IOXperts Video 1.1.2a10 posted

[Steve Sisak]

Hi Jerry,

At 8:53 PM +0100 7/6/06, Jerry Nicholls wrote:
>On 6 Jul 2006, at 18:28, Steve Sisak wrote:
>>I've just posted a new build (1.1.2a10) which should be pretty solid:
>
>Are the Philips cameras supported under IntelMacs yet ?

I don't have the Philips (including earlier Logitech cameras) driver 
working Intel native yet -- the issue is a handling Intel byte order 
for a big table of data used to construct commands to put the camera 
into various video modes.

Because of a bug in the camera firmware, if I make an error in one of 
these commands, I can put the camera into a state where it can no 
longer be used without disassembling and reprogramming it in a lab.

(This got me a trip to The Netherlands when I was writing the 
original driver for Philips -- needless to say, if I let out a driver 
that damaged people's cameras, that would be a very bad thing for 
everyone)

I'm probably 80% done, but I've already destroyed one of my test 
cameras and just want to be careful.

The new Logitech cameras work on Intel because they're a new chip set 
and I wrote the driver from scratch at a time I knew that I'd 
eventually have to support Intel byte ordering and paid attention to 
the issue all along.

This is one of those things that's easy to do during new development, 
but is really hard to go back and fix when you've got a few hundred 
thousand lines of existing code.

>I've got a PCVC675K which, oddly, will work using the 1.1.2a10 
>driver with BTV, but just isn't present with either Yahoo! messenger 
>or XMeeting.
>
>It just seems odd that it works with one app, but not the others.

That's because we _do_ support the Philips chipset under Rosetta -- 
in that case the PPC version of the driver is running, which still 
works fine.

The problem is, unlike the 68k->PPC transition, there's no concept of 
"Mixed Mode" under Mach-O and therefore no way to have a PPC 
QuickTime Component work in an Intel application (only one 
instruction set per process is allowed).

So, your camera will work with the current driver for PPC 
applications but not Intel or Universal (although there may be a way 
to disable the Intel half of a universal application if you want to 
try that).

I'm hoping it won't be much longer, but I currently have QA help from 
Logitech for their new cameras and am trying to get those out so that 
their currently shipping cameras are supported.

Intel support for Philips is next on the list -- it's in progress but 
I'm not going to release it until I'm sure it can't damage a 
customer's camera.

Also, I'm currently planning that Intel support for older cameras 
(all except the new Logitech cameras) will be a paid upgrade (except 
for recent purchases) -- given the amount of work involved, I hope 
this is understandable.

HTH,

-Steve

-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
Steve Sisak, CTO                                 steve.sisak at ioxperts.com
IOXperts, Inc.                                     voice: +1 617 876-2572
87 Bristol St #3A                                    fax: +1 617 876-2337
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