Troubleshooting

Common things to do

Please follow these steps if you encounter a problem - either if it's not listed below or if the steps listed there didn't help:

Check your USB cables. Restart macam. Unplug and replug the device. Make sure you have the latest version of Mac OS X. Connect the camera directly (without USB hubs) to a built-in USB port of your computer (not to a third-party host adapter). Check in the release notes and on the macam home page if it is a known problem. See the bottom of this page to find out how to write a bug report.

Problem: No video, no message

Your camera is currently not supported. See the list of supported cameras on the macam home page for further information.

Message: Camera used by another application

Quit all other running applications. Quit the Classic environment. Unplug and replug your camera. Restart macam.

Message: Not enough USB power

Plug your camera directly into an USB port of your computer.

Message: Not enough USB bandwidth

Unplug other USB devices or plug them into a different USB port of the computer. Lower the image format, frame rate or increase the compression if available.

Message: Not enough CPU power

Retry grabbing video. If you encounter the problem frequently: Quit other applications. Do less things that consume computing power. Use less cameras at the same time. Lower the image size or frame rate. Buy a faster Mac...

Message: Not enough memory

Restart macam or your video application. Quit other applications. Increase your computer's RAM.

Message: Unsupported

Your camera is currently not supported. See the list of supported cameras on the macam home page for further information.

Message: USB communication problem

Make sure your camera is connected directly to a USB port of your computer (not via Hub). Replug your camera. Restart macam. Make sure your camera is listed as "supported" (See the list of supported cameras on the macam home page).

Problem: Can't change image size/frame rate settings

The image size, frame rate and image compression settings can only be changed when the video is not playing. Press pause, change resolution, and restart.

Problem: Garbled/low quality video

This is a known problem. We are working on it. Wait for the next release. Sorry.

Audio problems

Audio is not handled by the driver but by Mac OS X's own USB audio drivers. Please look into the documentation there.

Problems installing macam.component

Please make sure you use the QuickTime folder in the Library directly in the root level of your hard disk (do not mix up libraries at other locations). Make sure you have administration privileges. Move older copies of macam.component or webcam.component to the Trash prior to installing the new one (if you encounter problems deleting the files: It will work after a restart). Try running without other components (move them temporarily to another location and restart).

Program freezes, Kernel panics, really weird things

Contact the authors. Provide detailled information. Help debugging. Wait for the next release...

Errors in conjunction with the QuickTime component

Please try to repeat the same problem with another QuickTime application. If the problem is repeatable, it is likely a bug in macam. If the error is specific to a single application, it may also be a bug in the specific application. Please consult the application's documentation about known bugs. It may still be a macam bug, so please contact the authors of both products.

Sending a bug report

If you have experienced something that looks like an error in macam, your help is appreciated: Please tell the authors about it (however, please read this help, the text that came with your release and the notes on the macam home page first to see if your problem and/or a solution is known). Some information is necessary in order to effiectively find and fix the error. Try to isolate the error. If it is a crash, please enable crash logging in the preferences section of the console application and repeat the crash. You will receive a crash log. Please include it in the report. Also include messages from the console - beginning at the launch of the crashing application. More things you might want to include are:

Send an email with the information mentioned above to mattik@users.sourceforge.net.