Using iPhone camera as Jitter Device

Dan Johnson's icon

Hi everyone,

I have recently started a project which requires the use of Jitter in two instances, the inbuilt camera of my MacBook and an external camera. I wish to use my iPhone as the second camera but I am not having any luck trying to get MAX to see it. I have it connected via USB hub and from what I have read this should be all that a Mac device needs to be able to see the phone but so far no luck.

Does anyone have tips?

TFL's icon

You can share your iPhone camera through NDI over local network using a dedicated app (such as CaptureCast Camera), and use [jit.ndi] to receive the stream straight into your max patch.

Herr Markant's icon

This works native in MacOS ventura.
If you need an alternative solution try Epo Cam https://www.elgato.com/de/epoccam

Dan Johnson's icon

Thank you for all the help, I decided to try NDI and installed it but no luck in getting it to appear in max as an object. Have I accidentally missed a step? I just dragged the whole unzipped folder into the "Max 8 Packages" folder

Rob Ramirez's icon

If I may offer one additional suggestion, unless you need the camera input as a matrix, I would go with NDISyphon and the Syphon package from the PM (assuming you are on a Mac), as that will come into Max as a texture and be more performant. (also won't need the 3rd party jit.ndi objects in this case)

Wil's icon

If you update to Mac OS Ventura, you can use Continuity Camera to connect iPhone wirelessly to jit.grab. I tested moving the camera up to 10 meters away with no loss of connection or frame dropping. There is also a new "free" app called "Detail" that simulates continuity camera. So I actually managed do a 3 camera shoot, all with real time rendering video and audio using jit.vcr.

iPhone 13 = continuity camera (wireless)
iPhone 10s = detail app (wireless) or visa versa
MacBook Pro M1 Max built in camera

Here are the basic 3 grabs that I used

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

You might have to mess around with vdevice -1.

Dan Johnson's icon

I managed to get something working for it but I just wanted to ask while I have the chance, is there any way to crop or resize an image from jit.grab?

Jean-Francois Charles's icon

One way is to use @usesrcdim 1, setting the part you want cropped with @srcdimstart and @srcdimend. Check out Jitter Tutorial #14.

Jean-Francois Charles's icon

(that's if you're going to matrices, not if you stay in texture)

John J.A. Jannone's icon

I saw a recent post somewhere about getting iPhone camera depth data into Max, but I can’t find it. Anybody have the link?

Federico-AmazingMaxStuff's icon

Hey John, could you be referring to this recent video of mine?
https://youtu.be/l8EEtlV5wmQ

Peter Nyboer's icon

Rats - looks like zig sim pro is not available "in my region." Are there any other apps that do this? I'm coming up blank.