ChatFX - 1.2.1

...this really does noticeably drag down your computer. I have tested it on 2 units I have, a MacBook Pro, 2.16 Intel, 2 gig ram and a PowerMac Duo G5 2.0 with 4 gigs ram.

Both units have 256megs on the videocard and both started to perform like quicksand when I was going through the effects for this plugin. Since getting my MacBook Pro I have had no issues in results to it slowing down, even doing complex editing it is still responsive and peppy. The same goes for the G5. The odd thing is, this plugin continues to make the machines slightly lethargic even after I turned off the effects. Once I closed iChat, it slowly came back to normal status. So this plugin is really sucking up the resources.

I appreciate and applaud the developers for their creativity, but the resource needs alone for this have turned me off of this fun plugin. Though I am excited to use such abilities in iChat, like desktop sharing, movie sharing, presentations or photo sharing I will hold out for Leopard next year and see how Apple implements such abilities into iChat.

If a way could be found to make this plugin tighter and work more efficiently and optimized and not as taxing it would be a fun plugin to have for the money, but at this point, when even Apple's top of the line laptop, one that runs Motion quite well, starts to crawl when using it....to me that is not good.

hi,
i am one of the developers and we appreciate all the feedback and it will go into making chatfx even better.
yes, chatfx is gpu (graphics processing unit) demanding the better graphics card you have the more responsive chatfx is. chatfx pushes the envelope no question about it.
if you have a problem with some of the more demanding effects (they are all different in that way) then things that help are quiting other apps. extra vram (if you are thinking of buying an imac get the extra video ram) makes a big difference. we hope to build in a gpu and cpu monitor in a future version.
we have a suspicion this is where apple is heading. the built in cameras are going to be used now that they are in most macs. demands will increase. gestural recognition? games? more video is coming.
this not an accounting app. itis a fun app it is also cutting edge. our other apps will run on any mac but chatfx is a different beast. its very entertaining but very demanding.
if you try it and try movies in the bluescreen then it will be hard to go back to the old video conferencing.
thanks again for the feedback. we have ideas for great new features and we are always working at optimizing to improve performance on more machines.
thanks
julian
ps we encourage creative people to check out chatfx. there are unlimited possibilities in creating effects. everyday we think of new ones that could be created. chatfx uses quartz composer which is a truly amazing but almost unknown apple technology that deserves to be used by more people. quartz composer we think is easier to use for programming then applescript or automator. quartz composer does video programming and it is really amazing. if you are a student or graphics person or programmer or someone interested to see how chatfx works then look at the faq on our site to learn more and start rolling your own effects.

Tried it, went through all the effects, very nice ones and more then iGlasses. Some didn't work though and lots of them were delayed by more than 1 sec as it needs lots CPU power. Even on my 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM it crashed when I tried to quit iChat after going through all the effects.
To sum it up: really slick effects, would be nice to have, but needs too much memory - not usable at this point of time in my opinion.

I tried the product out for about 20 minutes and decided to buy it. Yeah $20 is expensive for shareware, but it fills a niche that Apple decided not to address. Some of the effects are pretty amazing, and others just so so.

One issue I encountered. After trying out all of the filters during two different conferences, I notced my MacBook Pro with 2 gigs of ram was behaving slugish. I pulled up top and found I had nearly a million pageouts, and iChat was the culprit, devouring threads, mach ports and memory registers. It actually required a restart to clean things up completely.

Until this is addressed, users might want to avoid frequently switching the effects. =)

i LOVE this app you guys. i vid chat with ALOT of people and some of the effects are truly awesome and keep me and the person i'm chatting with fairly entertained. it's freakin $20. who cares. like $20 is gonna break the bank or something...