[Ti] miniDV Cam - video display - CPU load - buy iSight ?

[Ondra Soukup]

Hi,
every time I connect my miniDV camcorder and launch up a simple app  
to display video (HackTV, VideoViewer then even iChat, iMovie -  
whatever) the picture is choppy, like 1-4fps, CPU load about 90% and  
raising up to 100% when large moves are made - so there is no power  
left to encode video for iChat :/
But when I record a movie in iMovie - no frame dropped and everything  
is cool - 40% CPU and very high disk activity (obvious :)...when I  
play that movie at full DV/PAL resolution -- It doesn't skip and  
everything is cool again. So why does it generate so much usage when  
displaying video - even if I switch to 160x120 in HackTV - it's  
85%.... Will iSight solve my problem ? They say 600MHz G3 or any G4/ 
G5 so my 400MHz PowerBook seems to fit right in with no problem :)

What I want is user's experience with iSight and live video viewing/ 
recording/videocalling on "slow" G4s.


BTW I also used EvoCam to record movies - onscreen choppy and the  
file - OK, but compression did't ran realtime - it ended after 3  
seconds... QuickTime streaming had no chance.