MacBook's iSight yields black screen.

Question

• The iSight DOES show up in the System Profiler
• The Green LED DOES turn on
• Hooking up an external iSight works just fine except for PhotoBooth
• The microphone seems to work just fine as well
Am I out of luck here? Sadly, my warranty ran out exactly 1 day prior to the problem occurring!!
Is there anything else I can check on?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Good news, Anthony
Happy to see that you have Photo Booth working with your external iSight.
If you are using a built-in iSight with Flash-based video websites, select the "USB Video Class Video" Camera setting. When you use your external iSight, set Flash's webcam camera setting to "IIDC Firewire Video".
Based on your pictures and your list, some of your hardware or A/V-capable software like Delicious Library might be causing conflicts with iSight or iChat.
Some users report that plug-ins installed by Delicious Library cause conflicts. However, Delicious Library is trouble-free for other users. Therefore, your Delicious Library problem might be a result of interaction with other system components not used on all OS X Mac systems. Check Delicious Library Support for help or use their "contact us" link for specific help from the people who know Delicious Library best.
If Delicious Library Support cannot help you resolve your problem with Delicious Library, the only way I know to troubleshoot that problem is to erase your disk completely and then reinstall the software that came with your Mac. After updating your OS X and the Apple Software installed when you installed OS X, install Delicious Library and test to see if it works. If it does, install one of your other applications and test to see if Delicious Library still works. If Delicious Library doesn't work now, you have found the conflict. If Delicious Library does work after adding the next app, add another and repeat the test. This will be a LOT of work, but I have no better suggestion to offer for a Delicious Library problem.
The "Yes" and "No" in your application list does not tell me which iSight (or both) do or do not work with the specified apps. Before we continue with each of your individual apps, I will offer the complete list of suggestions that have helped iNtel Mac users resolve the "no camera...", "camera in use...", and green or black image window problems for their built-in iSight.
None of the suggestions is complicated, but the only way to find which one will work for you is to try them one-by-one until you find the one that fixes your Mac. If you still have problems with your built-in iSight after considering them all, it is possible that your problem may be hardware related. However, some of the following suggestions may let you avoid a visit to your Apple Service Technician for professional help.
(0) Disconnect any unnecessary peripherals while you do your testing to rule out possible conflicts. 
(1) Restart your Mac. Sometimes that is all that is required.
(2) If you use VMware Fusion to run Windows on your Mac, consider disconnecting iSight from your Virtual Machine as recommended by user "The.VCI" in this post.
(3) If you use an HP printer/scanner with your Mac, consider the "daemon" suggestions from user "parkersal" in this post.
(4) Check for any running applications, Login Items, or widgets that can use your iSight. (It is easy to forget widgets like Mirror in your Dashboard.) As explained in Apple's iSight "Your camera is in use by another application" message, iSight can be used by one application at a time.
(5) (This suggestion cannot apply to your Mac if ANY app works with your built-in iSight. I leave this suggestion here for possible benefit of some other reader whose built-in iSight will not work with ANY app in ANY user account.)
If someone has removed the QuickTime file shown in MacOS X Hints article to purposely disable your built-in iSight, you will need to restore the file to its correct location in order for your built-in iSight (or any other USB camera) to work.
(6) Try every suggestion re: Built-in iSight in How to Troubleshoot iSight. Be sure to include the checks for whether the problem is "application-specific" and "user-specific".
Click here if you need help creating a new user account to check whether your problem is "user-specific" during Troubleshooting.
(7) If resetting or the other troubleshooting suggestions do correct your problem, try the following:
• Backup your Home Folder, or at very least, your important files.
• Repair permissions. (Click here if you need help.)
• Then download and apply the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Combo Update.
• Finish with another Permissions Repair, and then check your iSight again.
Users have reported fixes to a variety of audio, video, connectivity, and software conflicts and unreliability issues after properly applying Combo Updates.
(8) Some iNtel Mac laptop users have also reported success after unplugging their Macs and leaving the battery out for half-an-hour to overnight. You might want to try disconnecting EVERYTHING, including both power and peripherals, for a few hours to see if it help you. (For other readers: To date, no desktop iNtel Mac users have reported that disconnecting has helped them.)
(9) If none of these suggestions work, contact your retailer, Apple, or your Apple-Authorized Service Provider for professional help.
(10) If one of the above suggestions fix part of your problems but leave some still troubling you, or if you want to continue to try fixing your problems without help from an Apple-Authorized Service Provider, please post another list showing which apps still do not work with which camera (or both.)
EZ Jim
PowerBook 1.67 GHz w/Mac OS X (10.4.11) G5 DP 1.8 w/Mac OS X (10.5.2)  External iSight