iCamSource keeps getting stuck?

[DanGoodspeed]

I just bought iCam today so I haven't had much time to work with it.  After getting it working fairly quickly without any problem, iCamSource seems to be having issues continuing to work on my Mac Mini OS X 10.6 with Apple Firewire iSight.  So in the past 12 or so hours.

Installed it, working fine.  A few hours later I checked my phone and it said it couldn't find the source, so I went to my mac mini and it hard crashed with that error message saying "You need to restart your computer."  I don't know if iCamSource was to blame for it, but I don't ever remember the Mini crashing before.  I restarted the computer, relaunched iCamSource, and started streaming again, working fine.

A few hours later I check iCam and it says no sources again.  This time iCamSource was just... stuck?  It said it was broadcasting fine, but the image in the preview was static even when there was something going on in front of the camera.  I hit stop and start and it started streaming again fine.

Just now I checked it again, and the video seemed to be streaming fine to the iPhone... when I noticed there was no motion.  So the live clock is ticking saying it's a live feed, but it's just broadcasting a still picture.  That could be dangerously misleading.  The iCamSource also showed a still picture, similar to before.  I just stopped and restarted the iCamSource, and it is again working now.

Any solutions or things to check as to why the feed keeps stopping?  I'd guess it's about 1 hour into the feed when it stops working.  Not sure if it's always the same amount of time or not.

[SKJM Support]

Thank you for your post, and I am sorry that you are having problems.

If iCamSource is crashing, there should be crash logs.

The crash logs would be in:

/Users/<Your Username>/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/iCamSource_<date_time>.crash.log

or in:

/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/iCamSource_<date_time>.crash.log

If you have Mac OS 10.6.3, I think they moved the crash logs to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports or /Users/<YourUsername>/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

If you find crash logs, please send the most recent one to support@skjm.com and reference this post and your username.


Also, what is the the % CPU usage of the iCamSource application and the entire system? It is located in the Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor application.

[DanGoodspeed]

There is no crash log for it.  I guess the crash only happened once, though I don't really leave it running because it stops working after an hour any way.

The CPU usage is about 30% when streaming with the preferences window open, about 20% when the preferences window is closed, and 7% when it says it's streaming, but it's just streaming a static image from about an hour into the stream.  That consistently happens.  It won't stream live video for more than an hour or so.  But it says it's working fine.  On my iPhone I can bring up the "stream" which is just a still image from hours ago but with the current time passing counting over it.

[drdiesel]

There is no crash log for it.  I guess the crash only happened once, though I don't really leave it running because it stops working after an hour any way.

However, I can say that I *AM* seeing this same issue. I'll email you the crash report as you requested the other user to do above.

With Preferences open I am at about 15%, with Preferences NOT open but iCamSource just running in the background it's about 4%.

[SKJM Support]

There is no crash log for it.  I guess the crash only happened once, though I don't really leave it running because it stops working after an hour any way.

However, I can say that I *AM* seeing this same issue. I'll email you the crash report as you requested the other user to do above.

With Preferences open I am at about 15%, with Preferences NOT open but iCamSource just running in the background it's about 4%.

drdiesel is receiving support via email.

[SKJM Support]

There is no crash log for it.  I guess the crash only happened once, though I don't really leave it running because it stops working after an hour any way.

The CPU usage is about 30% when streaming with the preferences window open, about 20% when the preferences window is closed, and 7% when it says it's streaming, but it's just streaming a static image from about an hour into the stream.  That consistently happens.  It won't stream live video for more than an hour or so.  But it says it's working fine.  On my iPhone I can bring up the "stream" which is just a still image from hours ago but with the current time passing counting over it.

Are you able to see a stable video feed from the Firewire iSight in any other video capture software (PhotoBooth, iChat)?

Also, is the iSight plugged into an extension cable? If so, please try plugging it directly into the computer.