Share home video with iChat in real-time

There are a couple tricks you can do here ( these I've all done and do all the time ) 1.) use an iChat Live feed to monitor security cameras around the house. I have 4 Cameras around my home that go into a combiner. THat feed is fed into a mac. I can check it by opening an iChat session ( an Automator routine runs it remotely ) from anywhere in the world. 2.) stream video from other countries or time zones. A video camera that accepts video IN can be set up to stream video from any standard to anywhere. For instance, sending ball games over seas

This is something I've done many times back in 2000 and 2001 before I was a switcher, in fact, before I even had a webcam. I used a Sony camcorder, hooked up over a video capture card to a PC and then streamed that video that was coming through the video capture card to my family over Yahoo IM. This way, they were able to see their grandson in LIVE video. This would work on iChat with any camera that could put video through it, including video capture cards and firewire DV cameras. While this is pretty old hat to people that have been using digital video for years, for those people just starting out on their Macs or with digital video, this might be helpful.

I did this several years ago with a PC. I was a PC user then and I had a PIII computer and the then brand new Intel PC Pro webcam, which had a Video In on the back. Windows 98 and NetMeeting, I was living in Europe at the time and would tape TV shows, plug the VCR into the back of my webcam and stream the shows for friends. Not because it was interesting TV, but just because we could do it.

I did this several years ago with a PC. I was a PC user then and I had a PIII computer and the then brand new Intel PC Pro webcam, which had a Video In on the back. Windows 98 and NetMeeting, I was living in Europe at the time and would tape TV shows, plug the VCR into the back of my webcam and stream the shows for friends. Not because it was interesting TV, but just because we could do it.

Today on TUAW: How To Press Play On Your Camcorder (and the poster hasn't even tried it yet! ha!). Stay tuned for tomorrow's breaking news: How To Attach Pictures To E-mail Messages To be followed by: Learning To Wipe Your Own Butt "TUAW. Where We Plumb The Deepest Depths Of Non-News. Over And Over And Over."

It works with ANY Firewire Audio/Video Device. Once my little sister was upset because she was going to miss an episode of her favorite TV show while "stranded" at college without Cable, so I hooked my Analog to Firewire video device up and streamed the show to her over iChat... Just hooked it right up to my Cable box and sent it to her... There are only a few situations where this would be the way I'd do this, if the video is short, enough just put it up on the web, or file transfer it over iChat. But for an hour long video/TV show/so on, why not, this way it doesn't take up space on your Hard Drive and saves the trouble of recording the show to iMovie then compressing then File Transferring it...

It works with ANY Firewire Audio/Video Device. Once my little sister was upset because she was going to miss an episode of her favorite TV show while "stranded" at college without Cable, so I hooked my Analog to Firewire video device up and streamed the show to her over iChat... Just hooked it right up to my Cable box and sent it to her... There are only a few situations where this would be the way I'd do this, if the video is short, enough just put it up on the web, or file transfer it over iChat. But for an hour long video/TV show/so on, why not, this way it doesn't take up space on your Hard Drive and saves the trouble of recording the show to iMovie then compressing then File Transferring it...

Yeah, i've done it just like that -- i had a video in final cut pro that i wanted to share with my brother cross country. so i put the video out to tape, closed final cut pro, started a one way video chat and just played the tape back. worked perfectly.

Now I'd like a way to share ANY video source through iChat to me and a few of my friends. :)

During the time Katrina hit over eastern Miami, my sister was without cable and had been wanting to watch the VMAs for several months before that. So, because she still had internet, I positioned my camera up at the TV while tuned to MTV and she was able to watch the VMAs. Worked out well.