AmberCutie's Forum
An adult community for cam models and members to discuss all the things!

Camming with a Mac/OSX

  • ** WARNING - ACF CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT **
    Only persons aged 18 or over may read or post to the forums, without regard to whether an adult actually owns the registration or parental/guardian permission. AmberCutie's Forum (ACF) is for use by adults only and contains adult content. By continuing to use this site you are confirming that you are at least 18 years of age.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Fay_Galore

Inactive Cam Model
Jan 28, 2014
1,150
7,003
213
profiles.myfreecams.com
Since I've seen many questions about cam-related issues with OSX I think it would be a good idea to have a thread with information, tips and know-how's. I have been camming on OSX for well over 5 years and never once had a problem that couldn't be fixed. I will share with you what I'm using but feel free to add/discuss etc :]
Please note this is written in october 2014, so things might have changed.

Webcams
There's a wide range of webcams out there, most of the HD cams are by Logitech. If you want to upgrade your cam there are a few that specifically work for Macs and a few that don't. I've tried the Logitech C920, had a lot of issues with that, it worked, but not properly. When I wrote to Logitech about my issues they replied
C920's specifications clearly indicate that it is for Windows only.
However, the Logitech c930 is one of the models that does say it works for OSX, so you might be better off getting that one.

Camming software
- If you're using a Logitech cam, probably the first freeware you want to get is the official logitech software which is called (surprise) "Logitech camera settings" you can get it via the App store (for free) or via this link https://support.logitech.com/en_gb/prod ... 5#download This piece of software will allow you to adjust brightness, colours, contrast as well as zoom and tilt.

- Camtwist Another awesome program that allows you to do pretty much anything! you can add text, countdowns, picture in picture, filters, moving gifs, it's great for greenscreens too! you can save settings so they're easy to reach next time you need it. It's completely free and you can get it at http://camtwiststudio.com/

- iGlasses My personal favourite, it's not free, at the moment it's 20 euros. It's like instragram for your webcam feed, lots of filters, you can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. You can overlay videos and photos. The only thing it does not do is picture in picture and text overlay (so for that you might want to add Camtwist as well)

- Manycam Not the best choice IMO. I never got it to work properly, but I do know a few girls who have so it's not impossible! It does pretty much what the logitech software and camtwist do together, except there are less options. I do have this running on my windows machine, and there's a huge difference in the OSX and windows version. I wouldn't recommend this, but it is the best choice for windows I believe. If you're a US resident it's 50 dollars for the full version, if you're UK it's 86 dollars, if you're EU it's 65 dollars. (which is ridiculous, because it's a download!) If you want to try this out, please start with the free version.

Using the software in your feed:
You might need to fool around with you feed a little bit. This has proved to work for me the best, but that also depends on your versions of OSX and the software you're using.
when I'm on MFC my feed goes:
Webcam -> camtwist -> iGlasses -> MFC (webbrowser)
I can edit and use all the software and they all have their effect on my feed (add text in camtwist, add a filter in iGlasses, etc.)
so, practically it would be:
Log into MFC, select 'iGlasses' as camera, go to iGlasses, select 'camtwist' as camera, go to camtwist, select 'Logitech C930' (in my case) as camera.
As I said, this might not work exactly the same for you, you might need to switch the order up or the order in which you open the programs (in rare cases). I personally only add camtwist to the line if I want to use text or PIP that night.
A small note, I found Chrome and Safari to be the best browsers to use with these programs. Chrome had the added bonus you can add a VPN if that's your thing.

Making videos
Macs are known to be especially good for photo and video editing, so shooting and editing videos is is no way harder then doing it on a windows machine. You can shoot your videos using your HD webcam and recording straight onto the mac or taping it with a DSLR or camcorder and than uploading it to your machine.

- iMovie Comes with your mac for free, if for some reason you can't find it in your app folder, you can download it here https://www.apple.com/nl/mac/imovie/ you can either record straight into the software or use an app like Photobooth and simply drag and drop it into your project in iMovie. This is an exceptional easy to use editing software, you can trim, add music, sound effects, alter saturation, lighting, add text, credits, overlays, filters, etc. etc. It's perfect for shooting clips. The finished project is automatically saved as .m4v, if you want it to be a .mp4, .mov or whatever, choose the 'export using quicktime' button instead of the 'export' button.

- Photobooth Comes with your mac for free too! it's literally a photobooth, allows you to make photos and clips with your webcam. It has the same filters as iGlasses and you can trim you clips. I use this to tape my shows with (run it simultaneously while broadcasting), and if I want to keep a specific part of it, I just use the trim option and save it as a video. you can also just tape little clips with this without going through the whole editing process. It's a very lightweight program, so it won't interfere with processing.

- Quicktime comes with your mac. This is not a great software for editing, but it's perfect for a quick trim or doing a screenrecording.

- If you want to go all-out and do a high-end videoclip with extreme edits you can have a look at software like Final cut pro, quite complicated software (and expensive) but you can make insane things with this.

Making gifs
You can save short clips as .gif from iMovie. You can also trim the clip and use Gifrocket http://www.gifrocket.com. Just drag and drop your video there and it will turn it into a gif! Another option is using photoshop or web-based apps like gifyo.com


Thank you for reading!
 
Been debating buying a Mac or not lately, thanks for the concise info!

