Webcam Watcher Online Help

Webcam Watcher Online Help

Chapter 1 - Getting Started
Overview
Installation
System Requirements
Quick Introduction
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Overview

Webcam Watcher watches webcams for you, downloading and saving pictures when they change. You can jump between cameras and scan back and forward in time, literally putting the world at your fingertips. With Webcam Watcher you can monitor hundreds of webcams at the same time even with a slow modem link. How? Webcam Watcher only downloads pictures when they change, making the best use of your Internet bandwidth.

Main Features

Monitor huge numbers of webcams - the program is regularly tested with more than 3000 webcams.
Fully multi-threaded design allows you to browse pictures while monitoring webcams.
Easily scan through cameras (up and down arrow keys) or back and forward in time (left and right arrow keys).
Show currently active cameras, or active in the last hour or day.
Auto-Update mode shows new pictures as they arrive.
Motion detection saves only pictures that change.
Allows you to download our latest webcam lists with thousands of webcams. New cameras are added regularly.
Get Weather or Map information for a webcam with a single click.
Favorite cameras can be priority scanned.
Includes a Screen Saver which can display live and/or saved pictures.

Downloading and Installing

Webcam Watcher can be downloaded from the main download page

Click on one of the download links and when prompted, select Save this program to disk.

When the download completes, click Open and the program will install.

You will find a Webcam Watcher icon on your desktop; double click this to run.

System Requirements

Webcam Watcher runs on PCs with Windows 95, 98, NT4, ME, XP or 2000.

Webcam Watcher uses minimal disk space itself; however using it to monitor webcams can use large amounts of disk space.
As for any program, Webcam Watcher works best when there is plenty of memory available. At least 64MB is recommended.
For best results when viewing images, a video display size of 800 x 600 with High Color (64000 colors) or True Color (16.7 million colors) is recommended.

Quick Introduction

Getting Started

Webcam Watcher comes with a few webcams already configured. To watch these webcams :

make sure you are connected to the Internet
click the Start All button
click the AutoUpdate button to show new pictures as they arrive.
after a short delay you will see live pictures relayed from the sample webcams.

The first time you run a webcam, Webcam Watcher will need to fetch the current picture. After that, Webcam Watcher only fetches the picture if it changes. You can download a much larger list of webcams from the Tools menu.

Main Screen

This shows the main screen. The right-hand panel shows the webcams, and the left panel shows the current webcam.

You can easily scan through the webcams using the Up and Down arrow keys. And you can scan the webcam pictures by using the Left and Right arrow keys.

To resize the panels, grab the bar that separates them and move it to a new position. You can view large numbers of webcams like this:

If you click the Thumbnails tab you can see thumbnails of the pictures that have been saved for the current camera.

Click on the Load Thumbs button to make thumbnails of the pictures. If Autoload Thumbs is checked, they will load automatically.

Double click on a thumbnail to display the picture. You can also use this display to delete pictures - select and press the Delete key.