Help: iChat saying 'This computer does not support video chats'

Test the iSight camera with other applications like Photo Booth or iMovie. Does it work in either? How about if you go to System Profiler and select USB under Hardware on the left. Does the iSight appear under USB High-Speed bus? If it doesn't work in iChat, Photo Booth, or iMovie, you may want to try an SMC reset.

JediMeister said:

Test the iSight camera with other applications like Photo Booth or iMovie. Does it work in either? How about if you go to System Profiler and select USB under Hardware on the left. Does the iSight appear under USB High-Speed bus? If it doesn't work in iChat, Photo Booth, or iMovie, you may want to try an SMC reset.

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talking about imovie, ichat and photo booth. is the quality of the camera different from each other? for example, on facebook when i post videos direct from the video button on the site, the quality is so crappy (cubes galore all over the play back video). in photo booth the quality seems superb. in skype, my friends have told me the quality of my cam is amazing. and i just checked out imovie for the first time and the quality seems even MORE detailed then photo booth. is this true??

@dsprimal: I'm not able to tell the difference between a video recorded with iMovie vs. Photo Booth honestly. It doesn't make sense to me that they would save files of different resolutions/quality...

idrewuk said:

It does work with PhotoBooth just fine. Which makes it all the more confusing.

Any ideas?

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Do you have any other programs that access the camera open? If you do (like photo booth) close it.

I don't know if that's the case, though.

Well, the good news is that it sounds like a software issue with iChat. If it works with Photo Booth there's no need to do that reset I provided instructions for. The next thing you need to isolate if it's an issue with the settings and configuration for iChat or if it's the actual application itself that's gone wonky.

To test this out you need to create a test user account (on the computer) and re-establish your AIM/Jabber/MobileMe screen name on that other account. If it works in another account its likely the iChat preferences within ~/Library/Preferences/. If it doesn't work in another account you need to reinstall iChat, which I believe is an optional install on your OS X install DVD. Just be sure to remove the iChat.app from /Applications before you try to reinstall, and also to customize the install so you don't waste time reinstalling something that you already have and is working normally.

Open Terminal and paste this:

defaults write com.apple.iChat newbwdup 300000

press enter.

I have this problem too! If anyone has a solution, I would really like to know.

Lord Vader...I know this is half a year later, but- thanks for the advice, you rule! working isight

Thank you

Lord Vader: I know its been long time since some has posted on this topic, but I have been looking for the solution and I just found it. Thanks alot. it worked like charm

Restart with the internet disconnected

Restart with the internet disconnected. This has resolved my problem a few times. the bug thats in there is to do with a sharing issue.

Lord Vader's Fix Works!

I had success with using the following in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iChat newbwdup 300000

I was receiving the following message: