How to improve webcam resolution with Droidcam App

How to improve the quality of the Web Camera?

Special thanks to all my friend for the encouragement in writing this blog after long time

Many of us working from home during this lock down and hosting meetings through Zoom, JioMeet, Google meet and Cisco WebeX.

But all of us are worried about the video quality of our laptop camera
i will share my own experience on how do i improved it for my regular meetings and classes. 

these pictures are sample- screenshots taken during my webinar research and invited talks at certain organization.

When i was looking for the better resolution, and after few minutes of browsing  i found  Snap Camera  and  Droidcam  which serve better for this purpose. Snap camera is not supporting Linux distro,
therefore i tried with Droidcam. This application is available for free download, it is suitable for all type of OS,  Download by clicking this https://www.dev47apps.com/

Steps to install:
For window just download the exe file and run.

for Linux user

Linux

The GNU/Linux client is a combination of a Video4Linux2 device driver and an executable app that will transfer the stream from the phone to the driver. Sound support is provided via the ALSA Loopback device.

It’s assumed you are somewhat familiar with the system and how to use the Terminal. Please keep in mind other posts on the site are Windows oriented.

Install

Note: 32-bit binaries are no longer provided, you’ll need to compile the client from source.

1. Ensure the following dependencies are installed (using apt-get, yum, etc.): gcc make linux-headers-`uname -r`

2. If droidcam is already installed, make sure it’s not open/running.

3. Download and install the latest client:
cd /tmp/
wget https://files.dev47apps.net/linux/droidcam_latest.zip
echo "73db3a4c0f52a285b6ac1f8c43d5b4c7 droidcam_latest.zip" | md5sum -c --#OK?
unzip droidcam_latest.zip -d droidcam && cd droidcam
sudo ./install
The install script will try to auto-sign the drivers if you have secure boot enabled. If the signing fails, you’ll need to manually take care of signing the driver by following ‘Secure Boot Module Signing’ instructions for your distro.

If all goes well, you can ensure the video device is installed via lsmod | grep v4l2loopback_dc. You should see v4l2loopback_dc in the output.

Open up a V4L2 compatible program (VLC player, Skype, Cheese, etc) and you should see DroidCam listed as a video device (or it might be listed as /dev/video).

Sound support is also available. After the above installation succeeds, you can then run
sudo ./install-sound
in the same directory. This will load the Linux ALSA Loopback sound card which the Droidcam client will use for audio input.

4. Start the droidcam client via the Terminal, or create a launcher if you’re using gnome. There is also a simpler cli client, droidcam-cli.

5. Check the connection post on how to connect. If all goes well, you should see the output in the chat application, and you’re done!

Extra Notes

Android USB connections: The client app will try to invoke adb automatically, provided adb is installed.
Debian-based Linux users can do: sudo apt-get install adb
Fedora/SUSE-based Linux users can do: sudo yum install android-tools

iOS USB Connections: The client will try to communicate with usbmuxd to detect and connect to your iOS device. Make sure usbmuxd is installed and running.

Sound support: In order to get the mic to show up in PulseAudio you can either run pacmd load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:Loopback,1,0 (you may need to adjust the last number), or by editing /etc/pulse/default.pa as described here. On some systems you need to do this after launching the droidcam client, and before you connect to the app.

HD Mode – Change webcam resolution

You can change the webcam output resolution as follows:

1. Close any programs using the droidcam webcam. Unload the device driver:
sudo rmmod v4l2loopback_dc

2. Re-load it with new options (WIDTH and HEIGHT are numbers). :
sudo insmod /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video/v4l2loopback-dc.ko width=WIDTH height=HEIGHT
Standard sizes (Width x Height): 640×480, 960×720, 1280×720 (720p), 1920×1080 (1080p).

3. Restart the droidcam client to reload the settings, and test it out. You can keep changing the resolution.

4. Edit the text file /etc/modprobe.d/droidcam.conf with the new options to make the change stick.

Next Install in the mobile

Go to play store download droidcam

How to start?

Ensure both phone and Laptop are connected with the same wifi connection

Start the mobile app you will get a phone IP and port number

Start the terminal in your laptop by using key

 Ctrl + Alt+ T

then type the following in the terminal

$ droidcam

then a pop window open like the following

Enter the phone and port number generated from the phone and click the connect button.

now your camera is on in your phone

How to connect with Google meet /zoom or etc..

Now start google meet

next go the the setting button (vertical three dots)on the preview of video 

then click the settings, now you will be directed to audio and video settings

select droidcam

change the resolution of video form your end as 720 HD

then you will see a high resolution image

 then join the meeting with high resolutions video of yours . tada!!!