Tricks and Hints

Using macam without a webcam

At the first glance, this seems to be senseless, but it may help developers of QuickTime applications to find problems in conjunction with macam. Open the file "net.sourceforge.webcam-osx.common.plist" in the Preferences folder in your Library folder in your home folder (if you're a developer, you are probably already familiar with the PropertyListEditor application). In the main dictionary, add an entry with the key "Dummy cameras" (if it's not already there). The value should be a Number type. Enter the number of desired dummy cameras (0 for default behaviour without dummies). At the next launch, you see your entered amount of simulated camera devices. Each produces a color bar image with a timecode.

Smooth recording

For best recording performance with other applications, make sure that the preview or recording window size matches exactly the size of the images sent from the camera. In this case, a rescaling step can be skipped which could otherwise reduce performance.