Facetime and external iSight - no sound input

I'm having the same problem, the audio section of my iSight camera isn't showing up as an input option in FaceTime under Lion. I've opened a support ticket with Apple about this, and they're escalating it to an engineer (i.e. somebody high enough in the chain that they don't work on Sundays) although I suspect the only answer I'm going to get is that they stopped supporting these cameras several years ago, and I should be happy that I'm even getting video to work from it.

After opening the ticket, I kept playing with it, and noticed a few things which led to the following work-around.

You will need to download and install two programs:

• Audacity, a sound recording/editing program.
• Soundflower, a system extension which creates virtual sound input/output devices. These virtual devices DO show up as input choices within FaceTime.

The way Soundflower works is that two programs use the virtual devices. One program (in this case Audacity) treats it as an output device, sending audio to it. Another program (in this case FaceTime) treats it as an input device, and it receives whatever audio is generated by the first program.

What we're going to do is use Audacity's monitoring fuction to copy the audio stream from the iSight into the Soundflower virtual device, and configure FaceTime to read the Soundflower device as its audio input.

To set it up, first make sure both programs are installed. Then run Audacity, and...

• Go into Preferences, and select "Devices" from the list on the left.
• Under Playback, set the Device to "Soundflower (2ch)".
• Under Recording, set the Device to "iSight".
• Click "OK" at the bottom.
• On the "Transport" menu, turn OFF the "Overdub" option, turn ON the "Software Playthrough" option, and turn OFF the "Sound Activated Recording" option.
• On the toolbar at the top of the main window is a picture of a microphone. Next to that is a button with a triangle pointing down. Click this button, and on the resulting menu choose "Start Monitoring".

You should now see the audio levels moving, and reacting to any noise in the room with the camera. You may need to adjust the audio gain at this point. You should see two sliders, one with a speaker and one with a microphone, to the right of the audio level meters (or maybe on a second row of toolbar buttons, if the main window isn't wide enough to show the sliders.) You want to adjust the sliders so that normal speech moves the input meter (the red one) up to somewhere between -6db and -3db.

Once things are adjusted, leave Audacity running and start FaceTime. At the bottom of the "Video" menu will be a list of audio input devices. Choose "Soundflower (2ch)" from this list.

Now, when you make a FaceTime call, you should have audio, and the other party should be able to hear you. If they tell you that your audio is too loud or too quiet, adjust the input gain using Audacity.

Very well thought out John... long process but if it works then great.. I haven't as yet tried it. I too, like you and MANY others have raised support tickets with Apple .. (what good that will do though) if Apple are trying to stop software support for original isight.. The Apple Support adviser did say that Hopefully apple address everyone's upset and bring out a patch, but in the mean time to plug a microphone into the back of my Mac Pro.

Thank you for the info in this thread. I am having a similar problem.

Brand new mac mini, lion 10.7, connected to a samsung LCD TV and attempting face time via an old firewire 400 iSight. I bought a 400/800 adapter to plug the iSight into the mac mini which only has firewire 800 and video worked just fine (low res of course, but it worked great) - but i was unable to transmit sound. strangely, the sound input preference indicated iSight microphone was working and the input meter was working fine (at least visually).

One option (haven't tried yet) might be to plug in an actual microphone to the mic jack on the back of the mac mini and select that as the input source.

Am guessing the adapter required to plug this isight into the macmini doesn't transmit sound, as noted in a previous post.

If anyone knows more would appreciate any info. Will post again if I find a mic to plug in and try that idea.

CR

I don't think it would be the firewire 800 to 400 adapter that is the problem, as her are loads of people having the same issue with only using the original firewire 400 cable with the original isight ... look here as well..

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13016027#post13016027

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3158695?answerId=15687174022#15687174022

try plugging in a microphone along with your isight and select that as source input... i think the audio input on the new mac mini is the same standand 3.5 mini jack.

Hi,

If the iSight (external) shows in System Preferences > Sound > Input and the blue bar is seen to move then sound is coming from the camera.

For iChat the Volume then needs to be at a point between 50 and 75% of the way to the right when you talk.

Then in the iChat Preferences > Video section the iSight Mic needs to be selected there as well.

(You should see a green bar move here)
Also the Microphone Enabled item in the Video menu needs to be ticked.

If you plug another sort of Mic in to the Input port (3.5mm jack) then the Mic need to be a Hi Line-In device.

(PC Mics tend to be Lo Line-In devices and don't work - consider Hi Line-In devices as somewhat pre-amped)

6:51 PM Thursday; July 28, 2011

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

I've got the same problem with sound. isight shows up in sys prefs and works but in facetime there is no option to select isight in video only other inputs. Video works well but no mic.

Hi,

With Firewire 800 machines it tends to be the Adapter on the whole.

There is some anecdotal evidence that the External iSight needs to be running Firmware version 1.0.3 (Check the System Profiler).

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8:14 PM Sunday; August 14, 2011

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi again Ralph,

Just to say that my isight was updated to 1.0.3 years ago .. and has the problem with audio... hopefully Apple will address the issue very soon.

Hi,

Realistically the external iSight is on the edge if not over it of being an Unsupported items as the last one was made such a long time ago (In Peripheral time)

Here is a thread with Posts by EZ Jim who lists adapters he has found work.

Here is a Search of Posts by EZ Jim with the word Adpater in them (More than just Firewire so you may need to pare that down)

10:32 PM Sunday; August 14, 2011

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Wrapping up my effort at this... I never attempted to plug in a separate microphone to use with the old isight camera, and just sucked it up and bought a new camera (Logitech c910). It works just fine and I am out 79 bucks I would rather have kept. Picture quality is much better, however.

CR

Ok

Understood.

8:20 PM Monday; August 15, 2011

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Apple has been pretty good about supporting legacy hardware, especially when the userbase is big. I own an Emagic Unitor 8 MK-II (a MIDI interface), which received legacy support for SL. Despite the fact that Apple never made that product, but aquired Emagic (makers of Logic Studio), they still were cool enough to release update drivers.

If there are enough users providing feedback about iSight support in Lion perhaps this gets resolved quickly.

From the Lion specs:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

"Video calls require a built-in FaceTime camera, an iSight camera (built in or external),"

... sounds like a bug to me that 10.6.8 -> 10.7.1 broke the external iSight support in FaceTime.

-rotta

rotta,

your info about the external isight supposedly being supported in Lion is comforting. there is a bit of talk on various threads about the problem being related to the adapter. i have tried daisy chaining off external firwire drive and also using the 800-400 adapter on my macmini with no success from either method. recording video and audio directly into quicktime proves the microphone is working flawlessly and the problem is with facetime. well, i'll wait for an OS update. perhaps my other issue of the monitor not waking from sleep may be solved as well..............sigh!

Hi,

See the First Reply by EZ Jim in this Thread as to some Adaptors that work.

This means not only Quicktime but iChat and Face Time as well.

8:18 PM Sunday; September 11, 2011

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb( 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

It is nice that they have this self help area but facetime really shouldn't need all of it's users trouble shooting problems with it. Facetime worked fine for awhile on my Mac Pro portable then stopped at one point I tried my wifes minmac to see if I could figure out what was wrong using the isight that I had. I was able to get video with no sound. The Mac Pro still refuses to connect even after trying the 8.8.8.8 fix and the change to the firewall settings both of which seem to help some people, so basically neither of my computers will work properly with facetime. Here is hoping the facetime programmers come up with a revision that is ready for primetime on their next release.