Receiving slow video from PC using AIM 5.9.5

Question

Hello,
I am attempting to set up an AV chat with my mother-in-law so she can see her new grandson. I have a PowerPC G4, 867 MHz and bought an iSight camera. I am running MacOSX 10.4.5, and using iChat3.1.4. She has a 1GHz PC (dell i think) and using AIM 5.9.5 program. She turned off her firewall, and before she bought a camera at her end, I was transmitting a one-way video and audio feed very well- without any alterations to my computer or router settings. Now that she has a camera, we have been attempting to video chat from both ends, but her image is very slow and freezes after about 5 min. On the other hand, she sees my image clearly, and the audio is clear.
I have been reading the old posts and have played around with my router settings as well as telling her to do the same. I have configured my Linksys router (BEFW11S4 ver 2) as instructed on the mlvdesign tutorial page for port forwarding, I have no firewall set on my computer, I do not have the Virex program, and I installed the DashOff script to turn off dashboard application.
Her camera is the new Fusion from Logitech, and she says it is plugged into a high speed USB port. When she views her own image on her computer, it comes in clear and appears real time. However, when she initiates an AV chat and I accept, her image starts off as a black screen with squares filling slowly. Once her image is established, it is pixelated in large squares and freezes. When I initiate the chat, her image is better (image delayed between audio and visual), but slowly gets worse until it freezes after about 5 min. The audio continues fine.
Other information: I have a cable modem from Adelphia, and I checked the speed of my cable modem using dslreports.com:
Your download speed : 2027 kbps or 253.3 KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 296 kbps or 37 KB/sec.
I am slowly going crazy trying to work this out. Is this my computer's problem or are her settings still off? I am trying to convince her to get the Trillian program instead, will this help? Or do I need to get the new Apple MacBook Pro...

Answer 1

Hi Ihutnick,
Welcome To The Apple Discussion Pages.
Ok do this.
Start a chat.
You open the Connection Doctor at your end.
She clicks on her preview which is behind your incoming Video (Tabs)
WHen the preview is at the front a small icon appears to the right
She should click on this.
A slider appears.
She should slide it slowly to the left.
You should see the Bitrate and Framerate go up in the Conection Doctor.
Try for 15 Frames a sec but 10 is more likely.
This may not do anything for the Freeze (It tends to be unsolvable).
11:43 PM Monday; April 3, 2006