let's say that you just picked up a
brand new Logitech webcam because you
want to improve the production quality
of your livestream maybe you picked up
the ever popular Logitech c920 or the 4k
Logitech Brio or maybe even the
brand-new logitech stream cam that I
reviewed last month you're excited you
open the box you mount it on top of your
monitor and add it into your streaming
software just to be left with a feeling
of disappointment because it doesn't
look anything like what you thought it
would do well fear not my streaming
friends because in this video we'll be
showing you exactly how you can take
your webcam from looking like this to
looking like this and we'll be going
through all of the improvements that you
can make to fix things like low
framerate pulsing autofocus over or
under exposure white balance washed out
or just strange looking colors and
finally maybe most importantly how you
can actually save these settings so that
you don't need to reset them every
single time you restart your PC
[Music]
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link in the description ok so right now
you're looking at the image of the Sony
a 64 hundred but I've just plugged in my
Logitech Cabrillo so let's add it as a
source in OBS it's exact same process in
stream labs OBS and let's see exactly
how it looks so we come down to our
sources list click add video capture
device I'm gonna call this Brio click OK
and it should find the device and as you
can see straight off the bat horrible
image wrong resolution sometimes you'll
see these colors improve over time
because it's using the auto white
balance so very very red now but it
wouldn't be surprised if in the next 30
seconds it starts to slowly adjust and
get my skin tones a little bit more
correct but this is the exact problem
right default settings out of the box
you want to repackage up this Logitech
Brio or whatever camera you've got and
send it back for a full refund because
it just looks awful but hold your horses
we can't fix it so what we're going to
do is right click on our source and go
to properties which is going to bring up
the camera properties and the first
thing that we're going to fix is this
resolution and frame rate you can see
now the colors slightly getting better
as the auto adjustments are coming in
but it's still four by three and it's
not using the right frame rate so the
first thing we want to do is resolution
slash fps type we want to change that to
custom now we're gonna lose our preview
just because we haven't got a resolution
set I'm gonna set mine to 1920 by 1080
and you should see now we get the
sixteen by nine frame fully filled now
the Brio as well as some other webcams
can actually run at 4k and i wanted to
quickly mention why would you want to
run your camera a higher resolution and
why would you want to run a low
resolution so firstly a higher
resolution is going to require more
processing power from your computer to
actually downscale that for your stream
and encode it so it goes off to twitch
or wherever you're streaming to so if
you're running at 4k and you only have
your webcam in the bottom corner of your
gameplay and it's very small that's
probably a waste of resources the real
reason you want to use a higher
resolution is if you're doing things
like punching into your image and
running a full screen webcam to maybe
emphasize a point that you're making on
a stream if you run that a higher
resolution when you punch in you
actually won't lose any detail because
you're still technically at least pixel
to pixel ratio whereas if you are
running your webcam at say 720p and
you're streaming at 1080p and you punch
in then obviously you're losing some
details so there's a benefit and a cost
to running a higher resolution if you're
not sure I would just run your webcam at
1080p it may only go up to 1080p if
you're using something like the c920
anyway now for FPS you can choose to
actually dial this in exactly if you
know what FPS you want to get out of
your webcam or you can just select to
run at the highest fps possible which is
coming out of your camera for me I'm
going to do 1080p 60 so once that
refreshes you can see we now have a nice
smooth 60fps stream for video format
usually webcams only have one or two
options for this this is just the
compression type that is being used as
you can see the Brio and I believe the
c920 both do use em JPEG which is motion
JPEG so essentially just a lot of
different JPEGs strung together in a
video format but if you do have more
than one option it's sometimes worth
just selecting and trying them both out
or all three of them out and seeing
which one performs best for you
sometimes they'll run a really
uncompressed video format which means
that you get a very low frame rate so
just try them out and see which one
looks the best in your opinion similarly
for color space there's a few different
options usually 709 or 601 try them both
out and see which one looks better in
your opinion lastly for a color range
I'd recommend setting this at full so
you get the full amount of colors
available from your camera there's not
usually a massive difference between
full and partial but I would recommend
setting at full you can leave everything
else as it is and just click OK to
return back to your screen preview okay
so we are looking slightly better but
the
still look pretty awful and you can see
that over time I'm slowly getting more
and more natural as the Brio is slowly
adjusting to be more natural to my skin
tones but still there is definitely some
work we want to do and the first day of
advice I would give you is to do with
lights webcams typically have extremely
small sensors so the more light that you
can get on yourself the better quality
and the higher frame rate that your your
webcam is gonna be able to run out now
I'm not saying that you need to
necessarily go out and spend loads of
money on something like the El Gato key
lights because I do realize that they
are expensive and you know soft boxes
aren't great either because they take up
a lot of room and not everybody has an
infinite amount of room to be able to
pull their desk back and put a big light
behind but even something really cheap I
think I paid about 25 pounds or 30
dollars for this light from Amazon or
you can get some slightly bigger ones
from companies like newer but some LED
panels from Amazon can be really cheap
and make a massive difference to your
