Use your webcam with multiple applications

Normally you can only connect one application to a single video capture source such as a webcam or video camera. It’s really annoying when Windows denies you access to a video capture device because it’s already being used by another application. You can get round this by using a free program called SplitCam.

SplitCam allows you to connect multiple applications to one video capture device. This means for example that you can use the same webcam for different Instant Messenger programs at the same time. Great if you want to share images or a video with friends on different IM’s. You can connect up to a maximum of 64 applications to one device at the same time although i wouldn’t recommend it. Not even considering the stress this would put on your RAM and processor, it can be rather tricky to setup just a few, never mind 64. You may find that because Windows is not really designed to operate in this way, it can cause the program to hang or suddenly freeze your video images.

In reality, it would be much easier if all of the contacts that you want to share video or images with were on the same messenger client but if this really is not possible then SplitCam certainly provides a temporary solution.