:love5:

PS - Also thanks for putting this together in the first place, there HAVE been a boatload of Mac questions lately!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fay_Galore
I'm one of the minority of Mac cammers too! Yay for this post, Fay! :thumbleft:

I run on a MacBook Pro (late 2012), standard RAM & Harddrive, OSX, with a Logitech C930.

I used to cam with a Logitech C920, but due to lots of software issues, I'm now on the C930 thanks to a kind regular of mine who bought it for me. I'll keep you guys posted here on how it works with the Mac - so far it is very sympathetic to programs like PhotoBooth where my Mac previously hated external webcams (fan would go nuts, I'd have issues with sound dropping out of sync, etc). I also believe the colouring in the C930 is far more gentle and responsive than in the C920. I think my eyes 'sparkle' a bit more now with the C930. Or maybe that's just me being crazy haha.

iGlasses is **essential** and I can't cam without it. This ensures my widescreen webcam appears in the correct aspect ratio for MyFreeCams, which is the only site I cam from. Without iGlasses, I either have the dreaded 'black bars' above & below me, or I'm a squished, distorted mess.

I'm also one of the uber minority where ManyCam works for me. This wasn't without great difficulty. In order to use it, my feed goes:

Logitech C930 --> iGlasses --> ManyCam --> MyFreeCams.com Model Web Broadcaster (in Chrome).

Sometimes this doesn't work at all, sometimes it only works in Safari, sometimes it works fine. My Mac is quite moody so you just need to play it by ear.

On a side note - I have every intention of upgrading some stuff in my Mac soon, which is easy to do. I have 4GB RAM, and I'm going to pump that up to 16GB. I'm also going to switch from a hard drive to an SSD. These are all Googlable and basically speed up your computer shitloads, especially when you're running several big programs at once. In theory it should also really really help your cam feed quality (ie. it'll SOAR) when online. Often I'd have Chrome, InDesign, iTunes & Notepad open all at once, and my computer just brainfarts and I get stuck on the colour wheel. These upgrades, which you can very very easily do at home yourself with £300 and 20 minutes, are well worth it. :) SSDs are also superior than hard drives because they don't rely on moving pieces - if you drop your laptop or move your laptop around a lot when in use (ie. camming), all your shit can be wiped in an instant. SSDs don't experience this, which makes them far superior for our line of work.

Note: don't buy an ssd and whip out your hard drive without backing up first :p :twocents-02cents:
 
DaisyBleu said:
These upgrades, which you can very very easily do at home yourself with £300 and 20 minutes, are well worth it. :) SSDs are also superior than hard drives because they don't rely on moving pieces - if you drop your laptop or move your laptop around a lot when in use (ie. camming), all your shit can be wiped in an instant. SSDs don't experience this, which makes them far superior for our line of work.

And for people looking into buying a Mac now, keep in mind that the new models (all the Retina and Air models) aren't that easy to upgrade/repair by yourself - they've consistently scored as low as 1 out of 10 in the iFixit.com repair assessment due to multiple things Apple did to force you to use their store for repair/upgrades:
- the battery is glued to the case
- the memory is soldered into the motherboard
- the SSD uses a different connector type, which arguably is faster, but it's also way more expensive

So if you are going down the Mac route, I strongly suggest saving a bit more money and buying a model with more RAM , a better CPU and more disk space.
 
Maybe this is a silly and/or hopeless question, but I cannot get my Logitech C920 to work on my Macbook Pro. It's an older model, but from what I've read, that shouldn't make a difference? I know that the C920 isn't technically compatible, but I'm wondering what work-arounds you ladies have used to get the C920 to work on your macs. I plug mine into the port and it isn't even recognized in any way. I've been hunting around in forums, but it seems like some C920's just automatically work when they are plugged in and others don't. I'm so confused! :crybaby:
 
clementinefizz said:
Maybe this is a silly and/or hopeless question, but I cannot get my Logitech C920 to work on my Macbook Pro. It's an older model, but from what I've read, that shouldn't make a difference? I know that the C920 isn't technically compatible, but I'm wondering what work-arounds you ladies have used to get the C920 to work on your macs. I plug mine into the port and it isn't even recognized in any way. I've been hunting around in forums, but it seems like some C920's just automatically work when they are plugged in and others don't. I'm so confused! :crybaby:

So I just went through this trying to buy one for my iMac. (literally bought and tried it out yesterday) The tech guy at my local best buy helped me and he is phenomenal with macs and this is the info I gathered from him that may help you...
you have to be running mavericks or later for it to work and (if you have upgraded to yosemite your chances of it working are like tripled apparently) you have to get the logitech cam settings from the app store,,,,
in addition, though macs are very intuitive they have a hard time with logitech cameras and sometimes it takes finding the right port and also making sure you can open it in Photo Booth/facetime before using it elsewhere sometimes helps the computer find it.......

hope that helps
 
  • Like
Reactions: SuzySirenXO
If you need to go farther, it's worth trying "active" extenders like http://www.amazon.com/Extension-Repeate ... B002VG39BI . They use a tiny bit of the USB electrical supply to repeat the signal like a hub would, but don't require a separate power supply. I've used them at work to connect an older logitech camera to a PC on the far side of the room without issue.
 
Just a note, I cannot recommend Final Cut Pro X, as it removed a lot of the functionality of older versions of Final Cut, and essentially became a glorified iMovie (at least when it launched).

For editing, Adobe Premiere works wonderful on Macs, though, like FCP, it is expensive. However, it maintains the tried and true method of video editing that FCPX seemed to try to do away with.
 
The c920 works fine for me on Yosemite. :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.