Tiger inprovements in iChat AV

zenatekzenatek
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I know that tiger will allow you to chat with multiple people on iChat video with iSight. My question/ query is since they are using the H.264 codec will the quality be better. Theoreticly they should be able to get 4 times the qaulity into the same amount of bandwidth.



Me and my wife use iSight to communicate and we both have very high speed connections but the I know the quality I see of her and she sees of me is not the maximum quality of the iSight camera and I want to know if this will change.



Any thoughts?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 19
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    During the Keynote demonstration this was covered repeatedly: yes.
  • Reply 2 of 19
    zenatekzenatek Posts: 203member
    I have seen the keynote 2 times so I saw what they said, maybe I just wasn't paying attention. I noticed that they said multiple chats would be better but I dont remember them saying specifically that just one on one chat would be better.
  • Reply 3 of 19
    confirmedconfirmed Posts: 74member
    from http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ichat.html



    "Clearly Advanced



    Tiger takes the high-quality video capabilities of iChat to the next level with H.264. Producing higher resolution than that of competing video conferencing solutions, the new H.264 video codec, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, is built right into Tiger and iChat. With its advanced video compression techniques, H.264 delivers a sharper picture and improved color accuracy. And H.264 intelligently scales to available bandwidth and hardware for improved overall performance."



    there's also a sample image comparing the new and old codecs.
  • Reply 4 of 19
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    What's unsaid is how much more CPU power the new codec requires over the old codec. H.264 aint lightweight, especially for encoding. And now with multiple participants, you're computer can be encoding 1 signal and decoding 3+ signals at once.



    OT...

    I'm more and more happy with my dual G5 every day now. And think... the machine is approaching 2 years old and its still a currently selling product! Its rare when your machine doesn't depreciate like all hell.
  • Reply 5 of 19
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Xool



    OT...

    I'm more and more happy with my dual G5 every day now. And think... the machine is approaching 2 years old and its still a currently selling product! Its rare when your machine doesn't depreciate like all hell.



    I thought you knew recent Apple history?
  • Reply 6 of 19
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    eh nvmd
  • Reply 7 of 19
    zenatekzenatek Posts: 203member
    Cool I had seen that video on that page many times but had not noticed that image comparison...will have to pay more attention in the future.



    The improvement is quite siginificant. It looks really great.
  • Reply 8 of 19
    future-ex-pc-userfuture-ex-pc-user Posts: 208member
    Does anyone know if iChatAV will even run on a Rev. A 12" Powerbook (867MHz).. I mean will it be possible to make a three person chat with those cool mirrors and all that stuff and still encode in H.264? (The graphics card does not support CoreVideo :-( )

    Or is there a downgraded version of the group-chat as well without all those effects?

    Thanks
  • Reply 9 of 19
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    3-way iChat AV in Tiger will require some processing power, i just saw the specs. dual 1GHZ G4 and above or G5 and above or something like that



    2-way iChat AV in Tiger using h.264 should be okay on a standard 1ghz-ish G4.... is my educated guess for now, given that you're looking at 320x240 to 640x480 resolutions which should handle h.264 code/encode on a 1ghz-ish G4... but no way of knowing for shure till the actual real-world tests come in.
  • Reply 10 of 19
    beigeuserbeigeuser Posts: 371member
    Check out the bottom of this page:



    http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat/
  • Reply 11 of 19
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    I'm very glad that iChat AV will support Jabber, now. I just wonder if Apple is considering running a Jabber server for .Mac users. That would be useful to me.
  • Reply 12 of 19
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    AFAIK, one of the main Adium developers went to work or was consulted by Apple for iChat.



    I hope it got a total revamp in the functionality and ease of use department.



    Changing your online name for example, is the most ass backwards, un-apple experience one can imagine.



    I love Adium's tabbed window chat.



    I actually only use iChat if/when I want to audio or video chat. Otherwise I've gone all Adium and Skype. Mmmm, Skype. Skype is going to be announcing video chat shortly.



    On the video front, it would be nice if you could choose to use the old H.263 format if you don't have a powerful computer.



