iChat 3 Pictures

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01 Connection Doctor.

Oct 2008

1 Connection Doctor

This is the iChat 3 Connection Doctor Window when a Chat is in progress.

In iChat 3 a drop down for the Statistics as shown and the Error messages has been Added. The Error option will be greyed out if there are no Error Messages during this opening of iChat.

The info shown in this section is no different from the iChat 1 or iChat 2 versions. You are the Local person with only your Framerate and Bit Rates displayed.

Your Buddy will be named and his (or her) Frame and Bit rates will be shown along with two bars as a graphical representation of their feed to you. If all is going well they should show 100% and be Green. At about 50% in will go Amber and further down it will go Red.

If they Pause Video or Mute their Mic (Both controlled from the Video menu but the Mic has a Mute Button on the chat Window) their bar will go white and show 0% If they do both (pause camera and Mute Mic) for longer than 10 Secs you will get an Error message.

The picture above shows my local Frame rate as being only 6.1 fps. This is realistically too low but the picture was grabbed only 7 secs into the chat. Allow a bit of time to settle down. If it does not improve check what other apps you are running that will use processor time and also the two places that can effect this:- your System Preferences > Quicktime Setting (Should read 1.5Mbps). Also check the iChat > Preferences > Video section that the Bandwidth Setting there is not capping you too far if you have had to use it. CApping it here can help if you have a really fast connection but a Buddy does not. Better Processor and Bacdwitdth leads to a bigger Chat window and more Frames per second on your end but that in turn means more data is streamed to your Buddy.

As iChat 3 can do multiple chats in both Video chats and Audio only chats you will see different info in the main picture if you are the Host (the one that invited everyone). Each Buddy will have their own details and Green bars.

If you are just a participant then you will see one like this main picture with just you and the Host.

Audio Only multi-chats can be done over Dial-Up but Video chats needs the Host to have at least a G4/1Ghz Dual Processor and 384k up and down Internet Connection. (with ADSL it can be done at 1Mb Down and only 256k Up but the Video gets increasing blurry as you add Buddies). Video can not be done to a Dial-Up Buddy

The Drop Down next

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Created with JAlbum 4.0.6

Created October, 2008 Major Update/Edit October 2024.

 ©  Ralph Johns. Created October 2008

Information Block

This site is about iChat from Version 1 through to iChat 5.x.x
Mostly this is kept as an Historical Document. Some small tense changes have been made but the content is by and large untouched.

It has a mixture of basic info and problem solving help.

The sections below will change for Specifics about info on the page on view

About This Page

The Connection Doctor whilst a Video chat was in progress

Compatibility

As mentioned above this has had a major Edit/Update in September/October 2024 moving towards being fully HTML 5 compliant meaning that the Browsers listed below are likely to no longer work.

I have tested in Safari 18.1, Firefox 130.x and 131.0, Vivaldi 6.9.3447.48 and iCab 6.2.3 (All Mac Browsers) I don't have access to a PC let alone multiple browsers to test on.

The original pages worked with Win/IE 5.5 and later (should work in 5.0, but not confirmed), Firefox 2, Safari 3, Opera 9, iCab 3.02 and later, Mac/IE 5, Netscape 6 and later

Old browsers (IE version 4 or earlier, Netscape 4 or earlier) should/may only see a text-based page which, while not the prettiest option, is still entirely usable.

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