You send an email announcing that ManyCam Lite is available without telling people anything other than the features of that tool.
Need
What would help is a side-by-side of the tools. It looks like you are getting rid of the current tool in favor of this “lite” tool - but I don’t see a side-by-side to understand what I’m losing.
Right now, I don’t use 95% of the current tool. However, what I do use is vital and must be unchanged. I’m not inclined to go digging myself, I’d like to have the ManyCam team do that side-by-side table so we can understand what features have been changed/removed/etc.
For example, I don’t use blurring, but many do. However I do use things like Crop and access to driver settings. If I went into Lite and saw that you can no longer tweak things at a driver level, that’d be a dealbreaker for me, because regular webcams often need to have those tweaked and you have to do it inside whatever software is calling the driver.
If I’m using my DSLR, it’s not a big deal because there are no drivers for the capture card, but if Lite doesn’t support the capture card, that’d be a dealbreaker.
In other words, I need the ManyCam team to confirm that no functionality was lost, changed/etc. and only new things or streamlined, without losing the power of the current tool.
Does MCL integrate with the larger MC? So that you can choose one or the other depending on the application you need?
Or does it replace/overwrite ManyCam Premium lifetime?
Don’t know and I’m not going to try, because I can’t afford to lose my current setup. It’s used for every video situation I do now.
I could theoretically use OBS, but OBS is tedious to use compared to ManyCam and its driver tends to be buggy. Also some streaming software blocks OBS drivers.
I suppose I could run it in Hyper-V and see. But I really shouldn’t have to do that when all the team should have thought of doing is a simple side-by-side table and comparison of the existing tool vs. the new. The website makes it seem like the current tool is being replaced, and that’s unacceptable if it’s missing critical features (which we don’t know if it is or not).
ManyCam Lite can be installed side-by-side. I’ve tested it and while it seems to be faster than the current version, it’s lacking several features. For example, lower-thirds are nowhere to be found. So it’s definitely not ready for prime time.
Hmm. I don’t use lower third all the time (too inflexible for constant use), but I do use it on occasion. I wouldn’t consider that personally a dealbreaker, but I wouldn’t want to be without it, I’d want them to enhance it because it’s significantly behind where other tools are IMO.
But something like this missing is another reason why I really want that side-by-side so I can go through the whole list of what’s gutted (and they may come back, but I would just wait until they’re back before making the leap).
I kicked through it on Hyper-V and while it’s “cleaner”, I’m still hesitant given the potential for missed functionality.
From what I understand you can have both ManyCam Lite and standard ManyCam installed (but not running) at the same time. If there is functionality that you find that ManyCam Lite doesn’t handle, just exit the application and run ManyCam standard instead. I agree, however that having a side-by-side functionality comparison would indeed be helpful.
As far as I know (everything is subject to change):
ManyCam Lite can be installed along with regular ManyCam. Both have separate settings, so one should not affect another.
Both can be run at the same time. Regular ManyCam channels the video feed to “ManyCam Virtual Webcam” and the audio to “ManyCam Virtual Microphone”. ManyCam Lite sends the video to its own “ManyCam Lite Video Device”. This is a lightweight virtual camera that works in almost all video apps. ManyCam Lite has no virtual mic at this time.
Since you can run both apps simultaneously, you can have different video feeds for different virtual cams. This opens some new capabilities. You can even select the same virtual webcam in two apps. Unfortunately, opening the same real camera in 2 apps at once is not supported.
ManyCam Lite is currently beta.
ManyCam Lite is not a replacement for regular ManyCam. It is a kind of preview app (for Studio+ owners) of the upcoming ManyCam 8 (yes!), in terms of general look&feel.
As Lite uses fewer resources, I’ve been using it on my lower-powered laptop, whereas I have full-fat MC on my high spec pc with 8 camera sources, multiple layers on maybe a dozen preset scenes.
Having said that, I could just run regular MC on my laptop, using far fewer presets and layers.
Thanks ieo. I found the email from ManyCam annoying; just that Lite was available, but no indication what is is good for or about why I would want to try it. If you are correct, that Lite is a preview for ManyCam 8, I can wait. I don’t need to waste my time doing beta testing for the company. I wish they had made that more clear, but am grateful for this thread. Tks.