Much as I try to get people to blog, I try to avoid blogging about blogging. It’s a bit too meta for me. Same goes for all things Apple; I love ’em, everybody near me eventually caves in and buys one, but I try not to blog this particular passion of mineIt seems like there is a disproportionately large percentage of Mac-using bloggers, both in Sweden and NYC. Thinking different is a bloggable trait, is my guess..
In this case, however, I’d like to note a particular feature of Apple’s new iChat AV application that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. I’ve been using my Canon Elura DV camera as the iChat video input, and it works flawlessly. I’ve been videochatting with Matthew and Kim in New York; Matthew and I have even used it to gloat or despair while playing Scrabble online.
But today, I was using my DV camera to do some logging and capturing in FCP when I started to wonder if I could send that video feed over iChat. I fired up a one-way video stream to Felix (who “only” has voice, the second class citizen that he is), and sure enough, he could see the rough cuts, with sound, while we commented away via text. In other words, whatever is on a DV tape can be monitored live by any iChat AV user.
Sure, the quality is much lower than full-blown DV, but what a collaborative tool! You can now show rough cuts or edited works in real time to clients, and elicit live feedback. This is going to make the video crowd very happy.
I’m sure that with a bit of tweaking, it should be possible to get a video-in feed that comes off the television. This way, It’ll be possible to follow the baseball World Series live off American TV, should I be so inclined, and should Matthew be so kind.
with pleasure. am going to my first minor league game tommorow: the brooklyn cyclones (first baseball team in brooklyn since the dodgers defection in 1950-whenever) v. the pustkatawney bobcats, or somesuch. it’s in coney island. haven’t been there since i was there with you in the very hot summer of 1999.
what movie are you making? finally getting around to finishing the letter movie?
Which Elura do you have? My 20MC doesnt seem to want to let me video chat…
Just the original Canon Elura…. the first model. I just plugged it in and iChat knew what model and make it was (see the title bar of the iChat window, above).
I stumbled upon this site, and I recently bought a Canon Elura 50 and have been using it with iChat. It works great, but automatically shuts off after 5 minutes. Anyone know of any way to turn this ‘feature’ off?
Yeah, take out the tape. The reason it shuts off is because it is in record standby and wants to protect the video head if you don’t use it. Taking out the tape means no need to shut off. Or at least that’s what it meant on my Elura.
I am to dumb to use my Canon Elura 50 that my husband got me for Christmas- I hate it, I have read the manual I can take pics and make videos but I can’t seem to get my pics unloaded to my pc. I am in tears after 2 hours of trying to figure this out! I hate it- it wasn’t made for blondes this is for certain. I hook up via USB and get nothing. I opened the Canon Zoom program click unload… then it looks for the camara and says no camara found. The camara show connected to pc….. HELP I am just short of tossing this out with the leftovers.