News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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| Product | ManyCam 1.0 |
| Rating |
 
|
| Company | ManyCam |
| Price as rated | Free |
| OS compatibility | 10.5 (Leopard) |
| Processor compatibility | Intel only |
Typically, while using your Mac’s iSight camera with one program, you can’t use it with another. But ManyCam frees iSight from this restriction. ManyCam’s no one-trick pony though; it has other features--some helpful and others downright silly--that you’ll enjoy.
ManyCam works by acting as the video source for your chat or video recording programs. Instead of selecting your iSight as the source in your chat or video recording program, you select ManyCam. ManyCam then captures the video from your iSight. You can launch, for example, Skype, SightSpeed, and Yahoo Messenger and video chat with someone on each at the same time. While you’re at it, you can also go to YouTube and record a Quick Capture. Unfortunately, ManyCam's biggest flaw is that it doesn’t work with Apple programs like iChat, iMovie, and Photo Booth that tap into the iSight.
The app launches like any program but appears only as a menu-bar icon. To set up ManyCam, you choose Video Sources from the ManyCam menu-bar icon, then choose your Mac’s camera. The software offers extra features like zoom, pan, colour adjustment, grayscale, and image rotation and flipping. If you’re feeling creative or goofy or don’t love the way you’re looking on camera, click Effects, then choose a new look. I like what’s under Effects -> Links.
ManyCam
lets you display far more than just your camera’s video. For example,
you can display your Mac’s desktop in full or a portion, and even zoom
in. It’s not as elegant or functional as Leopard’s iChat Screen
Sharing, but it may come in handy in a pinch.
The documentation is currently Windows-based, but the developer will likely catch up on Mac docs soon, making it easier to get started. And it’s free--always a plus. Besides, kids will have fun with the effects.
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[Deborah Shadovitz is a Web designer and the author of Adobe GoLive 5 Bible (IDG Books, 2001), penned Mac Design’s GoLive column, and was a contributor to SBS Design.]
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