OS X Videoconferencing with USB Camera?

August 23, 2005 9:31 AM

Anyone have experience with iChatUSBCam and iChat?

I'd like to get video instant messaging working on my computer, but I have a USB Logitech Quickcam. Do I really need to spend the ten bucks on iChatUSBCam? Is there any freeware out there that will do the trick?

Alternately, are there any reasonable alternatives to iChat, that work with a USB Logitech Quickcam? Yahoo's messenger program seemed intolerably buggy to me ... I haven't tried any others.

posted by louigi to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I tried iChatUSBCam for a little while when I first got my iMac. (to support an ancient, 3Com HomeConnect web cam that I bought on a whim in the heady days of 1999). I mainly just wanted to know if it worked. It did. Sort of. It made the fans in my iMac G5 go crazy. I didn't intend to buy it at that time. When the shareware nag time lapsed, it made iChat unusable. Uninstalling it was more difficult than the usual Mac application.

So I guess my experience was not positive. (And the web cam didn't work all that great, IIRC).

But I know of nothing else.
posted by teece at 9:41 AM on August 23, 2005

I've used it, and it does work, but the quality is just as you'd expect from the digicam. (I use the Quickcam Zoom, FWIW.) There are no freeware alternatives, and aside from Yahoo! Messenger I know of no other programs for OS X that do the job. Perhaps someone can enlighten us both...
posted by armage at 9:42 AM on August 23, 2005

Worked fine for me with the MacAlly icechat webcam.
posted by mrbill at 11:05 AM on August 23, 2005

Worked for me too, but the quality of those cheap webcams was so poor that my wife and I splurged on iSights for our long-distance chats.
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:00 PM on August 23, 2005

Am I the only person who bought an iSight, and took it back the next day because the video quality was totally sub-par for what I expected for $150?
posted by mrbill at 2:46 PM on August 23, 2005

I purchased my iSight for $129--(it was on the return table found at the end-of-the-month at the Apple Store). I love the quality--FWIW, I also installed EyeGlasses, it really helps!
posted by 6:1 at 4:59 PM on August 23, 2005