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iSight


Ernest Buckley

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I just got one for Christmas. Was wondering if there was anyway to actually use it connected to the web so that I could gig from my studio and people could just visit my site and see me live.

 

Is this possible?

 

Also, is there a way that I could use it and actually record myself in iMovie or something just to have some video content for people to check out on my site?

 

Thanks,

Ernest

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I had to look iSight up to find out that "is a state-of-the-art video camera" that "includes a dual-element microphone in its stylish compact aluminum body"...

 

State of the art.

 

 

You don't get that too much, anymore. ;)

 

 

PS... I think you should be able to find software to enable streaming video from your local to a web page. You're basically going to be looking for web cam software. You may have to look a little harder for software that also streams audio.

 

UNfortunately, unless you have a pretty fat pipe going up (why do people laugh when I say things like that?), I suspect you may not get a high frame rate and/or probs with the audio feed.

 

How about just shooting a little performance, recording it, use a good compression algo to cram its size down, and then make that available for download? You can tell 'em it's live and that you're simply sitting there waiting for someone to click... ain't it great how you can play it almost exactly the same each time? Anyhow...

 

One alternative to the web cam angle -- you might check out free video-conferencing software, etc... (Is there a Skype-video, yet?) I've thought about setting up songwriter's workshop type stuff around online tele or even video conferencing... problem usually is sound that's barely okay for talking, let alone playing an acoustic guitar. Of course, your audience has to know when to 'tune in' and have appropriate software.

 

 

PPS... quite a sales page Apple has up. It's a lot of fun to read -- like one of those toilet tank catalogs with the nudie cutie ice cube trays...

It
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Originally posted by Jotown

There are no stupid questions; only stupid people.
:D

 

Well, I'm kind of a stupid person, so I figured I probably ask stupid questions. :D

 

The "i" stands for U.

 

Ooooh...I get it. Which...I guess...means, U get it. :confused:

 

Originally posted by blue2blue


One alternative to the web cam angle -- you might check out free video-conferencing software, etc... (Is there a Skype-video, yet?) I've thought about setting up songwriter's workshop type stuff around online tele or even video conferencing...

 

And don't forget finally being able to masturbate in real time with people....which is the real reason I always figured people bought webcams in the first place. ;)

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If they have a Mac too you can use iChat AV for real-time video. Not sure if iChat can communicate with other progs, though.

 

My parents & I just did this for Xmas, actually - they had a webcam, we had a DV Cam, & we went thru Yahoo Messenger to do a video conference-type of thing. It was kinda fun, although I want to find a better solution. Camera quality matters - the DV Cam worked much better than their cheapo web cam. Audio sounded good on my side (they had a laptop with a built-in mic) but they said my voice sounded messed up (I had a cheap PC mic going into the onboard audio on our Dell PC). So, we have some things to work out - but it was still cool sharing Xmas eve with them. :)

 

So yeah, you can do real-time with it. I hear the iChat's a nice camera too, so that should help.

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Although they are not the easiest programs to use, Apple's Quicktime Broadcaster and Quicktime Streaming Server tools are free downloads from www.apple.com/quicktime .

 

There are a couple of commercial products that do the same thing, search for 'streaming' on versiontracker.com and you ought to find them.

 

You could publish a link to your stream, and people could join and watch. Use iChat at the same time, in text mode, and get everyone talking together.

 

If you wanted to have a larger audience, you'd need mirror servers to share the load. You can contract for such services from www.akamai.com, but it isn't cheap and may not support a live show as well as a saved stream.

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You might look for some information on Apple's own support forums - I think the one for Quicktime ( http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=932 ) would be good to look at and post questions to. Lots of smart people there.

 

Exploring the Quicktime tab on Apple's site will also be useful, there are free PDF files to download, and so on. Do some reading. Do some relevant Google searches, and then read some more.

 

Since QT Broadcaster and Streaming Server are free downloads, just grab 'em, install them, hook up your iSight, and start messing around.

 

See if you can view one stream on another computer at home. Move up to sharing one stream with a friend at another location. Scale up from there, keep testing until it breaks, then test some more. Take notes.

 

It doesn't have to be a polished show for the tests, it could be a live stream of the cat. The point is to master the tools.

 

I've seen one site that charges five figures to teach this stuff to companies - once you get it working you might have a new sideline...

 

edit: here's a good PDF link: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacOSXSrvr10.3_QuickTimeStreamingServerAdminGuide.pdf

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