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driven · Jan 15, 2007, 03:17 AM

Now that the iSight is apparently gone and nothing new seemed to appear at Macworld, can anyone recommend a replacement similar camera that's mac friendly / compatible?

brokenjago · Jan 15, 2007, 03:53 AM

The Creative Optia. $79.99 at Fry's Electronics. Creative rep (who is a cool guy and I trust) said it uses native Windows & Mac OS drivers, so it'll work on both.

driven · Jan 15, 2007, 04:25 AM

Most excellent. Thanks!

dylanw · Jan 15, 2007, 10:54 AM

Apparently the Creative Optra is a class compliant device, which means that, theoretically, the drivers are already built into the OS.

If you get one of these, could you let us know how it is, and maybe put some images up? I'm also looking for a webcam, and this looks encouraging. I haven't found any reviews except a couple of customer reviews on Amazon.com, and one of them complained about the image quality.

driven · Jan 15, 2007, 11:51 AM

I guess the only drawback is that this is a VGA camera (640x480). I think the iSight had a better resolution. (It certainly had a MUCH larger lens.) But ... beggers can't be choosers. At least this is USB and my monitor has a USB port. (Read: No running of a FW cable down to the PC on the floor!)

I'll post my results. Thanks!

dylanw · Jan 15, 2007, 12:07 PM

For what it's worth, I think the iSight is also 640 X 480. I'm using an old Canon Optura Pi as a webcam, and that's the same resolution.

philm · Jan 16, 2007, 09:12 AM

I believe this device is USB so I don't think it will work with iChat AV which requires a firewire camera.

ghporter · Jan 16, 2007, 10:05 AM

Every source I can find (Amazon, Shopping.com, Answers.com, etc.) says that the external iSight device has a 640X480, i.e. VGA, resolution. Since all of these places have the SAME text, it looks like they copied the Apple page for iSight before it went away, so that should be the official resolution.

I can't find a reference that says iChat requires a firewire camera. Can anyone provide one? (FWIW, I can't find ANY tech specs on iChat AV on Apple's site.)

Grrr · Jan 16, 2007, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

I can't find a reference that says iChat requires a firewire camera. Can anyone provide one? (FWIW, I can't find ANY tech specs on iChat AV on Apple's site.)

I thought it was common knowledge that it required a FireWire cam. And although I have not dug through the Apple site to find info on this, it does at least mention it in the ichat help viewer.

file:///Applications/iChat.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/iChatHelp/pgs/fz73.html

While im here.. USB cams can be made to work on ichat by way of a 3rd party patch/app called ichat usb cam. But you pay for that.

Hope this helps

ghporter · 11:51 AM

Having been a military electronics technician for many years, I have a thing about "needing" the formal data to say something-in that situation, "common knowledge" can get people killed.

I found the specs by looking into the Apple Knowledge Base: "iSight or any FireWire based camera".

Odd that there isn't a listing of system requirements on the main iChat page...

driven · Jan 16, 2007, 12:58 PM

Ok ... who else makes a firewire based camera?

Peter · Jan 16, 2007, 01:53 PM

firewire webcam - Froogle

dylanw · Jan 16, 2007, 03:00 PM

The built-in camera on iMacs and Macbooks is on the USB bus, and I understand that it is a UVC (usb video class) device. So, theoretically, any UVC-compliant camera should work. The Creative Optia is one, and I think Logitech makes one. I saw a posting on the Apple Discussion board that said that the Logitech one deviates from the standard enough that it doesn't work on Macs. I don't know about the Creative camera yet.

mduell · Jan 16, 2007, 07:11 PM

IIRC the external iSights are 320x240 CCDs interpolated up to 640x480 and the built in iSights have marginally better CCDs (384x288 comes to mind) with the same interpolation. That's how Apple was at "640x480" when the rest of the industry was stuck at 320x240.

arng1 · Jan 16, 2007, 09:32 PM

I did a search on ebay and found this lol.

link

Peter · Jan 17, 2007, 08:51 PM

I'm pretty sure the iSight is of equal quality to any other decent firewire cam...

dylanw · Feb 2, 2007, 06:37 AM

According to the updated list of USB webcams on the macam site, the Xbox Live Vision camera is a UVC camera and should work under OS X 10.4.3 or later. Anyone have one of these? Thoughts?

Recontech · Feb 7, 2007, 01:54 AM

Dylan, yes, the 360 Camera does in fact work with OS X. I have used it. However it is finicky with ichatusbcam app that is $10.

dylanw · Feb 7, 2007, 08:38 AM

In between posting and now, I actually picked up the Live Vision camera. It's buggy. It works fine with Quicktime (which is to say, I open the Quicktime Player and start a new video recording and I see an image). But if I quit and re-open the Quicktime Player, I get no image from the camera. The camera is on, but just not sending any video to the computer. Unplugging and then re-plugging the camera seems to reset it. iChat w/ ichatusbcam seems to work in exactly the same way.

Way too much trouble. I think I'll just pass it on to someone who has an XBox and pick up the Ecamm iMage instead.

Recontech · Feb 8, 2007, 06:30 PM

Dylanw,

Yes, I had the same results. I wonder if this is how all USB webcams work with OS X?

dylanw · Feb 8, 2007, 06:35 PM

The Ecamm iMage is supposed to be pretty solid. A lot may depend on the controller, etc.

For the time being, I'm going to fall back on my bulky-but-still-functional Canon Optura Pi.

MacGallant · Feb 8, 2007, 08:13 PM

I'm using a Logitech Communicate STX in iChat w/iChatUSBcam and Macam and so far it works pretty well. I got the it on sale at Staples for about $35. The video quality is pretty good and the framerate fluidness is ok as well.

IceEnclosure · Feb 9, 2007, 12:11 AM

I have the firewire iBot from OrangeMicro. Works perfectly great, now over 5 years old!

dylanw · Mar 13, 2007, 09:52 PM

Originally Posted by dylanw

In between posting and now, I actually picked up the Live Vision camera. It's buggy. It works fine with Quicktime (which is to say, I open the Quicktime Player and start a new video recording and I see an image). But if I quit and re-open the Quicktime Player, I get no image from the camera. The camera is on, but just not sending any video to the computer. Unplugging and then re-plugging the camera seems to reset it. iChat w/ ichatusbcam seems to work in exactly the same way.

I installed the 10.4.9 update this evening, and I noticed that it had a fix for iChat, and some additional UVC support, so I went and pulled this camera out of the drawer where it's been sitting for the last month or so. Surprisingly, it seems to be working properly. I've tried it in Quicktime Player and iChat a few times, and it seems to be working each time. I'll keep it out for the time being.