In regard to Profile Editing:

I can't edit my c:\windows\WMSysPr9.prx either. Looking at it in a text editor reveals it's actually many profiles in a single file. The profile editor, to the best of my limited knowledge, only works on files that contain one profile.

You might find it useful and interesting to do a search on your C: drive for "*.prx". My system has lots of profiles in various locations - the kind of profiles that can be copied and edited just fine. Of particular interest are the profiles found in \Program_Files\AbelCam\Data.

In regard to your other questions:

AbelCam WinMedia isn't exactly my "department". I've never made serious use of it because although the video stream is very nice the inherent buffering delay in WMP makes PTZ and light controls appear "broken". Web visitors want to click a control and see the cam move "now!!" or else they abandon. However...

I'm pretty sure if your chosen profile is set for 30 FPS you would need to change the camera config in AbelCam to 30 FPS. If you intend to stream 30 FPS I hope you have a powerful system and only 1 camera - that is a challenging framerate for any software! And in fact, I don't think any QuickCam product will run 30 FPS out of the cam at 640x480 as it would take about 100% of the USB bandwidth.

I've never tried using overlays with WinMedia, and in the AbelCam beta I am running right now WinMedia is temporarily out of commission. I'll check back here tonight and if nobody else has answred this I think I'll have time to install 2.2.4 and if the overlay works here.

Okay... I installed AbelCam 2.2.4 on an AMD64 X2 5600+ 2.8ghz WinXP Pro SP-3 and did some testing.

I, too, can not see a caption or overlay on the WMV streamed images. Also I see that the mirror and rotate options have no effect. It looks like what is streamed is the image you see in the Raw Preview, not the Configured Preview. I think this may be by design.

I tested with an Orbit AF since I don't have an MP handy. According to Logitech's official "matrix of cams, sizes and rates" both your MP and my AF are capable of 640x480 at 30 FPS. I took the same NTSC profile you mentioned and edited it to use 640x480, and gave it a new name so I could be sure I was actually using it.

My Orbit acts the same as yours: no matter what is in the Profile, and no matter how AbelCam's Size & Orientation items are set, as soon as the Video Server is started the output of the Capture Pin (as seen by clicking AbelCam's Format button) falls back to 320x240. I tried to force the issue by changing the Capture Pin's output back to 640x480 in the "Format" dialog, but all that did was make the Video Server quit.

However, when I hooked up a Typhoon camera things were different. If I set up AbelCam for 640x480, the Capture Pin output would remain there when I started the Video Server. And if I set AbelCam for 320x240 the Capture Pin would actually "step-up" to 640x480 on Video Server start.

So this would appear to be a Logitech problem - maybe. What is odd is that I can run the Orbit at 640x480 30 FPS just fine using AmCap.

You should also look at THIS old thread. AlexBa concludes it's a Logitech limitation but I'm not quite sure how he decided that.

Edited to add:

I'm experimenting some more with my Orbit using AmCap to look at its output stream. What I'm seeing is that at 640x480 resolution the USB 2.0 bus saturates (maxes out) at 25 FPS. Bumping the rate up to 30 FPS has no effect beause, well, the bus is saturated. So, the whole notion of 640x480 at 30 isn't really viable regardless of what the software is doing. If you can't get it out of the cam at full speed it makes no difference what happens after that...

This may explain why Logitech puts asterisks after their framerate claims in their literature.

Taking a closer look at my Typhoon cam with AmCap shows the same thing: 25 and 30 FPS look the same, and the bus utilization hits 100% at about 25.

I was searching around on Ligitech Web site and came upon QuickCam version 11.7. There seems to be a problem upgrading to it without first uninstslling 11.5. If anyone has 11.7 installed did you notice anything new or fixed.

Yeah, I'm running 11.7 for 2 weeks now. I got it off a CD that came with the last AF I bought. I guess they finally got around to posting it on their site - it wasn't there a few days ago.

I didn't notice anything massively different about it. It may use a little less CPU than 11.5, or it may be my imagination. It seems like auto-focus doesn't get stuck as often. Automatic Gain Control behaves a bit differently - that may or may not be better, depending on what you like. AGC doesn't lapse into stupidity (e.g. setting its shutter speed slower than the capture framerate - lol) nearly as often now, but the trade-off seems to be poorer images in low light. I had to mess around in the registry to get the exposure mode I wanted on one of my cams that's in a dimly lit area.

As a matter of policy (having had Logi-Disasters in the past) I always remove the previous installation before putting on any new Logitech driver.

Microsoft code is always in the picture when your dealing with Windows Media that a given. QuickCam 11.7 while on Logitech Web site it is not still not offered as a download for any quickcam model even the Orbit AF. I found it in the support area only and when I did a search on it the only hit I received was a problem with audio if old drivers are not removed first if you load 11.7 from the CD. The support area had a download link though.