Flash webcam settings on macbook (and possibly other cameras)

Question

I am working on a flash application that allows users to take pictures on their own using their webcam. It seems that on some computers (mainly MacBook and MBP), the default setting for Flash Player 10 for the webcam is “DV video” and not “Video Video Video Video”, which is the necessary setting (as far as I know ) to enable flash in order to use the webcam stream. If the custom flash settings are not configured properly, they simply get a black box where the video should be previewed, not the live video stream.

Are there any workarounds for this? I would prefer not to resort to "trouble"? popup with instructions for changing Flash webcam settings, if at all possible.

Answer 1

It seems you can add a parameter to the static getCameraclass method Camerato use a specific cam.

If iSight is your third camera on the Flash Player configuration panel list, you can try the following:

if (System.capabilities.os.indexOf("Mac")>-1)
    camera = Camera.getCamera("2");

You can also read this article that may interest you.

Answer 2

Flash CS5 throws an error using System.capabilities.os, but:

import flash.system.Capabilities;

then

Capabilities.os

It works great.