The newly released IOXperts driver, which works with any IIDC camera, and supports both OS 9 and OS X , but it is noted that the current driver doesn’t handle all of the settings 100% correctly. Read More…
The newly released IOXperts driver, which works with any IIDC camera, and supports both OS 9 and OS X , but it is noted that the current driver doesn’t handle all of the settings 100% correctly.
The IOxpert driver is a video only driver. On Mac OS X, Apple includes a driver which will handles audio even while the IOxpert handles video. Ioxpert states that they would like to support audio on Mac OS 9, but so far Apple hasn’t been willing to provide the information needed. As a result, they can not commit to supporting iSight Audio on OS 9. Video on OS 9 will be fully supported.
IOxperts is actively working on a new beta with full support for all of the video options on the iSight, and a new beta should be available very soon. IOxpert recommends to join one of the webcam beta mailing lists to keep track of changes made for the iSight compatibility. The new beta which will support the iSight, also
support software pan, tilt and zoom. With this feature, the host application can ask for 320×240 video, like most video conferencing applications do, and the user can set the zoom to 200%. This will run the camera at 640×480 and return a cropped 320×240 portion of the full image. Currently this feature requires the host application to have a video settings panel, which iChat AV and Yahoo Messenger do
not currently have.
The IOxpert Driver is available for $19.95, and users get both the Mac OS 9 and OS X versions. Noted is that one must purchase a unique license per camera, be it the iSight, another firewire camera, device, or USB camera. There is a huge list of supported applications on the IOxpert web site, including SecuritySpyand BTV Pro, and they state that some Mac OS X users have the new iSight camera and the feedback has been good.
SecuritySpy’s web site states” Multiple cameras can be connected to the same bus with high quality video and good performance. Generally the maximum cable length is 10m between devices but for long cable lengths FireWire repeaters can be used. The more cameras on the same bus the lower the performance but additional FireWire buses can be added using inexpensive PCI cards. Note that although many computers and FireWire cards have multiple ports they normally only have one bus.”
On the SecuritySpy / BTV discussion board I found two tips: An iSight user found an error generated: “Could not find an authorized OEM firewire device.” BTV Pro support replied saying it is because of the special Orange Micro OEM version of BTV Pro, which only works with the Orange Micro iBot camera. The normal version of BTV Pro works with the iSight. Another user said they just did some testing with iSight. It captures the full 640×480 at 30fps, but “I’m having problems with BTV (regular) not keeping the speaker turned off, so I get nasty feedback if I don’t mute.”
Also for SecuritySpy motion detection; the first few frames of a recorded motion may be blurry before the iSight focuses to accommodate a change in a object passing very close to the camera. This is still preferable to fixed-focus cameras, where if an object passes too close, it will always be blurry.
Please send us your comments using the iSight and third party OS 9 & OS X applications!
