Video and status icons not appearing

Question

I'm trying to set up a chat between my sister in Canada and my parents in the Uk. My sister's using a macbookpro with OSX0.4.1 and ichat 3.18 and my parents are using an imac running 10.3.9 and ichat 2.1
We got into a video chat with my parents the other day, but today although all is good here, my parents can only see themselves in the video - they fill the screen. I don't know how to get them so they see themselves in the smaller preview, and us in the large preview. Also, they don't see the status icons, nor any of the green camera icons next to my name or my sister's name in the buddy list (and apparanty never have). They've tried quitting ichat, unplugging and replugging in the external isight, and rebooting with no difference.
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

Hi Kevin,
iChat sometimes does this.
The easiest fix is to reconnect.
Or restart iChat.
Now in addition they should really check some other places.
With iChat open go to the Video menu.
This should have the Camera Enabled item ticked.
In the View menu they should make it Show Video and Show Audio Status.
This will produce the Green icons in their Buddy list if they are not already there.
There are in fact loads of ways to start a Video chat
1) Clicking on the Green icon for that Buddy.
2) Clicking once on the Buddy and then icons at the bottom of the Buddy list
3) From the Buddies Menu
4) Right Clicking /Control Clicking a Buddy and then from the Contextual menu
I can understand that they may have the green icons but not use them.
If the above does not work they should try Repairing Permissions
As they are in iChat 2 and Panther then they may need to Run the Cron Scripts.
See this FAQ for both the previous.
For the second bit they will need MacJanitor (Simplest and cheapest and only does the Cron script)
Download and install
Click the Padlock and type in Admin password
Run the Scripts one at a time or all All Tasks
10:55 PM Thursday; July 12, 2007