Mac Tips Daily! #155 - iChat AV Testing
You have your brand new Mac (or older one with an iSight), and nobody to test the cool iChat AV with? Well, luckily there are some Apple test servers that you can test it with.
Here is how to do it:
Open 'iChat AV'
next, from the iChat menu, choose 'Buddies -> Add Buddy'
Now, choose 'New Person'
Now, choose 'AIM' as the Account Type. Also, for the Account Name, type in: appleu3test01 and then click 'Add'
Now, click on the green camera next to the new buddy. Note: If the camera is a faded green, you may have to try later, since the server may be busy.
Your chat should now begin to setup
And you can see yourself in the corner window, and an apple commercial playing in the main window.
You can resize your image or even go full screen with the chat.
You can't talk to them, but this will give you an idea if your connection is going to work, or if its being blocked by a firewall.
If the servers above were busy, here are a couple more to try:
appleu3test02
appleu3test03
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video quality was quite bad on the playback. I normally use 640X480. Can the video quality be improved as it was rather blocky?
No, I don't believe it can be improved. Part of it could be the size of your window. Try shrinking it a bit and see if that makes an improvement.
I know Skype has a little hack to to get 640x480 out of it, but to my knowledge, iChat AV doesn't.
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I tried the instructions but no matter what menu choices I click on all the choices under "buddies" are greyed out except "change my picture". Thus I can't begin the first step on this page. Any advice?
Bob
If you are not logged in with a valid AIM or .Mac account, you will get the results you are seeing.
Make sure that you are logged in with your proper instant messenger account username (AIM or .Mac).
One way to do so is to go to the iChat menu ->Preferences -> Accounts ->Account Information. Then click on the account you want to use (I assume you do have one already created) and then and then add a checkmark next to 'use this account'.
That should fix it.
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