We used iChat 'successfully' for a few remote edit sessions a few months back using a hardware configuration similar to what you describe. A few notes:
iChat will accept video/audio via Firewire, but SD only. If you're working in HD, you'll need to down-convert first. In our case, we used a DVCAM deck with an SDI input connected to a Mac Mini via Firewire 400. iChat simply sees the deck as a 'webcam'. Note that the video preview displayed on the local end will appear backwards (mirror image), though the orientation is correct on the receiving end.
Also, if you are running iChat in Lion, then your DV device will need to be set to 32kHz, 12 bit 4 channel audio, rather than 48kHz, 16 bit stereo (not sure why this is, or in fact whether this is the case for pre-Lion iChat as well.)
Video quality using this rig is passable, though in our case latency was a bigger concern. The editor and clients were chatting via speakerphone while watching the cut at each end. It seemed like the delay stayed below 3 frames, which is pretty good considering.
One more note: When launching iChat, a bandwidth test is performed in the background. The results of this test dictate the total available bandwidth allocated to the video/audio stream. You can launch iChat in a 'debug' mode which will display the results of this test (Google iChat debug). If you share your internet connection with the rest of your office, then you may end up with an inaccurate result if somebody else is hogging all the bandwidth.
Of course, all of this will be moot when Apple kills iChat in favor of Messages/Facetime.
Anybody have any good third-party solutions to this problem?
--- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, John Moore <bigfish@...> wrote:
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> Today was a first for me in a show watch down. A remote client wanted to watch on iChat. One of the producers put their mac laptop in from of my new Sony monitor for the remote producer. Fortunately I had a spare TV tray in the bay, how ironic right?, that I was able to place in front of the table with the monitor on it so those of us in the room could see the screen too. Needless to say the remote producer said she was mostly listening to the audio as the picture quality was pretty low on her end. Kinda fun and scary all at once. Notes from two US coasts at the same time, Weeeeee.
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> I've read here and else where that iChat can take a firewire input instead of the internal laptop camera. Anybody got a suggestion for a converter that would take the HDSDI out of the nitris bob and convert to firewire or whatever a suitable input would be for iChat. I would hope that the converter would not only take the video but the embedded audio to firewire so the complete signal would be carried over iChat. I guess the converter could also be feed by the HDMI out of the nitris instead of HDSDI if that has more options. Curious what others are using. I remember FCP7 having some functionality in the area of iChat collaboration. Curious what others are doing in these situations.
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> John Moore
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> Barking Trout Productions
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> Studio City, CA
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> bigfish@...
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> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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