webcam because it just allows you to
light yourself much better separate
yourself from the background and then
give your webcam a much greater
opportunity to be able to run a full
stack another tip is that you want to be
lighting yourself more brightly than you
do for your background so if you can do
things like close the blinds like I have
done here
turn off any lights that you have in the
rest of your room and make sure that the
light really is brightest on yourself on
your subject and darker in the
background that again is going to help
your webcam be able to focus on you as
the subject right so presuming that we
have some sort of lighting setup sorted
we can actually jump into the webcam
settings and try and fix some of these
colors so how you would usually do that
is again right-click on the source click
properties and open up this configure
video window and and know a lot of you
have seen this with this window far too
much because typically what happens with
some of the Logitech cameras is that you
can play around with all the settings in
here adjust them get the looking exactly
as you want to and when it comes to you
restarting your PC or starting up the
next day for your stream all of these
settings have reset back to their
default values which is infuriating and
I understand people's point of view of
why they don't want to go around playing
with their settings when they have to do
it every single time that they start
their stream well the good news is I
believe I have found so
kind of a fix to this where you can use
a separate program from Logitech called
Logitech capture it doesn't have quite
as many settings as this properties
window does but it does save the
settings between reboot cycle so you
don't have to go in and adjust all of
your settings every time you want to
stream you can download Logitech capture
software for free from Logitech's
website I will include a link for sure
down in the description below the like
button so if you want to download this
it's a much better way of being able to
setup your webcam settings once that's
downloaded and installed you'll probably
see a window like this with a big box
saying the Brio 4k which is the one that
i've selected is not available that's
just because we've already got OBS open
so if we head back to OBS and just close
it down we should then get the preview
updating in logitech capture to show our
camera that we've selected which for me
is the Brio 4k but it might be the C 29
20 for you or it might be the stream
camp so let's work through these
settings from top to bottom
firstly like I said make sure that you
have the rice source selected so the
actual camera that you're wanting to
customize and you'd be able to see the
preview make sure the preset is set to
custom that just allows you to actually
change the settings down here rather
than use some of the defaults that
they've already got a set up for you the
next option we get is the priority do
you want to prioritize the framerate or
the exposure and this can be useful if
your lighting is going to change a lot
let's say that you're streaming in a in
an open environment where you know
windows are letting in a lot of
different light you can set this to
prioritize the exposure at the cost of
frame rate but typically I would
recommend selecting frame rate here
which means we get a nice consistent
frame rate for the Brio that is 60
frames per second or it might be fair to
be in for a second depending on how
you've got it set up but it should be
consistent and it won't prioritize the
exposure next depending on the kind of
camera that you have plugged in you have
some options for field of view in HDR so
the Bria you can actually go from 65
degree field of view up to 90 degrees
and select HDR mode which doesn't really
seem to do much in my opinion
but other cameras I don't think have
these two options so the next option we
really care about is auto focus now this
sounds like a good feature in practice
the obviously keeps you in focus even if
you move around or if you hold something
up
but it comes with a couple of caveats
firstly autofocus obviously needs some
kind of processing power because it's
always going to try and keep you in
focus and secondly on cameras all the
cameras specifically like the c920 when
you have autofocus enabled it can quite
often do that focus hunting thing where
it sort of warps in and out of your face
and it looks like it's trying to find
focus newer cameras like the Brio and
for the stream cam don't seem to do this
quite as much so you can leave autofocus
on especially if you're going to be
moving around a lot or holding something
up to the camera if you're like
reviewing a product or something like
that but if you can get away with
disabling autofocus and just setting the
focus manually because you don't move
around a lot that will save you a little
bit of power on the Logitech webcam and
obviously will mean you don't get that
focus and it okay so next we have auto
white balance which has kind of been the
bane of my life for the last few days
whilst I've been writing this video the
difficulty that webcams have with auto
white balance is that you're usually in
front of your computer monitor which
emits a sort of blue light and the auto
white balance will either show that blue
light and kind of make you look a bit a
zombie-like or you'll overcompensate and
just end up showing you as like a super
red or orange much too warm and the
white balance looking like you've been
out in the Sun for too long so really
when our scripts in this video and
originally planning it I wanted to tell
you guys to disable auto white balance
come in here and pick the exact setting
that you need to give you a correctly
exposed image to make sure that your
skin tones look natural in terms of
white balance but what I found in my
testing is depending on the webcam that
you're using if you disable this it can
be really difficult to dial in a exact
number that looks natural compared to
the auto setting so you can see here
that I'm kind of close but as soon as I
enable auto white balance and give it
some time to adjust again it just gives
me a color but I can't seem to find on
the slider it's really strange and this
is partly the reason why I just hate web
cam software so much it seems that some
settings are hidden behind these
automatic levels and you can't access
them through manual controls what I can
