Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Foscam Audio (1-way) coming in Live Cams Pro v1.2, Panasonic and Sony in v1.3

We've finally cracked the issues with decoding Foscam audio and have submitted Live Cams Pro version 1.2 to the app store. It was submitted on June 3rd (5 days ago) and is still listed as "Waiting for review" by Apple. Hopefully this will be released soon!

A word of caution, Foscam uses a highly compressed audio format which results in poor quality playback (although if you've heard it in Internet Explorer then you already know what to expect). Also we've noticed that the built-in microphone on these cameras is either of poor quality or poorly placed within the housing. As a result the volume of the audio is very low. We tested our 8918 unit with an external microphone and noticed a substantial improvement. If you are using these cameras as baby monitors then the external microphone is a good investment in peace of mind :)

Two-way audio will be under development after we add audio for a few more brands. At the time this article is being written we have completed one-way audio for Panasonic Profile 1 (non-iPro devices) and the first 2 Sony profiles. These will be released as v1.3 shortly after v1.2 is approved.

Our price remains at $1.99 US for the private camera license in Live Cams Pro. This is essentially the $2 upgrade fee we would have charged for audio and other enhancements if they had been introduced into the two separate apps in the past. The new app is a universal binary, requiring us to release it as a new product. Having a single application binary that works on all devices is better for our customers and easier for us to test and roll out as well. Our full-time efforts are still focused on producing the most powerful IP camera product on the iOS platform, we appreciate your support!