If you've never used MacWebCam, the first thing to do is start the application and create a new document.

Select New from the File menu. (Multiple documents can be open at once!)

Next, open the preview window (Command-P) and make sure you're getting video. If you don't see video, open the Video Capture Settings dialog (Command-D). Select an appropriate video source. When you see the video source in the dialog, you can hit Ok to save the changes. MacWebCam is often used on machines that are being used for other things-- so to save processing time, the preview window only displays a new video frame every second or so.

The MacWebCam logo in the upper left corner of the preview window is to remind you to register your copy of MacWebCam using the Register program included. The logo and about box at startup will go away as soon as you are a registered user. MacWebCam is a commercial product that is downloadable in a special evaluation mode that makes it much easier for you to decide if the program is right for you.

From there, you need to decide how you want to capture video-- you select the format- GIF, JPEG, PICT, QuickTime. And you'll want to specify how often a file is saved, and how many are saved. For the example pages that follow, we'll use the default values (12 JPEG images saved, taken 5 minutes apart.)

Its a good idea to save your document now-- use the name "mydoc" if you want the examples to work without modification.

Now that you have a MacWebCam document created, you're ready to integrate it into your server environment. You can create another webcam document at any time-- but keep an eye on memory usage and increase the memory partition if needed.

These are the minimum steps required to get MacWebCam running as a webcam program on a WebStar or Quid Pro Quo http server.

First, you'll need to move some files around.

  1. Put "MacWebCam plug-ins" in your HTTP server's plug-in folder.
  2. Put "mwc_unavailable.jpg" and "MacWebCam" in the same folder as your web server application
  3. Put the "docs" folder in the root level of your html directory.

Next, you'll want to restart your HTTP server to load the plug-in.

Ok. Now restart the server. And make sure your "mydoc" webcam document is open in MacWebCam.

Next, open this page from your web browser and see if the following links work.