- 2005.12.14
Having tried to do video chat years ago with the old CU-SeeMe software on a pre-G3
computer, I really appreciated the experience I just had with iChat AV
and my family while away on a road trip.
The old software, which used an old Connectix black and white "golf
ball" camera connected to the Mac's serial port, was slow and jerky,
and I never actually got to the point that I used it for anything other
than watching NASA TV.
I don't know how many of you are like me, but sometimes I try out
new things just to say I know how to do them, but then - not having any
particular use for it - I don't do it again. Other than "proof of
concept" tests and messing around a little with some students in a lab,
I never really used CU-SeeMe consistently.
Video iChat Using iSight
Now I find myself with two G4 PowerBooks (one for my wife) and two
iSight video cameras, so I just had to try it out.
Just before my recent trip to Nashville, I had my wife hook up her
camera and fire up iChat AV so we could initiate a chat. I have chatted
with her occasionally using iChat before, so she already had her
software set up and an account based on her .mac account all ready to
go.
Anticipating I would need to explain how to do the chat, I fiddled
around with the chat window and started typing instructions. Before I
could finish the first sentence, the window popped open asking me to
join her video chat, which is both an indication of how easy it is to
use and how smart she is (are you reading this, honeybunches?).
Anyway, aside from a couple of minor problems, it worked
beautifully, and my kids were fascinated enough to keep asking me to
watch them show off doing silly things because they could see my
reaction.
It took me a little while to figure out how to resize the inset
window so my picture didn't obscure the background so much ("Just put
your mouse over it and drag, dear," she said), and I had to restart
once because the connection was pretty poor in the hotel. We were using
an old AirPort wireless base station at home on her end, and presumably
standard ethernet at the hotel.
A Few Drawbacks
We were unable to make the image smooth over the long distance
connection until I limited the bandwidth to 500 Kb/s, which still left
me with smooth video and audio quality equivalent to a slightly mushy
speakerphone - like on a cell phone in speaker phone mode.
It was perfectly understandable. We could talk simultaneously and
still be heard. Loud noises made audible "echoes" as the sound from the
speaker fed back to the microphone, but under normal conversation this
was not a real problem. Even though there was an internet-induced
fraction of a second delay between transmission and reception, similar
to what happens to foreign correspondents on network news (but not as
bad), it didn't interfere with normal conversation.
Screen grabs are available for when your kids are being particularly
cute. There's no way to record video that I could discover, but that
might take a bit more processor power than is available. I recommend
you quit any CPU intensive software before starting a video chat,
especially Classic, which seems to hog my CPU quite a bit even when
idle.
Anyway, lots of you have tried this, and some of you haven't. The
point of this little missive (and I do have a point) is that the
quality of the connection is good enough that this is now going to be
an official part of my travel kit, and I'm going to do it more often
than just trying it out.
I wish my sisters used Macs, but even if they did they don't have
broadband, so I guess I'll have to continue using Yahoo Messenger with
them (YM does, by the way, support iSight cameras, so that works, if
not as well as with iChat.)
A Few More Drawbacks
There are a couple of things that could be improved. Bonjour
connections are only useful within the same subnet, so if you don't
have a .mac or AIM account and you're in different parts of the
building's network, you can't use iChat.
I wanted to use it to communicate with my planetarium students
working in a storeroom while I was in my classroom as a test, but those
areas are on different subnets, and the district blocks all chat
software data for obvious reasons.
I've put in a request for them to open a port for me to use, but we
all know how those things go. Eventually that'll be a moot point, as
we're supposed to get a high-speed Internet 2 video conferencing system
sometime in the next year as part of a project we're participating in,
but it would still be nice to be able to buzz home and say hi to my
kids when I have to work late (which is more often than I'd like).
While in the hotel I got an "AOL network is busy try again later"
error several times, but I couldn't tell if that was due to my slow
Internet connection or some long-term problem with AOL chat.
I hope (for AOL's sake) it isn't the AOL chat servers that's the
problem, because as the dialup population of the world shrinks, AOL has
to find some way to keep bringing new users into the fold. As much as
we experienced users ridicule AOL users, many of us started out there
(myself included), and it is still probably the easiest on-ramp to the
information superhighway.
Now there's a dated term I bet you haven't read in a while!
Enjoy your nostalgia as iChat drags you into the future we first saw
in 2001: A Space Odyssey all those years ago when Dr. Floyd
called home to iChat with his daughter. The only thing Kubrick got
wrong in that scene is that the call turns out to be a lot cheaper than
anyone imagined.
Link: CU-SeeMe
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
