My Facetime HD Camera does not display HD

The key to capturing HD will be to find software that can do it. BTW, "Software" includes your Mac OS, which you show to be OS X (10.5.5). No Macs that shipped with OS X 10.5.x had FaceTime HD cams. If your info is correct, you need to restore the Mac OS that came with your Mac in order to be certain of OS compatibility with your FaceTime HD cam.

Even with a compatible OS, regardless of which camera is in any Mac, the software that you use with a Mac's camera always controls the camera operation and determines the output that your camera can provide. This is true of both functions (examples: record or video chat) and output resolution (examples: 720p that the new FaceTime or FaceTime HD cams can provide with iMovie or QuickTimeX or the 640x480 {480p} limits of iChat.)

Some apps, like my Lion Macs; Photo Booth Version 4.0.2 will give higher resolution at Full-Screen than they do in the normal window size. For example, when using Lion (OS X 10.7.3) with Photo Booth, both my Mac Pro and my 15" MacBook Pro records 720x480 images in the normal Photo Booth window. However, when recording in Full-Screen mode, my Mac Pro gives 1280x853 images. The MacBook Pro gives only 1080x720. My 13"MBP resolution is limited to 640x480.

Your Leopard (OS X 10.5.x) results may be different.

For some more info take a look at http://discussions.apple.com/thread/2811535?answerId=13365028022#13365028022

Message was edited by: EZ Jim

Mac Pro Quad Core (Early09) 2.93Ghz OSX 10.7.3   24" LED Cinema Display
MBP 15" i7 (Early'11) OSX 10.7.3                 External iSights
13" MBP (Mid'09) 2.26GHz OSX 10.7.3             iBook SE 366MHz OSX 10.3.9

You do not say whether your poor images are only with chat, still pictures, all images, or everything.

(0) Broadband internet is required for good video chat images. If video chat image is your problem, check your broadband speed using http://speedtest.net/ Both UP and DOWN speed is important.

Minimum Speed requirements depend on the kind of video you want to do. See this article.

(1) If your problem is with ALL images from your cam, per http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3097, use good (meaning very bright, single-source) light.

Restart Mac and record a short clip in full sunlight. View the clip inside (not in sunlight) to see the best quality your Mac can give.

The Apple articles above apply whether your camera is called an "iSight" or one of the newer built-in cams that Apple has named "FaceTime" or "FaceTime HD" cameras.

(2) The software you use with your iSight/FaceTime/HD camera controls it. Unless you have added third party software that takes control away, your Mac should be giving you the best possible quality for the conditions existing where you are using the camera.

The ONLY case I know where Apple software lets you control the quality is in QuickTime Player movie recordings. Here is how you can adjust quality for QuickTimeX:

However, even if you have set the quality below Maximum here, other apps like FaceTime, Photo Booth, etc., should still automatically set best quality for the lighting conditions while you are using your camera for video.

(3) If you must take manual control of some of the parameters that are normally set automatically by the software you use to operate your iSight, the best I know is iGlasses:http://www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses/

Message was edited by: EZ Jim

Mac OSX 10.7.3