iSight No Longer Available

[brianbobcat]

To Cube,

I just checked my HVR-A1U which is a 1080i camcorder and it does work with iChat, kinda. I simply plugged it in via firewire and iChat saw the camera immediately, but wouldn't allow me to select it until I changed the record format to DV from HDV. Also, upon doing so, since the camera sensors are native 16:9 but iChat is 4:3, I was squished in the square iChat window. If you have the money and want a HD camera for regular use, and would also like to use it for the occasional video chat, go for it. Just make sure it has firewire. Now if you're gonna do a lot of chatting, especially with possible clients, the squished image may get annoying or look non-professional pretty quickly.

-Brian

 

[cube]

Yeah, that is what I was hoping for, a DV mode.

Didn't you try the 4:3 mode (full scan mode)?

 

[brianbobcat]

Well I turned on full scan mode, but noticed the image stayed 16:9. My camera's sensors are 16:9 native, so I think the only way to get a 4:3 image would be to crop off the sides, and to be honest, since I don't ever need 4:3, I don't know how'd, or if, I'd go about turning that on. If your camera has native 4:3 sensors, then all it's doing when you record 16:9 is to crop the top and bottom and then record that cropped and enlarged image to tape or whatever. Honestly, at this point, no external iSight is coming, so just go ahead and buy a HD camera so you'll be set for the future of digital video but also will have a camera that can work as a webcam.

-Brian

 

[ivnj]

I got this from Target for 20 dollars.

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.htm...1/602-2259401-0663024?ie=UTF8&asin=B00006HMGD

Not bad for 20. Need lots of light. But not too bad for 20.

The only issues are I had to download this driver.

http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

I use version 0.9.0.

Ichat doesn't see it for some reason. But Yahoo Messenger 3.0 beta a1r2.dmg does.

I just put the macman file it says to in my Library Quicktime folder as it says.

And Yahoo Messenger sees it.

Not sure if I'm going to keep it or return it.

Thanks,
ivnj