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iSight camera HELP...no vidchat or photobooth.....fine in Quicktime.

M

mrsollars

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 30, 2006
115
0
simply that...

iChat and Photo Booth will not give me a working built in isight camera....but i can see (and hear) myself fine in quicktime video recording.
I've dropped the .plist files. no help.
I'm up to date on software updates. no help.

Any suggestions. Apple help boards couldn't figure it out.

Matt
 
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sill looking for some help...

nobody up to the challenge?!?!

at least some suggestions on fixing it.

thanks guys

matt
 
Thanks for the reply....

PRAM and SMC didn't have any affect. same situation.

thank you for taking the time to reply though.


anybody else have any idea how to fix this issue.

Matt
 
Will try to help.

Be sure you go into the camera pull down menu in Photo Booth and ensure that built in ishight camera is checked.

In ichat, be sure you go into the video pulldown and that there is a check mark next to camera enabled and microphone enabled.

Do you have skype on your machine? If so, that is another way you can at least check to see if the camera works for it to help isolate the problem.

Not much, but it's is all I can think off. Let us know what happens.
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

All of those have been done....and still no camera.
Audio is fine.
Skype doesn't work (audio is fine)
Audio fine in iChat.

Quicktime video recording....Camera and Microphone WORK.

Any more ideas?

Matt
 
still looking for help on this.

this may be the first time i haven't been able to sort out a problem with the macrumors clan help.

anything is appreciated boys and girls.

thanks everybody.
Matt
 
Did you go into skype and ensure in the preferences>video is set to built in isight?

The times I have had isight issues is when, for example, I had photobooth running and answered a skype call and no video. I had to close photobooth, close skype then reopen so skype would work. I wonder if the system thinks that Quicktime is still in control of the camera instead of the program you have open. I know the camera can handle being used by only one program at a time.

Good luck.
 
mrsollars said:
simply that...

iChat and Photo Booth will not give me a working built in isight camera....but i can see (and hear) myself fine in quicktime video recording.
I've dropped the .plist files. no help.
I'm up to date on software updates. no help.

Any suggestions. Apple help boards couldn't figure it out.

Matt
Click to expand...

If your still under warranty you should take it to the Apple Store. They might be able to fix it for you or if not they might even give you a new one.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. It's not under warranty so the apple store is out.
I'll try uninstalling quicktime, ichat, skype, photobooth, etc. and then reinstalling them....starting with ichat.

we'll see if that works.

any other tips would be appreciated.

matt
 
I would try un-installing quicktime first, as it seems that it could be the culprit by keeping control of isight instead of freeing it up to work with another program. Has it always done this, or did this problem just develop? And, which program do you use your isight primarily for?
And, after you uninstall each program, then check to see if isight is working so you can figure out exactly which program is causing the issue.
 
The problem showed up out of nowhere. Nothing different. I teach, and came home from work one afternoon....received a vid chat invite from a friend, accepted, and they said ''your screen is black'' i could see them, i could hear them, but my camera was out. (they could hear me also)

the primary use is iChat, definitely. daily i'd say.

i'll try to give it a shot this evening.

thanks guys....keep the suggestions coming.

Matt
 
Have you gone in and repaired permissions to see if something in there could be causing the issue? And, had you done any upgrades prior to this issue?

I did a google search for isight issues, and there is no shortage of threads on various sites asking the same question, although it seems to vary as to what program it is working with vs. which one it isn't. This sounds pretty common, but I have not seen a definitive fix posted anywhere.

Scroll down to post 18, that might help.
http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=57786

I found this on another thread, might try it in the order suggested.
Thanks so much for the help, mkolesa!

I tried resetting the pram first, that didn't work; then, on a hunch, I repaired permissions and then reset the pram, and it works perfectly again!

I'm not sure what happened, but whatever it was, it's fixed. Thanks!

Also, some good info here about repairing permissions and starting off the back up disk a little ways down the post.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2270809&tstart=165

I had not thought of this, but if quicktime is set to start automatically, this could be causing the issue too. (this is part of the thread I linked above)

I just recently purchased a new iMac OS X and was running into the same problem, getting the error internal iSight camera not detected by Photobooth, Skype, or iChat. I tried the troubleshooting article mentioned above, but it didn't help. Restarting the computer would sometimes help, but it wasn't consistent.

I did have Skype and iChat set to open automatically when the computer starts, and once I disabled that the camera gets recognized without a problem.

So at least on my computer, having video based applications start before the computer has a chance to recognize the camera was causing the issue.

Man, it is amazing how many pages of thread there are about this topic. Check this one, and scroll about halfwaya down to the post by Andy where he mentions having multiple user accounts logged in.
http://getsatisfaction.com/apple/to...r_the_camera_is_in_use_by_another_application

Similar issue, unique approach. Check it out:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2371488&tstart=135

And, one more for you to explore:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9775989

This one sounds promising too, as it seems that quicktime was the culprit here:
http://www.philmug.ph/forum/archive/index.php/t-36683.html

IF for some reason any of these do work, please post up what fixed it to add to the knowledge base!!!!
 
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it fixed itself with the next available software update.

now i'm having a flash player problem

sheesh.
matt
 
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