Mac to PC video chat - anyone doing this?

Brin · 11-03-2006, 16:58

A quick search hasnt shown anything about this on the forum so....

I have just bought a macbook pro for my daughter whose doing a computing and interactive media degree ( it hurt!!) I have a PC at home and have I just

found out that the mac version of messenger does not support video chat.

I'm waiting for her to open a yahoo maik account because I believe that this will support mac - pc video chat but in the meant time has anyone on the forum got video chat going between mac and PC using any other software?

**Damien** · 11-03-2006, 17:20

Yeah this is a problem at the moment as none of the offical clients support video between PC and Mac. She can use ichat but that only works between macs. Microsoft have refused to enable video chat for mac. Yahoo does seem to allow webcams

There is mercury messenger:
http://www.mercury.to/
But i do not think that works correctly yet. Only from pc to mac but not the other way yet.

The best client imo is adium, no A/V chat but it is the best:
http://www.adiumx.com/
It works with msn and yahoo and you can have multiple accounts running at once. Plus it has tabbed chat. also: http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/VoiceAndVideo

Otherwise wait until Skype release video chat for mac. Sorry. Good luck to your daugter with the degree, i am doing same sort of thing. Also welcome to the world of macs

punky · 11-03-2006, 17:28

Officially, iChat (Apple's bundled IM client) will work with AOL's AIM. In reality, it doesn't. Its extremely hit and miss.

However, Mercury Messenger is a Java MSN client which will work on Macs and does have stable webcam support. Yahoo Messenger for Mac I think does support webcams too, but I am not sure..

**Damien** · 11-03-2006, 17:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

Officially, iChat (Apple's bundled IM client) will work with AOL's AIM. In reality, it doesn't. Its extremely hit and miss.

However, Mercury Messenger is a Java MSN client which will work on Macs and does have stable webcam support. Yahoo Messenger for Mac I think does support webcams too, but I am not sure..

Are you sure on this? Last time i checked it was one-way and rather low FPS

Chris W · 11-03-2006, 18:10

you can webcam on yahoo messenger for mac, get decent quality cam too

not sure if you can voice chat with it as well though, but i use Skype for that, which is as good on mac as it is on PC

punky · 11-03-2006, 18:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damien

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

Officially, iChat (Apple's bundled IM client) will work with AOL's AIM. In reality, it doesn't. Its extremely hit and miss.

However, Mercury Messenger is a Java MSN client which will work on Macs and does have stable webcam support. Yahoo Messenger for Mac I think does support webcams too, but I am not sure..

Are you sure on this? Last time i checked it was one-way and rather low FPS

Yahoo or iChat? I hear if you can get iChat to work with AIM its supposed to be as good as iChat to iChat. Dunno about Yahoo for Mac, never used it. It must be crap though as everyone recommends Mercury.

**Damien** · 11-03-2006, 18:53

I meant mercury

punky · 11-03-2006, 18:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damien

I meant mercury

Dunno, never used it (I refuse to let Apple rip me off by buying an iSight), but people say its fairly good. FPS is supposed to be in the 10s

Brin · 11-03-2006, 19:03

Thanks everyone!

I'll be having a play with Yahoo tomorrow when my daughter gets her account set up but will also check out mercury. I'll let you know how we get on

**Damien** · 11-03-2006, 19:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

Dunno, never used it (I refuse to let Apple rip me off by buying an iSight), but people say its fairly good. FPS is supposed to be in the 10s

I had low frame rates and could only receive last time i used it.

Brin · 12-03-2006, 11:21

Ive just found "Squidcam"

"Welcome to SquidCam, the most convenient video chat application available for Mac OS X today. SquidCam was designed to make video chat sessions easy and reliable under Mac OS X. SquidCam is capable of sending audio, video, and text messages over a standard network or Internet connection."

The application will support both Mac and Pc and seems to be straightforward to set up just requiring both ends to know each others IP addy. It also suggests that users signup and obtain a "Webloid" as an aid to this.

"A webloID is a unique identifier associated with an account you can create on Weblopedia. It offers a simple way for people to contact you using SquidCam. Setting up a webloID is easy. Users that have a dynamic IP address or even use multiple NAT devices will be able to establish connections using the upcoming release of SquidCam and a webloID. "

Has anyone come across this before? Im always wary of a catch

When my daughter wakes up this afternoon (typical hardworking student!) I get her to download the mac version and give it ago.

Brin · 14-03-2006, 21:31

I had almost almost given up on finding something that works and doesnt fill the tool bar with crud when I came across Sightspeed - A freeby and Iview which offers limited free 1:1 both these come in mac and PC versions

Sightspeed is quite good and my daughter got it up and running on her own but it seems very sensitive to the poor bandwidth of her wireless link ( surely it can't be my NTL end

) but as its free I can't complain!

She is home this weekend and I will give Iview a test and report back if we get it working.

punky · 14-03-2006, 23:42

Cheers for the update mate...

danielf · 15-03-2006, 01:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

Dunno, never used it (I refuse to let Apple rip me off by buying an iSight), but people say its fairly good. FPS is supposed to be in the 10s

Last I heard, the iSight is obsolete. You want to get the iSore, which is twice as expensive, and offers half the functionality/FPS. Rumour has it that Apple fans are particularly excited about the design which makes it 'yet another Apple product that makes Apple stand out against the competition'.

Another punter remarked: 'This product really shows that Apple are setting the stage for design in the next decade'