Don't push me...
Tuesday, April 7, 2009 at 8:33AM I was invited to take part in this weeks live recording of "This Week in Media" hosted by Daisy Whitney late yesterday afternoon. It was my third time, even though my first outing never got published due to technical difficulties - at least I hope that's what it was :-)
Anyhow, Daisy mentioned in her invite that the show would be based at the Twit cottage and for any Mac based participants, to fire up their video for Skype to be included in the live video feed,
Gulp!
Never done a live video feed into a podcast before!
This blog post is the result of my trying to rig up a simple video feed using my existing kit.
First off, the machine I use for Skype is the main Mac Pro. It has a USB audio interface from my Mixer and a separate Mix Minus input into the audio line in. It's set up this way for when I'm recording the MacRoundtable. I've no webcam, but seeing as I had a couple of Camcorders kicking around, I thought it would be trivial to set one of them up as a web cam.
Wrong!
45 minutes later, I realised that I should have bought a new USB or FW webcam but it was too late to sort that out.
Backup plan, set up the MacBook Air and use the built in video camera on that.
OK, swapped over the USB interface and the audio line in to the MacBook Air - fine worked a treat!
OK, so now I want to use a wired ethernet connection for the MBA rather than wireless.
D'oh! The MBA uses a USB Ethernet adapter and with only having a single USB on the MBA......
So disconnect the USB hub from the Mac Pro and connected the MBA ethernet adapter and the USB audio interface into the USB hub. Fine!
But the USB hub on the Mac Pro had the Mac Pro keyboard plugged in, so my keyboard is not working.
Connect the keyboard to the USB port on the Dell monitor, but that is plugged into the other Mac Pro.
So by now I'm a little bit miffed as you might imagine.
The bottom line is I really need to acquire and configure a decent web cam onto the main Mac Pro. But without giving too much ammunition to the MacBook Air haters, it really would have been so much simpler with just a second USB port on the MacBook Air, it really would!
Update: I threw out a Twitter request last night for good web cam suggestions and the top 5 appear to be:
Quickcam Pro 9000
Quickcam Vision Pro
Blue EyeBall
eCamms BT-1
Logitech QuickCam Communicate MP
I'll ignore @PatMahons suggestion of getting a 24" LED Apple Cinema display for the built in iSight camera and stereo speakers. Pat, you should know me better than that to even seed such an idea :-)
As an aside, I can't seem to put the whole MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro decision point out of my head but the whole debarcle last night has really made me reconsider seriously. I'll still need a webcam for the Mac Pro though.
Update: Following on from the comments, I thought I'd better revisit the camcorder setup before parting with any cash. Looks like it was easier than I thought "Well would you believe it...."
Reader Comments (10)
Don, I'd really like to hear you solve the camcorder option. Something I want to do myself!
Thats a tricky one. Ideally a webcam with high quality and lots of software controls is ideal, but I have yet to find one. I was interested in the Blue one, but initial reviews are not happy with the video quality. I have the Quickcam Vision Pro and the only way to record in the HD mode is to use an obscure program called BTV Pro from Ben Software. Other than that it works in most programs at 640x480 just fine.
The quality of the image is very good, although since there are no manual controls you have to go with what it does. If the scene is well lit its usually fine, but variations in the scene sometimes causes the iris and the auto-focus to fluctuate.
The best option would be this webcam with a software program to go manual. So far its fine for basic stuff but I am still on the lookout for the best Mac webcam. I think the best option is to use a camcorder, although it is trickier to set up.
Dear Don, don't you have a WIFI network in your home/office... MacBook Air would have worked very well with Skype over WIFI ?? Well, maybe I missed something...!!
Well I wasn't sure about using a wireless connection for both audio and streaming video. Never tried it before so I wanted to go with the solution I thought would give the best results - a hard wired connection.
Hey Don,
I don't see the issue here. Plug in the DV Camcorder over firewire and set it to record mode.
It'll be recognized by both Skype and iChat to be used as a camera.
I have a gazillion cameras lying around and they all behave the same.
You need to use FireWire with DV cams. Ustream works with my Sony DV camcorder so I imagine Skype would.
I have connected my miniDV camcorder to my mac via FireWire. Works perfectly for Skype and iChat. The only thing you need is the right cable, you know, the same cable you use to get your movies off of your camera and into iMovie.
Well I have to say that it didn't work for me last night with two different camcorders.
Will have another try later!
Thanks for the feedback
So Don, when does the 24" Apple Cinema LED Display arrive then? ;-)
Just in case you missed the update at the end of the main post - here is the current situation! - http://myownreality.eu/2009/04/well-would-you-believe-it/