tell you is that in my testing I found
that for the logitech stream cam the
newest camera auto white balance seems
to work quite well and
the c920 I found that assisting the
white balance manually works quite well
but for the Brio
it just is really confusing me because
in the review video that I did for the
stream cam the brioche seemed to have
just by far the worst colors on auto
settings and so I definitely thought I
was going to be doing manual settings
for the Brio but upon testing the last
couple of days I can't seem to reproduce
this color that I'm getting right now
which is quite close to what my natural
skin tone is without using auto white
balance
so from Brio honestly it seems to be
sometimes you need it and sometimes you
don't which I know isn't helpful but
it's just that is how inconsistent this
software is so what is my advice
actually for you when you're setting
this up well what I would do is I would
enable auto white balance if it looks
fairly accurate to the skin tone that
you have if not you can disable it try
and play around with the white balance
slider and make sure that you can dial
in something that looks a little bit
more accurate but you've just got to
experiment and play around for yourself
so next we have the image settings this
just allows you to fine-tune things like
the brightness contrast sharpness and
saturation of the current image so
hopefully you won't have to do too much
adjusting here but it does allow you to
have a bit more granular control if you
do want to adjust things so I'm just
gonna lower my brightness ever so
slightly maybe just bump the contrast a
tiny bit bump the sharpness a tiny bit
and then I'm gonna leave the saturation
at default because we're actually going
to be fixing the saturation and making
the image looked a lot more systematic
when we get back into our streaming
software so I don't need to do that here
the last thing that we need to do just
in the logitech capture software is set
the anti flicker rate so this is the
frequency of your power lines in the
country that you live in so typically
for the UK for Europe and for Australia
this is 50 Hertz and for America Canada
and I believe Japan this is 60 Hertz so
just make sure that you set this
correctly and all stop the lights that
you have in your house or your LED
background lights from flickering in
your webcam image so back in our
streaming software you can see that our
webcam is looking quite a lot cleaner
now but the last step that we're gonna
do is to add a filter or alert which is
gonna make our image look a lot more
cinematic and this is really where
you're gonna see the biggest difference
in your webcam footage so what a filter
or LUT is is is real
similar to those that you get on apps
like Instagram where you can basically
change the colors and the look of an
image basically from applying a certain
type of filter and then choosing how
high of a percentage of that filter you
want to apply to the image so maybe a
year and a half ago I released a pack of
30 free lurtz
or streaming software like OBS and
streamlines OBS that you can apply to
your webcam and they come in all
different kinds of colors so really I
hopefully have grid enough of a
variation that no matter how your webcam
image looks you'll find one that really
works for you so I'll show you how to do
that here if you right-click on your
webcam source and go to filters and then
in the bottom section here we have
effect filters you want to click the
plus and apply a LUT now you can name
this LUT if you want to I'm just going
to leave it as a pilot and then you need
to browse to the path so I will leave
linked in the description the link to
the website where you can download my
pack of 30 free lists all you need to do
is unzip them leave them somewhere on
your computer where they'll always be
and then browse to that path and then
choose which letter is that you want so
you can see here OBS comes with some
default lists I'm just gonna go to the
path where all my alerts are created and
really what you should be doing is
opening one seeing how it looks
seeing if it's right for you and then
opening the next one and choosing one
based like that I already know that this
came one looks quite good so I'm going
to apply that you can see instantly
these LUT has been applied if I drag
this over you can see it in the full
screen preview now this is running a
hundred percent so it might be a bit too
heavy of a look for some people you can
see the difference if I click this eye
icon this is without alert and this is
with one so I think it's a bit too high
for me I'm going to move it down to say
sixty-five percent or something like
that you can see how much of a
difference that makes and it just makes
the image look a little bit more
professional and more cinematic and like
I said there's 30 different lists in
there so you can go through make sure
that you are changing the Browse path
apply a different one each time and find
one that really suits your camera and
your look one last thing to know is that
obviously the whole point of this
logitech capture software was that you
didn't need to go in and dive into the
settings and change them every single
time you restart your computer but one
thing that you do need to do is you
usually need to launch the logitech
capture so
we're and then as soon as it's launched
you can close it again it will then
apply the settings that you have saved
for your logitech webcam and then it's
gonna be accessible in your streaming
software so sometimes you just need to
launch logitech capture so it forces
those settings on the camera and then
you can close it and run your stream as
normal hopefully you guys have found
this video helpful and you have now got
a much better image out of your webcam
do share your results with me over on
Instagram or Twitter or discord just
send me a screenshot of what your webcam
is looking like now and which look
filter you ended up using also if you're
not already why not hop into the gaming
careers discord where we have a whole
heap of people who are content creators
and streamers and they're discussing
this kind of thing all day long so I'll
leave a link to that in the top of the
description as well as always a massive
thank you to the patrons this month who
have supported the gaming careers
channel and I will catch you guys in the
next video peace the stream cam you'll
the midstream cam 25 megapixels okay