Well, I can tell you that is kind of a hard thing. Starting with the problem that many providers of web cams are not developing good drivers fro Mac.
I bought some days ago a Genius web cam for the Mac of my father... And to tell you the truth.. It is the worse HW I ever bought in my life! With a PC.. It works fine. Be very sure about which camera you will buy and I advise you to request a demonstration.
The Mac comes with the iChat. It is a very cool software and it is developed to work with the iSight. In the case of my MacBook I have no problem because the camera is builtin. But for a Mac mini... You need to find a good camera. As far as I learnt you can use iChat with iShight and with DV cameras using a firewire connection. But I also found some ways of solving the problem with some special software:
- http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20203 That software will help to make your camera to work with iChat.
- http://www.ioxperts.com/products/webcamx.html This one is not for free (19$) but promises the same. I used the demo with that genius camera... It worked. But the quality of the image was crazy bad because that camera is not supported.
- http://www.ecamm.com/Mac/ichatusbcam/issues.html Here there is the other choice.
- http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/ from here you will get some Mac drivers that can make your web cam work! Give it a try.
Ok! So if you don't want to use iChat and your camera works well I advise you to check http://www.sightspeed.com/ They offer a free software for chatting with other Mac users and also PC users.
If you are already a user of skype and you would like to get the new Beta version for Mac that includes video... Then visit: http://www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/20beta.html but also give a check on the requirements: http://www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/20beta.html And if doesn't work visit: http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=830
Please feel free to give me your comments and experience!
2 comments:
yeah, you are so right. just bought a genius look 316 for my mac mini and it doesn't work well. :(
but thanks for your link-tips. I'll try to get it working. ;)
cheers!
Daniel
Hello Daniel,
please let me know if you find some solution. Until now the best thing was to replace the camera for a simple one that works using FireWire.
They aren't so expensive and work without any problem.
Good luck!
Post a Comment