    Also, how does it wrk if you want to video conference with someone that is using iChat 1.x and you have 2.0?? Will 2.0 automatically use the H.263 codec or just refuse to work?
  • Reply 13 of 19
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by zenatek

    I know that tiger will allow you to chat with multiple people on iChat video with iSight. My question/ query is since they are using the H.264 codec will the quality be better. Theoreticly they should be able to get 4 times the qaulity into the same amount of bandwidth.



    Me and my wife use iSight to communicate and we both have very high speed connections but the I know the quality I see of her and she sees of me is not the maximum quality of the iSight camera and I want to know if this will change.



    Any thoughts?



    The 10.3 version of iChat chooses different resolutions based upon your processor speed. It does this based upon mzh rating rather than some sort of speedtest. I discovered this when changing the jumper settings on my G4 upgrade. 1350mhz was reported in the system profiler as 50mhz and iChat used a lower resolution. 1300mhz reported correctly in the system profiler as 1300mhz and thus iChat used it's max resolution.



    Hopefully they've bumped up the max resolution for people with fast connections and both parties running the 10.4 version of iChat. h264 is probably capable of cramming full iSight res over a typical broadband connection...



    I'd check this but must wait for my relatives to upgrade to 10.4.
  • Reply 14 of 19
    beigeuserbeigeuser Posts: 371member
    Video quality went down after I switched to Tiger.



    I just chatted with my mother back in America this morning. This was the first time after I upgraded to Tiger. She had Tiger installed last week.



    The problem is that the framerates dropped to 1 frame per second.



    I hosted the chat and I have a FW800 DP 1.25 G4. My mother uses a eMac 1GHz.



    We didn't have this problem in Panther.



    I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting with the same results. When I booted from another partition with Panther, the framerates went up to 15 fps.



    Our specs seem to meet the requirements set by Apple.



    Does anyone else have this problem?
  • Reply 15 of 19
    ricksbrainricksbrain Posts: 517member
    Sounds like the Virex issue-- it's not compatible with Tiger. Uninstall all Virex stuff-- us spotlight to find it all. Then restart somputer. I had the same issue and this fixed it.



    iChat has dropped to a max of 15fps, though-- kinda' annoying, but the video is horrible.
  • Reply 16 of 19
    ricksbrainricksbrain Posts: 517member
    scratch that... "isn't" horrible...



    Sorry. Coffee hasn't kicked in.
  • Reply 17 of 19
    beigeuserbeigeuser Posts: 371member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ricksbrain

    Sounds like the Virex issue-- it's not compatible with Tiger. Uninstall all Virex stuff-- us spotlight to find it all. Then restart somputer. I had the same issue and this fixed it.



    iChat has dropped to a max of 15fps, though-- kinda' annoying, but the video is horrible.



    Tiger is a clean-install. No virex involved.
  • Reply 18 of 19
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BeigeUser

    Tiger is a clean-install. No virex involved.



    Known bug in Tiger 10.4.1.

    Fixed in 10.4.2.
  • Reply 19 of 19
    beigeuserbeigeuser Posts: 371member
    After reading the discussion forums at Apple.com, I've changed the bandwidth settings for Quicktime Streaming (inside the quicktime preference pane in system preferences) from Auto to LAN. I've contacted my mother in the U.S. and had her do the same.



    The picture quality is significantly better now (compared to the 1fps). It's actually about the same as the quality in iChat 2.1. It's not good as what I expected but perhaps her 1GHz eMac is not powerful enough to maximize the new codec.



    There are a few things that still seem strange. For example:



    bandwidth with iChat 2.1



    Japan-U.S. 280 Kbps

    U.S.-Japan 250 Kbps





    bandwidth with iChat 3 (quicktime streaming set on auto)



    Japan-U.S. 50 Kbps

    U.S.-Japan 100 Kbps





    bandwidth with iChat 3 (quicktime streaming set on LAN)



    Japan-U.S. 870 Kbps

    U.S.-Japan 100 Kbps





    iChat 3 & Quicktime 7 seems to now take advantage of the high-speed connection that I have at home. The Japan-U.S. transfer speed is actually close to the limit of my connection. But the U.S. Japan connection has lost a significant chunk of its bandwidth. I hope this is fixed in 10.4.2.
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