Isight with horrible quality in ichat

Question

Connection between two brand new MBP (13" an 15").
Own picture is in way bettwer quality than the big video stream of the counter part.
Quicktime streaming settings were already set to 1,5 MBit.
isight cam works great - at least the pics taken with Photo Booth.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Hi,
Welcome to the    Discussions
The quality of the incoming picture from your Buddy depends on several factors.
The camera itself at that end.
The Processor at that end.
What other things that processor is doing.
What the Internet Speed is between the two of you. The controlling speed is often the Uplink speed at in end.
Most Intel Macs with an Internal iSight can produce a 640 X 480 pixel picture.
It varies how many frames a second they can master, 15fps is the lower frame rate and 30fps is the Max based on the Processor(s) and cores available.
The Internet connection has got to be able to handle the data at the rate the camera and processor(s) can produce it. (A computer may be able to produce 30fps but you have to be able to stuff that through your (or their) uplink connection).
Of course you have to be able to at least match their Upload speed with your download speed.
Next you have to consider that now you Mac is dealing with two lots of Video (yours and your Buddies). This will impact on your Processor.
Lastly you have to consider what a 640 x 480 pixel pic looks like once you have it expanded/enlarged to a size you can use/view with ease.
You are also comparing the same pic in terms of Pixels displayed at two different sizes even if their is no loss over the internet.
Try it in a graphics app with two pics they have the same number of pixels and show them at different Sizes without altering the Pixel number (i.e zoom rather than any other method)
If there are are great differences in internet speed you can try reducing the bandwidth in iChat > Preferences > Video section to 500kbps to even things out a bit.
Summary.
It's too varied to allow for all the factors in any one connection to talk about this from a global perspective in trying to suggest all the possibilities.
What your processor is doing at anyone time, including mail downloads and Time Machine in Leopard will impact on Processor use. iChat is "rated" to not use the processor in front of other apps so this also needs to be factored in.
What Internet speed each end "bought" normally specifies the download rate as it is faster. It is the Upload speed that is the controlling factor in a Video chat.
The initial quality of the camera does have some bearing by iChat will only produce a 640 x 480 pic as a max.
9:58 PM Sunday; July 19, 2009