Facetime and external iSight - no sound input

Hi,

You list two Macs that don't have Internal Cameras.

You are complaining about an App that is primarily designed to use the Internal Camera on every other Intel Mac there has been since the Intel Range was introduced in 2007.

You seem to be using an External iSight camera that has had production ceased some years before Intel Macs came out.

You are already starting from a position that is going to need a Workaround of some sort just to Connect the External iSight if your two computers only have Firewire 800 ports.

You may have an older Intel that has Firewire 400 ports.

The issue then is how many different ways people use their computers, how they maintain them and what they install on them.

Apple can't be expected to test ever possible scenario partularly covering every Upgrade and Update combo with anything and everything that has been installed on a Mac since it was bought.

400 to 800 Firewire adapters are the first thing to check if an External iSight is not working with an app.

Face Time and iChat need ports above the 1024 Threshold to be open in your router.

Using UPnP if your router has it will sort this issue.

Many people have not had issues with either app. They just don't come here to say so.

10:04 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

Not to be argumentative, but I cannot see how a FireWire 400 -> 800 adapter would matter in this situation. It is not like HDMI, with dedicated pins for audio vs video. FireWire is a serial technology, where audio and video are muxed together into the same serial data stream. The 9-pin to 6-pin adapters simply remove the Pair A/B ground references and the status contact pins. They do not alter the data stream pins.

That said, I'm suffering from the same issues with my external Firewire iSight and my 2011 Mac mini. The iSight works fine in 10.6.8 on my MacBook Pro, using the same adapter cable. It would be really nice to get this working, as the Mac mini is a beefed-up Apple TV in my case. Video calling on the big screen would be a big plus, and the external iSight is the only FireWire camera I've got.

Hope that helps. Definitely sounds like a software issue to me.

Hi,

In the iSight Community EZ Jim is the top Responder to people's questions about the iSights.

He has been posting since it was a forum for the External only (no Internals)

I have previously linked to specific threads where he explains which adapters he has found work.

I have also linked to a Search (Mostly so people can see how often the question comes up)

As Firewire can handle as many data streams as you have Hard Drives, plus an External iSight or other Firewire Peripherals, based on a Device ID i see no reason that the Video and Audio from the camera are not kept separate.

However the external iSight only send data at 200Mbps and cannot be daisychained with other 400 Devices Hard Drives on a 400 "network". as it were.

I would have to ask EZ Jim if an External Camera also slows down a Firewire 800 Connection

9:47 PM Wednesday; September 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

Same problem except I have a 2010 Mac Mini. Facetime works fine except it ignores the audio from the iSight. I have confirmed that the iSight audio itself is working fine and is is being registered by Lion. No problems when I reboot the Mac into Snow Leopard.

If Apple was going to break it with Lion intentionally they should have said so. Since they didn't, they should fix this.

Hi,

Is the 2010 Mac Mini a Firrewire 800 device ?

If so then you will be using an Adaptor for something Apple has not made for 7 years.

There are probably hundreds if not thousands of adaptors that are out there.

My G4 runs OS 9 through OS 10.5.8

I am miffed that my MacBook Pro only runs Tiger, Leopard and Snow.

It's a bit like complaining that your car no longer supports cassettes.

Yes it is frustrating when Apple get caught out by something outside their control like an Adaptor.

Testing tends to only as good as what Developers are running on thier Macs.

It may be that Apple will include updated Firewire drivers in future updates to Support older Firewire 400 devices and as a consequence improve the range of adaptors that will work.

There are links to Threads from within this thread that highlight some adaptors that do work.

9:05 PM Sunday; September 25, 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

Are you sure the external iSight audio problem in Lion is related to using a fw adapater? I can understand the situation if the same problem was encountered in SL. On my 2009 mini (running 10.7.1), Skype seems to work fine with the built in audio using a Sonnet FW800-400 adapter chained to at least two different hard drives.

So far the only work around to get iSight audio to work (for me) has been using a Sennheiser MKE-400 microphone from my HDSLR rig. Only wish that my monitor had a hot-shoe mount on top since velcro looks ugly.😉

-rotta

Hi,

The Issue arises in Snow Leopard as well.

Most likely the adaptors that work or don't work probably change a bit at each OS Upgrade and maybe Updates as well.

