IChat Can be heard and watched, I can Watch but I can not Hear

Question

Hi iChat Forum,
I'm new into the Mac world environment with a recent out of the box MacBook Pro that I just recently received three weeks ago. One of the main concerns that I would like to share with you is Video Conferencing with a PC AIM user, which I think this deserve some sort of investigation or if you have any suggestion that I could do to solve the problem I really, really would appreciate it.
Let me tell you my story:
On me side, I'm in UK based with:
- A New MacBook Pro, No modification to any settings.
- Firewall, I checked settings and it is off.
- BT Voyayer2091-B7 Wireless ADSL Router (Works Great), high speed.
- Setup Account for iChat on AIM network
Other End, My Wife based in Mexico with:
- Dell Latitud D810 Intel Prowireless, Windows XP SP2 (1.8GHZ, 2MB Memory), No internal microphone integrated.
- Ethernet Broadband connection, high speed.
- Webcam PCL-300K connected trough a USB port with Microphone.
- Setup account for iChat on AIM network
We followed the recomended setting described by this two sources:
http://www.mvldesign.com/videoconferencetutorial.html
and
http://www.ralphjohnsuk.dsl.pipex.com/index.html
Without too much hassle we were able to communicate each other, wow! this is great it works!! we though, with a little bit of delay in the frame display but voice very clear this was enough to keep in touch each other.
After three weeks of succesfull communication on both ends for long periods (1.5hrs) without any interruptions we were able to communicate, and it was four days ago that all of the sudden we starting having problems with our communication, starting primarly with receiving this message errors of not responding for an invitation from her after I accepted her request, the same situation in the otherway around. However after disconnecting and trying again it was only when she invited and I responded (Accepting) which finally we stablish communication again.
The Problem:
Now, even that we are able to stablish communication with Video in both ends, she CAN perfectly hear me and watch me, on the other hand I CAN see her but CAN NOT hear!!. At first we though it was a problem on the microphone, not switched on or some kind of sound setting that she might turned off, but NOT, everything was right.
Well, I refer back to the documentation described in the links above thinking that this may be an issue with the router on her END not Mine or firewall setting. She reinstalled everything and follow all the required steps to setup the setting of the firewall according to documentation and we tried again with the same results.
On my end as I mentioned previously I do not have any firewall set on in my Mac, the only bit that I have not check yet is the router configuration, and the reason is because I'm in a renting property that provide us with Broadband connection to internet that individual or different computers/pcs have access to. And because everything worked fine at first, I don't think there are setting there that are needed to be changed, no one has make anychanges to the router and everything works fine.
Our last resource for us was, thinking that it might be a problem with her microphone in her web cam, so we decided to use SKIPE instead, and surprise!, we could stablished only voice communication in both ends, so this proved that her Microphone setting are OK!, so our work around to our communication and Video problem is to open an iChat convertation for the VIDEO part, On my END and set the MUTE and Open, at the same time a SKIPE session for Audio only. This works pretty good and actually the frame rate of the display on boths ends accelarate a lot.
If I check connection Doctor on the iChat session I received 100% coomunication with video and 0% Voice, still I don't received Voice from her.
I know this is not the good solution and I'm still concern of what wen't wrong on that time that interrupted our communication without doing anything in the settings in both machines.
We decided not to spend more time anymore on this matter due to I'm very tire investigating what migh have been wrong, but as I said this is not the right solution something is wrong in my settings which does not allow me to pass through voice signals from her. I reached to the point to reinstall ichat but because this is NEW machine and don't want to incurr in the same sort of situation I had with Windows, that is why I personally switched to Mac.
Well have a happy reading and if you come up with some solution or you have come across with something similar and managed to soleved it I really would appreciate it you help or advice.
Kind regards
Alberto

Answer 1

Hi BetoMosqueda,
Welcome To The Apple Discussion Pages.
If your wife has unplugged her Mic at any time she will need to redo the tuning.
It is also possible that her video quality need to be reduced to allow the audio to come through.
You should start a chat.
At her end she should see your incoming video is in one of two tabs.
She should click on the rear tab which will come to the front and show her preview.
A small icon should appear to the right of the tab.
She should click on this to bring up a slider.
Sliding this to the left will reduce her video quality.
At this point this will allow the processor at her end to produce new frames faster which means her pic to you will smooth out a bit.
If you open the Connection Doctor from the Video menu you will see the frame rate and Bitrate go up.
As the slider gets moved further to the left you should get Audio.
7:08 PM Sunday; May 7, 2006