Director @ Night

Live Video in Director on OSX, No Xtras Needed!

November 20th, 2006

I rarely need to deal with video feeds in Director but with my new iMac I have one of those little built-in iSight cameras. While out web browsing the other day I noticed a discussion about being able to put a live video of yourself within a web page that only you can see (the video feed is from your own camera).

This is done via a Quicktime movie that uses live input from your iSight camera on a Quartz Composer compositions track (a new track type for QuickTime). There is an article on O’Reilly that shows you exactly how to create one of these QuickTime movies. The movie that you create will automatically turn on your iSight camera and place that video stream within the movie.

I created one of those movies (I used the full 640×480 for export size - the current resolution of the camera), dragged it in to my Director cast, and put the member on the stage. I hit play and there I was waving to the camera within Director. Live video inside Director via a QuickTime movie with no Xtras (ok..you do need the QuickTime Xtra, but that come with Director)!

Quartz Composer also allows for various filter effects to be used on the QuickTime movie (see last link in O’Reilly article).

Very slick! I’m sure this could be really useful for kiosks and science museum displays, and just lounging around the house
Download the Quartz Composer file (zip).
Download the sample QuickTime movie (zip).

Entry Filed under: Apple, Daily thoughts, Real-world Examples