Daisy chaining the 200Mbps camera with 400Mbps Drives has always been an issue, although some have found it works for them.

This seems to be down to the Chips in the Drives coping with data rate changes better.

Using the External iSight Firewire Camera with a Firewire 800 computer and adapters and Drives (possibly firewire 400 ones) is just stacking up issues that need to be worked around.

10:08 PM Sunday; September 25, 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

Ralph,

I said Mac Pro portable (built in camera) and then didn't add portable the second time I mentioned it, sorry for the confusion. My portable with a built in camera was working fine with Facetime for the first month or so and then I did a software update, some of which was to help with Lion migration but I am still using Mac os 10.6.8. After this upgrade facetime refused to connect. After spending hours on it and going to the Apple store where it worked, does not work at home for me, my wifes mini mac works fine with the same account except for the audio. I have given up and still hope that some day the program will live up to it's promise.

Hi,

The title of this thread makes it clear we are talking about Audio Issues with the External iSight (It has a Mic - in fact two - inside)

Obviously a MacBook Pro is a Laptop/Portable and a Mac Pro is a Tower and not very portable so I presume you mean the former.

The Laptop will have it's own Internal mic which has nothing to do with the camera and are two pieces of hardware the computer has.

It should be set in System Preferences > Sound > Input and chosen in iChat > Preferences > Audio/Video Section in the Microphone Drop down.

The System Preferences bit needs to be set high enough to seer the blue bar get to at least 1/2 halfway , preferably 3/4s and not banging in to the right hand end.

In iChat in the Video Menu Microphone Enabled needs to be Ticked

In the View Menu Show Audio Status needs to be ticked

(Selecting this line in each toggles the tick On and Off (And the function) )

These are in addition to selecting the Mic.

Below the Camera Preview in th Audio/Video Preferences you should see a green bar move when you talk (It will not move as far as the System Preferences setting.

The main fix if the Audio is not working is to go to Library/LaunchDaemons and remove the com.apple.mio.VDCAssistant.plist then restart the Mac.

(It's a 64 bit only issue)

10:31 PM Sunday; September 25, 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

Unofficial Hotfix. 😉

You are correct, I should have said Macbook Pro, and I have 2 problems which I lumped together. My Macbook Pro Facetime does not work and in the process of trying to diagnois the problem I found that the using my mini mac with Facetime the video worked but audio did not, as far as I know it works fine with ichat, my computer also works fine with ichat. Ichat is not an option since I am trying to communicate with an ipad. Ichat works as one would expect and in my opinion it is to bad that the ipad does not support Ichat. If you have found a way to make the mini mac audio work with Facetime great.

Yes, the Mac Mini has a Firewire 800 port, so I use a Sonnett Firewire adapter. I don't buy the apologetic Apple-can't-support-every-adapter argument. The Sound Preference Pane lists and recognizes the audio input from the iSight mic. It is only Facetime that has a problem, not the OS. So I would say this is a bug and since they didn't explicitly say that they were dropping external iSight support with Facetime then they should fix it. I shouldn't need to buy a new adapter or a new camera. Hopefully they will fix it soon. It is disturbing that I persuaded several of my iPhone/Mac owning relatives to switch from Skype and iChat to Facetime because of its stability and compatibility only to have this happen.

Frankly I think that Apple quality assurance really dropped the ball on the Lion release. Next time I will not make the mistake of upgrading two of my machines so quickly.

Regards

The main fix if the Audio is not working is to go to Library/LaunchDaemonsand remove the com.apple.mio.VDCAssistant.plist then restart the Mac.

(It's a 64 bit only issue)

That file doesn't exist in my Library folder (either root or Users/Documents).

Hi,

From a thread in the iSight Community

It seems EZ Jim has done some more testing and it is a Face Time Issue.

I admit to presuming the Issue I knew about in Snow Leopard and adaptors affected Face Time in the same way as it affected iChat but it appears there is a separate issue.

Also see this recent Thread that mentions Adaptors.

I apologise for any confusion.

Just to be clear there appears to be two issues.

Adaptors and converter cables for Firewire 400 to 800 Computers And Face Time also not seeing the External iSight even if the adaptor works for other applications.

Again you have my apologies.

3:07 PM Monday; September 26, 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