Play Camera

Play Camera is a Windows tool that lets you take screenshots and record videos using the PC camera as a source, while also providing multiple tweaking options to control the image quality.

Automatic webcam detection

The application automatically detects the webcam and gives you the power to start recording straight from the main window, but it's strongly recommended to step into settings as well.
In fact, this is the only way to adjust camera properties, video effects, resolution and device settings, even if beginners may have a hard time trying to figure out the purpose of each option.

Configuration settings

First of all, the “Camera Properties” screen enables you to adjust multiple parameters such as brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpness, gamma and white balance.
Additionally, Play Camera comes with multiple options concerning resolution, video and audio device settings, but the video effects screen is the one that helps you customize the streamed content.
You can for instance choose between two image modes, horizontal or vertical mirrors, and two different color modes, black and white and sepia.

Exporting options

By default, Play Camera saves screenshots and recorded videos in the “Documents” folder in your Windows user's home folder, but if you want to change the output folders, there's a separate menu just for that.

Performance

Play Camera works like a breeze on all Windows versions and doesn't affect system performance at all, requiring just a moderate amount of resources to work properly.

Bottom line

As a conclusion, it does its job, but it still needs some improvements. For instance, it can't save the content directly on a removable drive and you can't choose between multiple image or video formats.