Amazingly, everyone in my family now uses Macintoshes. Doing video chats with them is obviously simple - just fire up iChat and off we go. In general, I only video chat with my family.
One of my Chinese teachers, however, had the idea that we should try video chatting in Chinese to help me get some practice.
(For the curious, I am having trouble understanding Chinese. I can hear the sounds, I know I know the sounds, but they are not forming any meaning in my brain. With single words (with context) I am ok. I also have problems speaking full sentences - I can read and write pretty well, but that is only because I can rearrange word orders and take time to form what I want to say - something you can’t do when speaking)
He, as you might have guessed, uses Windows. Getting this to work (for free) was a long process with a lot of failures. The executive summary for the exercise is: Just use Skype.
Skype’s web site is a bit confusing, but you only have to pay if you call a physical phone. If you chat, voice chat, or video chat online it’s free.
Here were our attempts and the outcomes:
MSN
He was already using MSN. To keep things simple I tried to find an MSN client for Mac that would do video chat (or at a minimum voice chat). Don’t bother with this - it is folly.
Google Talk
I forgot that google talk doesn’t do video, but we couldn’t even get voice going from (Windows + Google Talk) -> (Mac + iChat).
Yahoo
This one was cruel. You can get video to work between (Windows + Yahoo client) -> (Mac + Yahoo client), but no audio. Who would use that? Cruel.
AIM
I found some web sites that say this will work, but we could not get it to work. (Windows XP + AIM client (no firewall)) -> (Mac 10.5.1 + iChat (no firewall)). We couldn’t get voice or video. In fact, iChat wouldn’t even acknowledge he had audio or video capabilities. I was disappointed with this one (and Google Talk) as it would’ve kept all my video chatting to iChat.
Skype
Finally we both downloaded Skype, and it just worked. We installed the application, created accounts, initiated video chats, and were chatting within minutes. (It is a well behaved Mac application to boot).
One last cool thing about Skype is it says it works on Linux too. I don’t have a Linux box with a camera so I can’t try it, but I am impressed they support Linux. If I had money, I’d invest a bit in Skype.
aMSN works http://www.cmq.qc.ca/4w/amsn/
Not for me. Last time I tried it it couldn’t use my isight. Out of curiosity I just gave it a shot again right now.
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.1 (9B18)
Report Version: 6
Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0×0000000000000000, 0×0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0×9043aca8 __kill + 12
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0×904df7b4 abort + 84
2 com.tcltk.tcllibrary 0×0a05a35c Tcl_Panic + 24
3 com.tcltk.tcllibrary 0×0a0676f8 Ptr2Block + 80
Plus the app looks a bit out of place on a Mac (GTKish or something).
As the kids say, Skype FTW.
Jeez. What a waste of time. You went through every client out there and tried Skype LAST?
Yeah, it was lame.
There was a bit of logic to the attempts though - he was using MSN already and I was using Google Talk and AIM already (.mac). I heard that yahoo worked and I had an old yahoo account so…
It wasn’t until all the “normal” channels failed that I even thought about skype.
You can also use SightSpeed if you want VideoCalls and also try MeBeam which is 100% browser based Hi-Res Video Call solution.
Live Messenger also has a Beta Mac version that supports Video Calls. Also OoVoo is both Windoz and Mac
Chers,
MG
http://www.VideCallTips.com
我非常的鄙视腾讯网，居然QQ不支持Mac，真不方便。。。
如果Mac下能用QQ就好了，中国还是用QQ的多。
Do you know QQ, we mainly use QQ in China, but the software doesn’t support Mac.
Several third-party clients also exist for the Mac OS X platform before, but the company doesn’t support, and even worth, they banned all clients exist on other OS than Windows.
你好maoohang
I’ve never used QQ, though I have heard of it. The Mac OS X client Adium seems to support it though: http://adiumx.com/ . I am not sure who banned it - if they banned it on the servers then it might not work :-/
iChat works fine with AIM. You have to go to Edit->settings in AIM for Windows and select the video cam and video cam microphone for it to work. It comes up with default as the setting which will not work.
I appreciate all the suggestions here and Skype is great too.I tried them all: aMSN, Skype, SightSpeed and all worked fine. I had weird audio interference issues with Skype on the PC but I think I need to adjust something or quit an app. I like AIM and iChat the best as that is the one I use on the Mac. I will also use aMSN as a backup and in addition (though I need to figure out how to adjust the video window size and make the video more automatic) since my MSN friends are out there and I believe the have video. MSN has the benefit that it doesn’t hijack the PC like AOL and AIM repeated try to do.
I found one more good option. I tried http://www.tokbox.com. It is easy and you can enable contacts and IMs from any of several services (AIM, MSN, Yahoo..) It will email you and let you know when you missed some chats and the camera use was simple and easy. This could be good for contacting with beginners and people who might have trouble installing and launching programs as this is WEB based.
I tried everything in MSN and clones and finally did Skype last, which my Moroccan wife will test later today. We were both frustrated at not visually and audibly communicating from our mac to a friend’s PC halfway around the world. The iSight, Skype, Logitech subwoofer and Leopard preferences are all in sync, ready for testing…results forthcoming. This forum was very helpful!
Skype worked fine on my iMac until I upgraded to Leopard AND the latest Skype version for Mac. Now it won’t sign in…just getting this error:
Failed to sign in: unable to mount database
Blah!
I am frustrated, I would like to use skype when talking to my girlfriend but she doesn’t have a computer and has to go to a computer for rent place to use one, and all the computers are windows machines (I use a imac) and they won’t allow downloads of skype… What to do?
Thanks for any help.
She could try running skype from a USB drive:
http://www.gruups.com/usbskype/
I am not sure if that would be allowed either, but worth a shot.
After a ton of wasted time, I found SightSpeed to be the only program that worked across platforms (between my iBook G4 and my friends’ PCs. The one to one video chats are fine. But there is a big echo/bounce when you try to do three or four people at a time in different time zones. SightSpeed is free if you use if for one to one. Conferencing requires an upgraded service plan at 10 bucks a month….pricey.
I found this to be helpful! Trying to find a chat program for me and my boyfriend who’s on a mac, and I’m on a pc.
Also, kudos on the blog design. I use the same one. http://www.squishedlizard.net