Google has a stand-alone plugin for your browser to be used on their video casting products, like YouTube Hang-outs. It is ‘buried’ on Google’s website for developers, here. It will enhance the performance of “older” hardware. Finally I got some hints for lighting from a Microsoft webcam sensor testing page. Update: Also set your webcam resolution to around 640 x 480 which is good enough at DVD resolution.
Update
You do not need an extraneous webcam if you have one built-in. Also fine tune the throttle on your wifi router such that it prioritizes video and sound before static elements. And finally, make your browser do more of the processing of data and content, instead of off loading it on the web server to cut out the transmission.
Enable these on your router
IPV4 MULTICAST STREAMS – if you have more than one browsing device connected to your browser like a Roku as well.
WAN Port Speed – set it to the speed of your service and not more, like, 10 mbps instead of 100 mpbs if that is the case.
WLAN Partition – enable this so that different devices, like, your Roku and laptop are not able to communicate with one another.
HT20/40Mhz Coexistence – enable so that the router can function better around environmental interference.
WMM Enable – enable this to prioritize video and sound ahead of static web elements.
Enable QoS Engine – enable this to prioritize ‘gaming’ bits and bytes, though you aren’t playing video games.
On your web browser
Handlers – if you offload the processing of handlers to the website, switch it to local mode and have your computer do this work.
For YouTube hangout users
Enable DVR – turn this function off. It is not important that users can rewind while you are live.
Live Chat – turn this off if you do not want people to be ‘text chatting’ as you are speaking.
Ultra Low Latency – set latency to Normal or Ultra Low, prioritizes your video ahead of ‘text chatting’ and DVR bits-bytes.
COMMGiving 