Photo booth only records partial Video no matter how long it is...Help!!

Welcome to Apple Discussions, C Dot MooDy

is anyone else having this problem?

I have not seen any specific post of exactly your problem, but a few users have posted questions about how long Photo Booth can record, so they might be asking about a similar issue.

For instance, a search of iSight discussions about known Photo Booth recording time limit:

   http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1450644&tstart=50

if so is there a solution for it?

For a solution, consider the same suggestions I offered in the topic linked above:

(1) Be sure you are keeping Photo Booth (PB) as the foreground app; i.e., you can always see " Photo Booth" by the  in the upper left corner of your display.  Don't click on the desktop or any other open window while recording. Recording stops on my Mac if PB is not the active app.



(2) Other things that might be contributing to your problem:

• Don't let your Mac go to sleep or allow its screen saver to work while you are recording.



• Check and, if necessary, modify settings of background apps that might be interrupting your Mac during your PB movie recording. Examples would include Mail checking for new email, iCal executing an alarm, your Software Update... performing its scheduled check for software updates.

I do not know that one of those might be your problem, but if you can find no other cause, and if you must record long clips with PB, consider any of those ideas you think they might have an impact. 

(3) Also consider these suggestions If your Macbook runs slowly or exhibits any other problems in addition to your PB issue.



(4) If all else fails, you might try iMovie to see if it works better for recording longer movie clips on your Macbook. While not a one-click app like PB, iMovie HD can add Video FX (Effects) after you have recorded your clip. If you cannot get PB working, iMovie might be worth considering as an alternative.

(5) If you would rather not use iMovie, perhaps a PB clone application like WebcamTweaker or Freak Show will work for what you want.

Please let us know how it goes.

EZ Jim

PowerBook 1.67 GHz w/Mac OS X (10.4.11) G5 DP 1.8 w/Mac OS X (10.5.2)  External iSight

Have you used a background movie other than the ones that came with the application?

hiya,

just out of interest (I have just tried in photobooth and it does record movies but not great ones), have you got imovie or quicktime? Videos are a lot better in that.

Specific to your question, I have no answer, I am afraid.
Good luck

I have this exact same problem on a powermac dual g5 2.0 GHz 4gb ram with leopard 10.3 (all latest patches) and an external logitech quickcam pro. I recorded a 4.5 minute video and it only saved 7 seconds of it. On multiple successive attempts at several minute videos, the amount of video recorded ranged from 33 seconds 2.5 minutes - all were some amount short. Photobooth was the only app running, and the display never went to sleep (sleep time is set to 15 minutes idle).

sorry, that would be Leopard 10.5, not 10.3. 🙂

For what it's worth, the recording function in Photo Booth was intended to record answering machine messages for use in iChat and stored in RAM for immediate access. RAM needs to be emptied in certain situations since it is limited, this could prevent applications to run that need more RAM to run than available. Recording video depends on available RAM to prevent the need to wipe blocks of RAM containing critical data in use by another application. This might cause issues that cause the iSight to return the "in use by another application" error. Recording video with the application that claims the empty blocks of wiped data might force the application to release the iSight for use in another application. Trashing previous recorded clips could be worth a try, see if your recording duration extends after deleting one clip before you proceed.

I have this same problem as you C Dot MooDy, but I currently run Mac OSX Leopard,
and don't have any programs running in the background. It only runs for a random amount
of seconds. (Varying from 5 seconds, to 10 seconds, to even only 2 seconds!) If anybody has
any solutions to this, then please post! =)

Edit: I tried moving my location to my bedroom, and when I went to unplug the AC Adapter,
I found that it was "straining" to keep itself connected to my laptop. So I tried holding my laptop in a closer position to the outlet, and my Photo Booth started recording fine! =D

Message was edited by: Michelle R.

I have this same problem. Only making short videos, about 20 to 30 seconds. PB gets the first four or five seconds and misses the rest. The problem is intermittent. QT pro videos work just fine. Hope someone has an answer.

Jerry

Jerry




To Apple Discussions!


Have you tried all of the suggestioned in this thread?

same issue here - started recently - maybe suggesting that one of the last software updates is causing it perhaps? Especially as it sometimes records with no sound now too - both the incomplete video and the loss of sound problems seem fairly erratic and random - unrelated to other computer activity taking place at the time.

The same thing happens to me. It's frustrating to say the least, especially since I'm just trying to capture short clips and imovie doesn't recognize my webcam (quickcam). Watching the thread for more suggestions.... 😀

Just an update. I disconnected everything except the webcam and then tried to record 20 five-minute clips. Of those 20 attempts, the shortest was 4 seconds and the longest was 2:26, with the second-longest clip at 1:36.

Is anybody actually able to record longer clips with Photo Booth?

4 recordings attempted. At end of each recording Photo Booth showed about 4min10 in the red timer, but after hitting stop, the actual video lengths were:
12sec, 5s, 2min42, 1min17.

* Test conditions:
My config: MacBook Air,1.6GHz,2GB. 21GB free on disk. 830MB free memory.
Running Software Update just before the experiment revealed no pending updates.
Activity Monitor running in the background to make sure no other app is kicking in or hogging cpu/mem.
Photo Booth is the foreground app during the whole test.
Immediately after clicking the record button the cursor is moved to the hotcorner that disables the screensaver. Nothing else is done until 4min10 when stop button is clicked.



* Somebody suggested to use a iMovie.
iMovie is able to record a 7min clip from iSight (almost) fine.
"Almost" because iMovie does not allow low res video like Photo Booth, and my Mac Book Air configuration is not really suitable for heavy weight video editing: iMovie crashed once after hitting done, and once the "Import from iSight" window just vanished without even generating the thumbnails, and once the whole system froze.
--

I just re-run a test, but this time the 1st step was:
Restart the system.
Started Activity Monitor and Photo Booth.
And it worked just fine: 4min10 test -> 4min10 video.

Then I started firefox (to post this reply). Tested again
Pass: 4min test -> 4min video.

I then started Mail and iChat.
Failed: 4min test -> 1min36 video

Quit (cmd-Q) Mail and iChat.
Failed: 4min test -> 20sec video.

--

Before, I had the same results as you: random duration of saved video for same recording time.

What worked for me:
Restart the computer, launch only Photo Booth.
Quiting apps is not sufficient (see my earlier post in this thread).