Lose audio during conference

Question

During a 3 way conference on ichat, the audio from the last person invited stops after a while. Connection Dr says audio is fine. Happened from 3 different connection attempts with different people doing the inviting. Has anaybody else seen this problem?

Answer 1

Hi,
iChat 4 is governed by the System Preferences > Quicktime > Streaming Settings as well as the Bandwidth settings in iChat itself.
These Quicktime Streaming settings should be set to 1.5Mbps.
If she has to Change then iChat should be Quit and restarted as the App "reads" the Speed it can see and writes this to the com.apple.ichat.plist as it starts up.  (if the Speed is not Fast Enough at this point the Connection Doctor > Capabilities tab tends to say some functions are restricted).
iChat checks again during the connection Process for Video Chats.
Upload speed is the real key to this.
The Quicktime setting at Automatic in Leopard (iChat 4) will restrict the Internet speed to 384kbps  In Tiger/iChat 3 it used to restrict it to 0kbps).
A mixture of Internet Speed and Processor speed decides Frame Rate.
My First edition MacBook Pro (2007) with a plain Core Duo Processor manages 20fps
My G4/1Ghz Dual Processor manages 15fps
These are over an 8Mbps Download and 780kbps Upload service
System Preferences > Sound > Input will show you your Audio in the Blue Response bar.
In the iChat Preferences > Video Section this becomes the green bar under the Pic.
In the Connection Doctor during a Chat the Green Bars there are the incoming Video and Audio Stream.
If a Mic or Audio Input device has been Set up for iChat before a Video Chat has been Started you can swap between the two.
There can be issues for Headsets, particularly Blue Tooth ones if you try to Set them up during a chat.
They have to "Set" in System Preferences > Sound  "First" and then set as the choice in iChat "Second"
There are some Test accounts run by Apple that you can use. From Contact Testers
Current Known Test Account Names
Auto-Respond Accounts
Whereabouts
Capabilities
Level of Expertise
appleu3test01 (AIM)
Apple
On Leopard:
     Video only Responses
Dummy: Auto-respond (No Need to Text)
appleu3test02 (AIM)
Apple
On Tiger:
     Video only Responses
Dummy: Auto-respond (No Need to Text)
appleu3test03 (AIM)
Apple
On Tiger:
     Video only Responses
Dummy: Auto-respond (No Need to Text)
[email protected] (@mac.com)
Apple
On Tiger:
     Video only Responses
Dummy: Auto-respond (No Need to Text)
[email protected] (@mac.com)
Apple
On Leopard:
     Video only Responses
Dummy: Auto-respond (No Need to Text)
[email protected] (@mac.com)
Apple
On Leopard:
     Video only Responses
Dummy: Auto-respond (No Need to Text)
(NOTE the On Line / Off line Status pics are not always quite up-to-date.  They also do not state if they are Away whilst On Line either)
I would gues that just one end is slowing during a chat.  This used to be an issue with Comcast in particular.
iChat is a Peer-to-Peer Connection when doing Video Or audio Only chats.
That makes it look like Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and some ISPs try to combat this by reducing the Internet speed in an attempt to make it impractical.
Dropping to 500kbps usually drop the connection "Under the Radar" as it were.
It also tends to smooth out where the Internet Speed varies too much.
A 5% variance of a 10Mbps service is the 500kbps that iChat usually needs.
This tends to mean that iChat's Buffering cannot keep up, as it drops Video Frames to try and keep things smooth.
Example pic with two of the test accounts
Notice the slight drop in the Third (appleu3test03) Audio and Video stream.  (I missed catching it going occasionally lower)
I am on a new i5 iMac and you can see the Pic size has dropped off for may end and the incoming pics are will below the 640 X 480 max.  (the Lighting is Bad at my end hence the lower Frame Rate and Bit rate)
It may take some adjustments all round to get this a an optimum.
7:26 PM      Monday; December 12, 2011
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Lion 10.7.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously