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Realtime FCPro playback in iChat AV! Here’s how it works for me!
After a little bit of experimenting today (with Panther) I was able to finally get the output directly from FCPro 4.5 into iChat AV. And this is now working much like the NAB demo I presume. And if it’s not, it sure works the way an editor would want it to be, realtime playback from both the canvas and viewer windows.
Hella cool and once the quality gets kicked up in Tiger, this will be Apple’s response to AVID’s expensive fiber feed system.
Now obviously, if I wanted to participate in the chat on camera as well, I would simply use another computer with an iSight camera. In other words, my edit rig would be used to play the output from FCPro while another computer (e.g. Powerbook) would allow me to be on-screen for the video conference aspect.
A few of the previous posts mention:
“All I know is the method requires sending firewire out to a 2ND Mac for streaming.”
“I assume they just plugged the firewire output of one mac into the firewire input of the ichat mac. No magic there.”
I haven’t tried it this way but I believe you guys. Just like you said, I guess you would take the FWire output from computer 1 with FCPro installed and send it to a DV converter that would then just plug in to computer 2’s FWire input and Viola! The output from computer 1 shows up as video in computer 2’s iChat video window. However, that would mean using 2 computers just to get FCPro’s realtime output to show up in iChat AV, as well as, as a third computer to join the chat on-screen for the video conference aspect. Unfortunately, that’s an extra computer I don’t have.
Getting DV video into iChat AV hasn’t been the real challenge. We’ve all been able to plug a DV deck, camera or converter into our FWire port and have that video show up in iChat AV. Where it’s been a bit tricky is when you do it on a single computer and FCPro and iChat AV have to share the same FWire port simultaneously. This leads to many annoying “General Error” (FCPro) and “Your camera in use by another application” (iChat AV) errors. Maybe this is why others have simply sent the output to a second computer and avoided these headaches all together.
Having said that, now let’s get to the the fun part…
FCPro and iChat AV working together on the same computer to play a realtime output to iChat AV.
Eventually it would be cool if Apple just allowed FCPro to select iChat AV as an output and have everything work effortlessly/seemlessly together without the trial and error factor. But until then, this is what I’ve found to work best for my situation. And if you already knew how to do this please forgive the redundancy of this post but this is not an easy concept for the average user. So forgive my excitement of wanting to share this with everyone who wants to do the same but maybe didn’t really know how or where to start.
Hopefully, this post (which has now become more of an article-I apologize) will help those people by actually explaining the entire process involved. Or at least how it worked for me!
I have a DP 1.25 G4 with a Kona SD card and FCPro 4.5 installed. Note: Having a PCI capture card like the Kona or Blackmagic has really made this process rock. I believe since the I/O is a FWire capture card this scenario may not work as well or at all. You’ll have to try it for yourself.
Anyway, my Kona’s SDI output is being converted to S-Video while it’s audio is converted to RCA audio. This can be done with many types of equipment but I use an Extron SDI-AVR 100 for the video ( https://www.extron.com/product/product.asp?id=sdiavr100 ) and a Behringer SRC2496 for the audio
( https://www.behringer.com/SRC2496/index.cfm?lang=ENG ).Those converted outputs are then sent to my JVC HRDVS3U Mini-DV/S-VHS combo deck’s analogue inputs. My deck then converts this into DV and spits it out through it’s FWire port. This could probably be done with any analogue to DV converter though (e.g. Canopus, etc).
I then took the deck’s FWire output and plugged it into my G4. After having a few problems with iChat AV I finally got it to recognize the FWire signal after installing the small app iglasses (https://www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses/). This app may not be necessary but it quickly fixed my problems for $8 so I went with it. Now click on the green video icon and you should see iChat AV’s video input.
Now you can see anything that is being played through your deck/converter in iChat AV’s video window. If you have a PCI capture card (like my Kona) you have realtime desktop preview (RDP). So at this point, you now have RDP out to iChat AV. This is way cool because you can do anything you want now, use the quicktime QT player to play a movie or listen to a song in iTunes and it will all play in realtime in iChat AV.
But since we want to play out of FCPro, let’s move on.
Finally, I launched FCPro and loaded a few clips into my project. Here’s where the bonus of a PCI capture card really comes in. Now, anything I play in FCPro (from the viewer window or canvas) plays out realtime in iChat AV. The real tip is that you cannot use the default DV-NTSC easy set-up because that will conflict with iChat AV for the FWire port on you computer and cause FCPro to display a “General Error” message. So just select the appropriate easy set-up from you capture card (e.g. Blackmagic NTSC-DV for DV or Blackmagic NTSC-8/10 bit for uncompressed) and you’ll be good to go. All your clips or timeline video will now appear in realtime in iChat AV.
So there it is, and yes this is way too long. Again I’m sorry about that, but if this helps just one person appear cooler to their client, or saves an editor’s butt in a time crunch. This will have all been worth it!
Thanks you guys,
Joe E. Botana
[ e d i t o r ]THE BUTCHER SHOP
https://homepage.mac.com/zbutcher5/PS-This was done in Panther but will hopefully work the same under Tiger. One can at least hope!
And if this is information overload, you can always check out ShowMacster ( https://www.showmacster.com/). -
5 Replies
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Awesome tip. I guess it does seem like a simple concept after reading it, but for someone who never even tried iChat it really sheds light on it. Until now, I all I knew is that you had to use a second Mac. Now I understand why people say that and that you really don’t need to if you can output video by means other than FW.
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This sounds awesome. I’ve just installed Tigger, but I didn’t get a chance to go to NAB and see the demo you’re speaking of. Can you explain what the benefit of having functionality like this means. I’ve not used iChat either. I’m assuming it’s a Subscription Service like .MAC? How much is it?
What does all of this mean? Make me smile some more, man.
Keith Hill
https://www.LightedPath.biz
Dallas, TX
FCP HD (v4.5), Combustion 3 (v3.0.4), DVD StudioPro3 (v 3.0.2) all on a MAC G5 (v10.4-Tiger) 2Ghz PowerPC 1.5 RAM -
Joe,
I have the same set up as you except I have a dual 1 ghz G4 with a kona card.
A year ago I tried the same test you completed with my kona and an external composite to firewire converter.All went fine until I tried to get the G4 to accept the firewire signal at which point the test failed. I will have to try out your suggestion to use the iglasses application.
Can you explain in more detail how you are using the iglasses application and what happens if you do not launch the application?
Thanks,
Tony Salgado
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Hey Keith,
Hopefully Disney won’t be upset that you installed Tigger instead of Tiger!
Just joking…
Anyway this is a really great way to have real-time collaboration with your clients
remotely:* Digital Dailies Viewing
* Client reviews off-site
* All in real-timeI work off-site a lot and now I can immediately show a client a rough cut of an edit first before going through the hassle/time of posting to the internet (e.g. FTP).
It’s a real time saver. Usually you have to edit. Post it. Then get notes.
That takes a lot of time. Now you can get their input instantly, make any necessary adjustments then output a QT and post it.
Hope that helps you smile a little more. 🙂
Joe E. Botana
[ e d i t o r ]THE BUTCHER SHOP
https://homepage.mac.com/zbutcher5/ -
Hey Tony,
I think I had the same problem as you did until I installed iglasses.
I think it has some sort of cool routing/pass-through abilities that just make it work. Not really sure why.
So give it a try and hopefully you’ll get the same results.
Good luck,
Joe E. Botana
[ e d i t o r ]THE BUTCHER SHOP
https://homepage.mac.com/zbutcher5/
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