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App to capture HD with ISight

D

doctoree

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 28, 2008
406
0
Secret lair/ Earthmiddlepoint
I did some research and was able to find this interesting page:

http://macdaddyworld.com/2007/06/28/the-megapixel-test-program-and-more-details/

There is a table that lists all the capture modes the ISight supports:
MJPEG 640×480 @ up to 60fps
MJPEG 720×480 @ up to 60fps
MJPEG 800×600 @ up to 30fps
MJPEG 1024×576 @ up to 30fps
MJPEG 1024×768 @ up to 30fps
MJPEG 1280×960 @ up to 30fps
MJPEG 1280×1024 @ up to 30fps
Uncompressed 640×480 @ up to 30 fps
Uncompressed 352×288 @ up to 30 fps
Uncompressed 160×120 @ up to 30 fps
Uncompressed 704×576 @ up to 25 fps
Uncompressed 720×480 @ up to 25 fps

This guy also offers an app to capture at 1280×1024 pixels but A only still frames and B with a huge delay which is caused by the big amount of data.

But between the lines he states that a usable capture in 720p-ish 1280×1024 resolution COULD be achieved when using MJPEG. And when we take a look at the list above, there is MJPEG 1280×1024 and it is even 30 FPS.

Do you guys now a software that supports this?
I've tested a lot of Apps:

QuickTime Pro:Easy but low res
Photobooth: Ease and cool fx but low res
IZaw (or something like that): Easy but super low res
IMovie: More complicated but at least it can be set to 1024x576 and at this resolution its completely fluent (probably using MJPEG)

Maybe we can hack QuickTime to get everything out of our nice Laptops?

Doc

P.S: Prior to posting I've searched Google as well as this forum extensively
 
I just noticed something really interesting.

I just used the movie recording feature in QuickTime Pro 7.5.5 (249.13), the latest version, to capture some footage and it now captures in 1280x1024 Photo Jpg!!!

WOW

The files are huge and look gorgeous.

Can anyone confirm this?
 
picture1cfebc.png


as u can see, mine shows 640x480
 
How do you reach this window in QuickTime?


Edit: I found it.

Here, I'm able to alter the drop down to "Device Native". "Best for post processing.Raw video and audio,large files."

Can you also choose this in the drop down box?

Doc
 
I had no idea the iSight camera could do 60fps.

How do you record at 60fps...does QuickTime let you?
 
doctoree said:
How do you reach this window in QuickTime?


Edit: I found it.

Here, I'm able to alter the drop down to "Device Native". "Best for post processing.Raw video and audio,large files."

Can you also choose this in the drop down box?

Doc
Click to expand...

Got it...

picture180e57.png
 
doctoree said:
Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Does anybody know if Photo Jpg equals MJPEG?
Because then it would be a sweet 30fps capture.
Click to expand...

MJPEG and PJPEG (motion vs photo) are basically the same thing. The main difference is that when you have interlaced source content (which you don't, with an iSight), then MJPEG compresses the different motion fields separately, and knows about the complexities with 4:2:0 colour samples in interlaced fields (basically the number of colour lines is reduced by a factor of 4 for each discrete piece of motion, and all sorts of chroma aliasing can go wrong if you handle it incorrectly). (PS, in NTSC land YMMV as you may have 4:1:1, depending on stuff, yada yada, etc).

Both of these are very similar when compared to MPEG, which doesn't store entire frames at all most of the time, and therefore gets a lot more bang (quality) for the buck (bitrate).

CK.
 
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