Facetime input?

flick

Hey All,

Anybody know a good way to get a live webcam from an iphone into Isadora? I've searched through apps, and I've search the forums for "facetime." Right now I'm looking at having Facetime run in the background, then switching from ISadora to facetime just when I need it to happen. Its ugly, there's a little window in the bottom left with my own face / camera on it, and there's all kinds of facetime gak on the screen I don't like.

Would love a better solution - but facetime is amazing for realtime live video feed.

LPmode

I am using IP Webcam for android and I have tested a similar app on IOS (can't recall the name. The IP stream is opened in a browser window, and read by isadora through camtwist. I don"t use any of the camtwist effects but they seemed QC based and you can also use those effects in Isadora Core. Most likely they are the same as the ones used by Facetime.

If on PC use VHSscreencap instead of camtwist

Some phones perform better than others and I wish frame rate was a bit better, but overall very cool. the phone camera works for extended distances and there are no signal drops as with wireless cameras. I also remember a talk around the forums about getting Isadora to read the IP video feed directly.

flick

That would be good but in the show the iphone is hand-held, so webcam won't work. Over facetime it's somehow really good realtime interaction, faster than firewire or dazzle, which is amazing since it's over the net.

Low framerate is sucky. Wish I could just use the Iphone as a live cam via airport.

I will check out camtwist, thanks.

LPmode

I'm not using a webcam, but a smartphone. The app is called IP Webcam and you install it on the phone. the app creates a server that streams the camera feed which then you can open in a browser window or VLC media player. sorry for confusing you

your sig is probably using unsupported code.

flick

flick

Aaaand solved. The sig that is.

flick

Hey this works nice. On Iphone I'm liking an app called Mini Webcam, after looking through about a dozen possibilities. Free, realtime, good configurability, and it sends the image to either firefox or Safari.

Safari version can be resized in the browser window with cmd-+ or cmd-- (that's command minus) but firefox version is fine if I use camtwist to only send the webcam region to Isadora...

Michel

In regards of quality nothing is better than epoccam, even the free version is really good. After installing the driver on the mac you can choose epoccam direct in Isadora as livecam. Unfortunately the driver doesn't work on lion anymore. hope they update it soon.

Best,
Michel

Skulpture

Soooooo weird I have literally just stumbled across CamTwist less than five minutes ago and here I come and see... a post about it on Izzy forum! haha.

Found out about here btw: [Networked Video: With a Sweet Arsenal of Tools, One VJ Telecommutes](http://createdigitalmotion.com/2012/07/networked-video-with-a-sweet-arsenal-of-tools-one-vj-telecommutes/)

[ ](http://createdigitalmotion.com/2012/07/networked-video-with-a-sweet-arsenal-of-tools-one-vj-telecommutes/)

LPmode

I never used syphon but CamTwist can lock on specific windows and will ignore any other overlapping windows. It can possibly reduce any processing overhead from using syphon as intermediary.

epocam looks like it has really great frame rate, but it has bigger lag. no options in the free version

flick

Hey all,

Been in rehearsal here in Richmond BC testing all this.

Camtwist added crazy overhead. Had to run Firefox with webcam showing, then select a region of that window in Camtwist and then use Izzy to see that as an input. On a MBP 2.4 Ghz Intel Core i5 with 8gb ram, used around 110% of processor to do all that (Firefox, Camtwist, Window Server, system processes). Video files were stuttering in Isadora while all that stuff was happening in the background, though the webcam itself was fine when I brought that up.

Also, Isadora showed an option in Live Capture settings that said "Camtwist" and eventually another one would show up reading "Camtwist (offline)" which got automatically selected. I think this was because I tweaked settings, restarted IP Webcam on the iphone, turned Wifi off / on etc...

Went with Mini Webcamera, a $4.99 app that connects right to its own drivers as a quicktime component. Awesome quality and nearly realtime.

Problems:

Mini WebCamera auto-orients (if i turn the phone, the webcam snaps 90 degrees as if I didn't want to rotate my own camera). No setting to shut this off.

Isadora seems to lose the ability to change any Live Input settings while Mini Webcam is installed, even if not running. yeesh. All the options are frozen in the live Capture Setting dialogue.

Mini Webcam on Low Res setting is grey and pixellated, glitchy etc. Can't tweak Isadora settings to fix due to frozen interface.

BUT it works great other than these nerve-wracking thingies.

Michel

@flick

1. I normally use Firefox for surfing the web, and when I first used a screen capture tool to pass the selected area to Isadora I first tried Firefox. The performance wasn't that great. I then tried Safari and the performance increased quite a lot.

2. But now you can get around all this, download the syphon quartz composer plugins from http://syphon.v002.info/ you find it on the right side beneath plugins. In the mounted image you go to the folder Extras-->For CoGe Beta 3-->Syphon Client as Player / Syphon Server as FX. Copy these two quartz files into Library/Compositions. Then download the Syphon-Camera from google code. Now you get you network camera (or normal webcam) direct into Isadora via syphon client in Isadora and the syphon-camera app.

PS: you need Isadora Core for this.

Best,
Michel

flick

Well, my show's over and things worked really well...

http://ykfestival.ca/media-arts/extraction

I did have one mid-show F*up. The Iphone spent half an hour in an actor's pocket during the show, when it came out it had been switched out of the webcam app. Oops! When I grabbed the camera from them, it had been switched to the stock iphone camera app, which caused me some confusion (maybe the actor tried to solve it by opening up the camera app?).

But I re-opened Mini WebCamera on the phone, and Isadora picked it up again instantly. Show goes on.

We hadn't really had this problem in run-throughs, but I had considered covering the iphone screen with something transparent that would block the touchpad. Didn't have time to figure it out (ulp!) and also thought blocking the touchscreen would just cause its own problems.

I need to create a flipover, velcro screen cover so I can have the camera running without touchpad vulnerable to touching, but actor can see the frame. Also really quick to rip open and do stuff on the iPhone.

Airplane mode works with Wifi on, connected to the macbook's hotspot. Gave the network a password so everybody in the room didn't hop onto the network and jam it up failing to check their email repeatedly, and also turned off internet sharing on the Macbook because when internet failed, Macbook shut off the wifi (you don't want that wifi network if you stopped sharing internet, right?). Losing the wifi while connected necessitated restarting isadora to reboot the Mini Webcam driver.

Also, the iphone seemed to be more troublesome when it wasn't charged right up to capacity. Left it plugged into a/c until the actor grabbed it 1/2 hour into the show.

-Flick