Web cam driver problem with Panther?

[Steve Sisak]

At 12:52 AM -0500 11/12/03, William H. Magill wrote:
>I'm confused.... (Not to mention that I mis-posted this to the 
>wireless list...)

There's a couple things going on here.

>I thought that under Jaguar, I had de-installed the I/OXperts webcam 
>driver and found that my Pyro FireWire WebCam continued to work with 
>iChatAV.

The Pyro Webcam is also supported by Apple's Quicktime IIDC Digitizer 
which was first shipped in Mac OS 10.2. (After we spent a year 
debugging the FireWire user client :-( )

>Doing clean install of Panther, I find that the camera is apparently 
>seen by iChatAV, but no image is generated.  (Plugging in the Camera 
>launches iChatAV. But the preferences does not offer a video driver.)
>
>So I downloaded WebCam 1.1b24, installed it and rebooted.
>
>Same effect.

It appears that in the final version shipped with Jaguar, Apple 
changed iChat AV  to invoke Apple's driver directly, prevention you 
from using our drivers (or any third party drivers) with iChat.

We go through great pains to be compatible with Apple's driver -- you 
can use the "Source" tab in the standard video settings dialog to 
choose between our driver and Apple's.

Of course iChat AV (like Yahoo instant messenger) does not allow you 
to access the video settings dialog, so you are stuck with whatever 
it chooses to do.

>Went back to 10.2.8 (installed on a different disk) ... oops no video.
>
>In iChat beta under 10.2.8, again plugging in the camera launches 
>the app, and in preferences video, I see two camera options - Pyro 
>WebCam and ioxperts Pyro WebCam. Selecting either one results in no 
>image.

Something is wrong there -- make sure you try WebCam 1.1b27 as we had 
a problem where our thread which reads video data from the camera 
would die when switching cameras. You should still have been able to 
get video from the Apple driver.

>I THINK that I had been using the Pyro with 10.2.8, but I might not 
>have used it since 10.2.6. I first tried it under 10.2.8 with 
>IOXpert 1.0.6 driver -- then installed the same 1.1b24 version, 
>still nothing.
>
>Any guess what's up?

Try 1.1b27 -- there's one fix that might apply.

>What else can look at.  (How can I verify that the camera is 
>working, besides with iChat? ... got a handy tool? I thought I had 
>one but I can't find it.)

Any of the applications listed here:

   <http://www.ioxperts.com/apps_osXvideo.html>

Note that we may have to remove iChat AV as a supported application 
-- note that this is not a bug on our part, but a marketing decision 
by Apple.

If you want to continue using our drivers w/iChat AV (or any USB 
camera) you need to stay with the beta version on Jaguar.

I'm visiting Apple next week and will see if I can get anywhere.

While we could find a way of tricking iChat AV into using our drivers 
(capturing the Apple driver for instance), Apple marketing has made 
it very clear that they do not want us to do that.

Of course, considering the damage the not being permitted to support 
iChat has done to us, I'm not sure how much more harm they can do -- 
however, before burning any bridges, we need to talk to them.

>Bill Magill

-Steve

>iMac 800/768 meg -Super Drive.
>4 FireWire 400 drives hanging on a Powered Pyro Hub (which is where 
>the camera normally sits), but using the CPU port makes no 
>difference.


-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
Steve Sisak, CTO                                 steve.sisak at ioxperts.com
IOXperts, Inc.                                            +1 617 876-2572