How we verify webcams
Every camera on Webcam Vista is a real live stream: no recordings, loops or slideshows of old pictures. This page explains how we make sure of that.
Where cameras come from
- Public live streams on YouTube that their owners allow to be embedded
- Official open data: traffic cameras of road agencies, published with live video (for example Caltrans in California)
- Camera owners: hotels, resorts, bars and towns that add their cameras through Add your webcam
We never use cameras that were found by scanning the internet, private cameras, or streams that are not meant to be public.
The automatic check
- A new camera is published only after its stream has passed a check: the player answers and the video is live.
- Every camera is checked again around the clock, about every 30 minutes.
- A camera whose stream has ended or stopped working is removed from the site. It is not kept as an empty page.
- Each camera page shows when it was last checked ("Checked 14 min ago").
- Preview images of road cameras are taken from the live stream itself and refreshed every few hours.
Places and categories
- The place (country, state, city) comes from the camera's own data or its title, matched with OpenStreetMap.
- When the exact position of a camera is not known, it is shown at the centre of its town, and the page says the location is approximate.
- Cameras whose place could not be found are not listed on country and city pages until an editor checks them.
- Categories (beaches, ski resorts, ports, roads…) are chosen automatically from what the camera shows and corrected by an editor when needed.
Something wrong?
If a camera shows the wrong place, has stopped, or you own it and want it changed or removed, write to click.ua@proton.me. We usually fix it within two business days.