Cheese vs ManyCam

Cheese is a free GNOME Desktop program for taking webcam photos and videos on Linux. It applies multiple effects to photos, and those effects and sharing choices also work with videos. A three-second visual countdown helps prepare for a shot, while burst mode captures a configured number of photos at a configured delay. Users can select an installed webcam, set its resolution, and adjust brightness and contrast. Fullscreen mode supports kiosk-style setups such as an office lobby or party. Photos can be saved to disk, emailed, uploaded to Flickr, exported to F-Spot, or used as a GNOME account photo. Installing nautilus-sendto adds more sharing options. Packages are listed for Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu, with stable tarballs and a GitLab repository also available. Documentation, chat, mailing-list, and issue-tracker support are listed. Cheese costs nothing.

ManyCam is virtual camera and live streaming software for conferencing apps, streaming platforms, and remote learning tools. It can blur, remove, or replace backgrounds with images or video sources without a green screen. Sources include webcams, videos, images, screen captures, apps, and web sources, with plans listing up to 200 sources. ManyCam can provide a virtual camera to Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, and broadcast simultaneously to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and other RTMP destinations. Production features include picture-in-picture layers, source switching, screen capture, recording, titles, a whiteboard, and NDI support. The free download has limited features. Standard costs $59 a year and lists one device, four video sources, Full HD quality, and one RTMP stream. Studio is listed at $79 a year, and Premium at $99 a year; both include 4K quality and unlimited RTMP streams. ManyCam lists Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows, with desktop support specifically stated for macOS and Windows. It says video processing happens on the user's machine and it does not store audio, video, or images on its servers.