Running FireCapture on a Mac

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Bruce G
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Running FireCapture on a Mac

Post by Bruce G »

Running FireCapture on a Mac

Download the most recent version of FireCapture for the Mac from Torsten Edelmann’s site
http://www.firecapture.de

The following material between the rows of asterisks is copied directly from Torsten’s readme.txt, which is found in the FireCapture .dmg file that you downloaded.

*************************************************
FireCapture needs the libusb library on your Mac in order to run a camera. The
terminal commands below will install it.

To execute the terminal commands, the terminal login shell needs to be the zsh
shell. The default shell, tcsh, will not work.

To set the login shell, open System Preferences >> Users & Groups, right click
the current user and select Advanced Options. In the Login shell field, select
/bin/zsh and click OK. No need to restart.

Open the Terminal program and insert the commands below.

#Verify the zsh shell is running by entering at the user prompt
echo $SHELL
#The response should be /bin/zsh

# At the user prompt, install Homebrew (if you haven’t already)
#The password requested is the current user password.
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homeb ... er/install)"

# At the next user prompt, install the libusb library
brew install libusb

Done.
*************************************************

Read the portion containing the Terminal commands carefully because Terminal commands are intermixed with documentation.

After you complete the work described above, FireCapture is capable of running, but will be prevented from running by Gatekeeper because Torsten does not have an Apple Developer ID, something that would cost him on a yearly basis for a program that he supports and distributes for free. So it is up to us to put in a little bit of effort to complete the installation.

Torsten does provide something of a workaround in the readme.txt file, but it turns off Gatekeeper completely. Not a good idea. The following procedure tells Gatekeeper to to allow the program to run, even though it is not associated with an Apple Developer ID. 

1. Locate the FireCapture .app file and make sure you know the Unix path name to the file. For convenience, I placed the .app file directly on my Desktop. The Unix path name for the Desktop is ~/Desktop
2. Issue the following Terminal command using the correct file name for the version of FireCapture that you downloaded:
sudo spctl --add ~/Desktop/“FireCapture v2.6.app”

The quotes around FireCapture v2.6.app are required because the file name has a space in it.
If you did not place your application on the Desktop, use the appropriate Unix path name in the command above.
If you get the error message "invalid API object reference", either your path name is incorrect or you forgot the quotes around the file name.

3. You will be prompted for your password (this prompt may not appear if you are already logged in as admin). This is the same password that you use when you open your computer. The reason a password is needed is that the “sudo” part of the command promotes you to a “superuser”. Once this command executes, you are done with Terminal.
4. The first time that FireCapture runs, you will receive a prompt asking if you really want to run the application. Once you give the OK, you should not see the prompt again.
Last edited by Bruce G on Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.


Bruce G
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Re: Running FireCapture on a Mac

Post by Bruce G »

Sorry it took me so long to get to around to this. It has been a busy few weeks.

If anyone has corrections or further information regarding this procedure, please post. I will incorporate what I can into the procedure. After that, the thread should be archived and these comments can be cut.

Incidentally, I thought I would give AutoStakkert! for the Mac a try too. I encountered the Gatekeeper problem again and, with the same sudo command above, I was able to get Gatekeeper to let me run AutoStakkert! (it's still in alpha, not even beta test, so I don't recommend it yet).


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Re: Running FireCapture on a Mac

Post by Montana »

Just bumping this to the top for Merlin or Mark to see. My hubby is very interested in this as he is hoping to get an apple for his next computer.

Bruce, you can delete your own posts, on the top right of your posts there are little icons, one is edit the other is delete.
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Re: Running FireCapture on a Mac

Post by marktownley »

Sorry! Been busy. Filed in the library it is!


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