"Your camera is in use by another application"

[philipt18]

I tried to get Delicious Library 1.5 working yesterday on 10.4.1. I couldn't get the iSight scanning feature to work, which was odd because back when I was using Panther and DL 1.0 it worked fine. Anyways, after I quit DL I could no longer use my iSight with any application. They all say it's in use by another application, even though there is no application using the camera. Rebooting does not help.

I tried posting to the apple support forums but the person who answer3ed said something about DL installing incompatible QT plug-ins - but I have no QT plug-ins installed and can find no mention of that issue anywhere online.

Does anyone know what is going wrong here? Is there a way to determine which application is using the iSight?

Thanks.

[hayne]

That message is something that came up frequently a long while back in connection with iChat and iSight.
I recall that unplugging the Firewire cable sometimes fixed it.
If you google for that message I think you will find a lot of web pages that discuss this issue.
But since it seems in your case to be related to the Delicious Library application, you should write to the developers of that application or look on their web site.

[philipt18]

Believe me I've searched everywhere for a fix for this. I've tried the obvious (like unplugging the cables) and the not-so-obvious (like fixing permissions) but have not found anything. Does anyone know how to determine which app OS X thinks is using the iSight?

I have seen this message in the past when actually trying to use two different apps that use the iSight, but I've never seen anything that caused the iSight not to work, even after a reboot...

[Raven]

As hayne pointed... fingers are pointing towards DL...

[philipt18]

Believe me, the first thing I did was e-mail the developers, but that was yesterday and I haven't gotten a response. Their website is annoying sparse when it comes to support information. I'm not overly impressed with DM as a company...

[David Maberry]

Quote: Originally Posted by philipt18 I tried to get Delicious Library 1.5 working yesterday on 10.4.1. I couldn't get the iSight scanning feature to work, which was odd because back when I was using Panther and DL 1.0 it worked fine. Anyways, after I quit DL I could no longer use my iSight with any application. They all say it's in use by another application, even though there is no application using the camera. Rebooting does not help. I tried posting to the apple support forums but the person who answer3ed said something about DL installing incompatible QT plug-ins - but I have no QT plug-ins installed and can find no mention of that issue anywhere online. Does anyone know what is going wrong here? Is there a way to determine which application is using the iSight? Thanks.

Try going to your Activity Monitor (in your Utliities folder) and show "My Processes", iSight may be running in the background (as a start-up item). Try quitting the process and see if that doesn't clear it up.

Hope this helps,
David

[philipt18]

What do you mean iSight may be running? Is there an iSight application that runs in the background? I don't see anything in Actibities Monitor called iSight, although iChatAgent is not responding if that means anything...

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by philipt18 iChatAgent is not responding if that means anything...

Try force-quitting iChatAgent.
And make sure that your iChat status is "offline".

[philipt18]

I tried that originally but it didn't help. When I relaunch iChat, I get the same non-responding iChatAgent listed there. I tried it again just in case and got the same thing.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by philipt18 I tried that originally but it didn't help. When I relaunch iChat, I get the same non-responding iChatAgent listed there. I tried it again just in case and got the same thing.

But I don't think you should be using iChat at all if you are trying to use iSight with Delicious Library.

[philipt18]

Obviously not at athe same time, but I still want to use iChat with video. In the above case, DL was not open.

[hayne]

See if you have these problems when you log in as a different user. (Create another user via the Accounts preferences if you only have the one user account so far.)

[brooker192@mac.c]

The problem is to do with Quicktime after installing Tiger. Re-install Quicktime 7 from the Apple Site. This will fix the problem. Good Luck!

[philipt18]

Just to close out this thread, the iSight was found to be defective by Apple and replaced.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by philipt18 Just to close out this thread, the iSight was found to be defective by Apple and replaced.

Thanks for letting us know the final resolution - it is useful for future readers of these forums.

[steveninsonoma]

Thanks for this bit of advice! After upgrading from 10.3.9 to Tiger, suddenly I could no longer use my digital camcorder for both iChat and stop-motion animation using iStopMotion. I got an error in iChat that said: "Your camera is in use by another application." But it clearly wasn't.

I have to say, the people at Apple support were real jerk about this. I can no longer get Apple Care on a three year old eMac, but I was willing to pay the $49 for "incident support." But they said they wouldn't support a non-Apple camera, or a third-party software product. I suggested that I just go back to 10.3.9, but they said in order to do that, I'd have to do an "erase and install." I knew that would create all kinds of new problems, so I seemed to be SOL. But the simple act of reinstalling Quicktime 7 solved it. Sad that the Apple support people didn't know enough to suggest that.

[croatjj]

Hi.

I had this same exact issue with my PowerMac G4. I would plug in my new USB 2.0 MacAlly IceCam2 and it would work in all other programs except for iChat. I noticed that in the other programs the camera was very slow (response time) but was functional. After searching everywhere I some how decided to unplug it from one of the two built in USB ports (shown below) and plugged it into an expansion port on a PCI USB 2.0 card I recently installed.

Quote: http://developer.apple.com/documenta...section_2.html USB Ports The PowerMac G4 computer has two external Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports on the back and two on the keyboard. The USB ports are used for connecting the keyboard and mouse as well as additional I/O devices such as printers, scanners, and low-speed storage devices. The USB ports are off of the USB controller connected to the PCI bus. Each USB port is connected to a separate USB root hub, allowing both USB ports to support 12 Mbps devices at the same time with no degradation of their performance. The USB root hubs also connect to the internal USB modem and Bluetooth modules and to the USB port on the ADC monitor connector. The USB ports comply with the Universal Serial Bus Specification 1.1 Final Draft Revision. The USB register set complies with the Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI) specification.

Well you see it right, my problem was that I had the webcam that required a USB 2.0 connection plugged into a USB 1.1 port! I wish I would have known this before hand but I assumed that since the computer was built during the reign of the USB 2.0 era that the USB ports on my computer were in fact USB 2.0 and not the old 1.1 standards!

Well I plugged in the MacAlly USB 2.0 IceCam2 into the USB 2.0 slot on my expansion 2.0 USB card > opened up iChat > works perfect now! If anyone is receiving the very disappointing error message about "camera is in use by another application" message with a USB webcam - verify you are using the correct USB standard (ensure the camera and port matches).

I wish I would have known this a few days ago!
Thanks,

~croat

Delete CamCamX5.component from hard disk/Library/QuickTime.

I installed new version of QuickTime 7.6.6 and error went away. Everything works great now.