Periscope: Webcam Software

Reviewed by Ted Bade

Freeverse, Inc. 447 W. 24th Street, New York, NY 10011 (212) 929 3549 FAX: (212) 647 0562 info@freeverse.com http://www.freeverse.com/periscope/ Released: April 2007 $30 USD Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4 or later; Built-in or external iSight, or a supported 3rd-party USB or FireWire camera; Mac OS X 10.4.9 provides improved support for 3rd-party cameras.
Strengths: Easy to use to both capture images and to share them. Weaknesses: limited video manipulation, no movie option. You can save a series of pictures as a movie, but not capture a movie. For a demo of this product: http://www.freeverse.com/download/select.php?name=periscope&platform=osx

Introduction

Periscope is a program that gives you control of your external or built-in iSight camera. You can use it to snap an image based on a variety of different events including motions, duration, a script file and more. It’s a great utility and it works well.

If you have an iSight camera or a Macintosh with one built in, you can use Periscope to automatically (or manually, for that matter), capture images for you. It is up to you to decide how to apply the controls and position the camera! You can use these abilities for security or just for fun. Once the image is captured, Periscope offers some basic tools for saving the captured image.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basic screen

You can capture an image using one of five different ways. First is the ability to snap a shot when motion occurs. You can either have the software and camera watch the entire screen or a section of it. Sensitivity to motion is set by moving a simple slider control so that an image is taken exactly when you want. Set the sensitivity up to capture a shot with the slightest of motion or so only major movements cause it to snap. But what if you want to snap an image when someone walks into a specific area? You can set Periscope to monitor one or more regions of the view area for motion. Each region’s sensitivity is set independently. Although the regions are rectangular in shape, they can be made any size.

You can also use an audio input as a trigger. I think of monitoring the baby in its crib or watching the front door. When a noise happens, an image is snapped. As with motion, you can adjust Periscope’s sensitivity to sound. Just be sure to set the sensitivity level so that every cricket chirp doesn’t snap an image!

Another method of capturing images it to use a timer. Tell Periscope to snap an image at a regular interval from seconds, to minutes, to hours. Want to see a movie of how the stars cross the sky? Set it up to capture an image every 1/2 hour as it watches the sky, then play back the results as a short movie!

For a more complex means of control, you trigger the operation of the camera by an script file. The script can take a bunch of things into account, limited only by your needs and imagination. And finally, for those Macs that have them, you can operate the camera using the Apple remote control. This would be a great tool for capturing candids at a party. No one expects that PowerBook on the table is actually being controlled from across the room.

As well as capturing the image, you can tell Periscope to add certain pieces of information to the image it takes. The Date and Time stamp is the most obvious item, Whenever an image is taken the date/time is included on the image. You can control the font and color used for the text, and include only date, or only time, or both. When you turn on that feature, a date/time box appears on the screen, this box can be moved to avoid covering anything that might be important. You can also add a line of text to the image. This might be useful if you had multiple cameras and wanted to know exactly which one you are viewing or simply to title the captured image.

 

 

 

Setting motion regions

With the pictures stored on your computer, you probably want to do something with them. Periscope offers a handful of options for sharing the images, available under the “share” tab. You can use Periscope to email an image, save it to a folder, or to a .Mac or Flickr account, FTP it to someone or just put it in your iPhoto library. I was impressed with how Periscope handles emailing an image. From within Periscope, you simply enter an email address and title, Periscope then sends the email using your email address as the sender. This might be useful to have your Mac at home send you images of what’s happening there while you are at work!

Conclusion

If you have an iSight camera and want to use it to capture an image automatically, you will want to take a look at Periscope. It does a good job of capturing images and offers a variety of events that trigger an image. It is an interesting program which works well. Download the demo and see how it works for your needs.