iChat video quality

[pknz]

I have been video chatting over iChat with my sister in England, however she complains that the video she sees of me is blurry. So I have done a small test at home to see if I could find the error behind this.

My test:

I tested to see if the video over iChat was any different when run through Leopard and Tiger on a Mac Pro and Tiger on an iBook. I have found that if the webcam is hooked up to my Mac Pro the video is noticeably worse than if it is on my iBook. Attached are the photos.

On the left you can see the quality of the webcam when connected to the iBook, and on the right, the poor quality when the webcam is connected to the Mac Pro.

So what could be causing this difference in video quality?

 

[Freis968]

Did you ever find an answer to this? Those two pics are shockingly different.

 

[southerndoc]

I have a feeling this is not the camera but bandwidth limitations.

What settings do you have for your bandwidth limits? Check in the QuickTime settings in system preferences under the streaming heading. Also check the bandwidth limit in iChat preferences under the audio/video heading.

I'm thinking the Mac Pro probably has lower limits set or has limits set to none (which actually causes decreased iChat videochat performance).