usage when testing a STD laptop camera on a Lenovo T410)
The C920 does seem to use a lot less CPU than the C910. 640 by 480 on a core 2 Duo HP laptop was up to 80% CPU. With the 920C this dropped to 45% at 1280 by 920 by 30FPS.
I also found that 640 by 480 utilises VP80(or VP60 in order versions of Skype). It changes to H.264 for 720P and 1080P.
The C920 hardware H.264 encoding does not seem to be supported on Skype for Linux 2.2.
Note HD/HQ Skype access requires the latest software (Skype and Webcam drivers), dual core or higher CPUs, a supported camera and bandwidth. Skype will ramp up to HD/HQ if the previous is satisfied and their is available bandwidth AND CPU. It can take 2-5 minutes to ramp up to 1080P even on a local 1Gb/s LAN. Also, Skype will NOT ramp up to HD/HQ speeds unless the Camera is supported at these speeds.
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