Support for HD (1280x720px) web-cams

Question

Does JMF 2.1.1e support HD format (e.g. 1280x720 px, 30 FPS) web-cams?
After a recent purchase of a Netbook with web-cam, I finally got around to playing about with using JMF to access the inbuilt cam and grab sequences of frames (for time-lapse animations). Unfortunately the inbuilt camera is 640x480 and of otherwise low quality (as you might expect of a camera supplied as standard in a Netbook). Am considering buying a HD web-cam, but need to assure myself I am not spending $70+ for a camera that is not compatible with JMF.
Did a quick search of the forum for '720' and got 5 hits that were not relevant.
Side note: Checked the Netbook could take 4 hours worth of frames every 2 seconds and store them (into a Zip archive) at 640x480 using the internal camera on battery. It still had 31% charge left. It will be interesting to see how storing the images performs in terms of charge, using an USB based HD camera. ;)

Answer 1

AndrewThompson64 wrote:
captfoss wrote:
Andrew, if you don't mind learning something new, I think your best bet would be Adobe Flex. It's free and it's got excellent support for web cams... I'd take a look at some ActionScript code and see if it's something you think you could pick up fairly easily.Might be the way to go. ..That is probably a cleaner approach, but in the end I settled for a hack.
- A simple Java app. that will click a point on screen repeatedly using Robot.
- VLC media player connecting to the web cam and offering a snapshot button to click.
Connected to the new 'Fission'(1) webcam, I get 1600x1200 snapshots in .png format that I can further utilize to create either 1600x1200 4:3 ratio animations, or by cropping a little of the top & bottom and down-sizing, a 720p 16:9 ratio animation. I'd probably do the latter using JAI from an Ant task.
A test last night suggested it could only grab an image around once every 4 seconds. I set it for every 2 seconds over two hours, and while I expected 3600 images, I ended up with just 1836. Given the still camera could only manage one shot every 9 seconds or so, this still allows me to keep the same basic rate of progress of the animation at double the FPS (15->30) that I was seeking. The only other concern is the total length of animation obtainable via. a single battery pack. The 2 hour run took battery from 100% to 41%, but I am hoping I can stretch it to (at least) a 4 hour shoot using a 4 second delay.
1) I had never heard of the Fission brand before I saw it. I got it from Aldi(2) for $25 Aus. It supports a phenomenal range of formats, some astonishingly high.
2) Not sure if Aldi operates in your neck of the woods. They are a German based group that supplies groceries real cheap, and offer whatever other little nick-knacks that are also cheap.