Ask Slashdot: Fixing UVC Camera Issues Under Windows?

Khyber writes: I bought some cheap Chinese camera glasses with built-in microphones. These are (supposedly) UVC cameras manufactured in 2015. Under Windows XP, these cameras are seen perfectly fine and work as web cameras; even the microphones work. Under Windows 7, the camera appears to install just fine, however I get the 'This device can perform faster if you connect to USB 2.0' (which it is connected to) and when I try to load it up with any camera viewer such as manycam or any chat program's built-in previewer, I cannot receive any video from the camera. I can get audio from the camera microphones under Windows 7, so I am wondering if the camera device is having problems enumerating as a USB 2.0 device due to some change in Windows 7 (which it doesn't seem to have issues doing under XP,) or if the UVC driver for Windows 7 is missing something in comparison to the one used for Windows XP. Anybody else had issues getting newer UVC cameras to work in newer operating systems?

Comments

Re:More info needed

[Khyber]

" there's literally nothing to go on in your description"

Incorrect. As stated, it is a UVC camera. That means it's a USB Video Camera universal device which means no drivers are required - it's the same standard that almost every single laptop webcamera uses and has used for a long time, even OSX and Linux support it.

Then I provide information that it works under XP, and half works under 7. I describe what does and does not work (Everything works in XP, only the video feed does not work in 7.)

Mentioning that it is a UVC camera, you would logically think to check for UVC versions, right? This is a UVC 1.0 camera.

Going to the Microsoft site, it shows that UVC 1.0 is fully supported from 2000/XP on up including in Windows 10.

  Any other device plugged into that port operates at USB 2.0 speed. Same port under Windows XP sees the camera just fine. Under 7? It sees the camera, it simply refuses to acquire a video feed from it.

Re:Since when has /. become tech support?

[Khyber]

You must be new here. :)

Anyways, this is not a driver issue, per se. I believe this is a Windows issue. I have seen reprts of other UVC devices in laptops (their built-in webcams) having the exact same issue.

Turns out, those devices are UVC 1.0, and Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, changed something in their newer USB Video Camera driver that breaks devices following the UVC 1.0 spec, despite Microsoft claiming that Windows 7 has full support for UVC 1.0 devices.

For those people with laptop issues, usually they could fix it by finding the (semi-rare) updated driver from the manufacturer website.

This manufacturer has no driver. It is a claimed plug and play. And funnily enough, it works under Linux and OSX 10.4+ as advertised!

This is what leads me to believe that this is not a driver issue on my end, but a MS driver issue.

And I really, REALLY don't feel like having to constantly run in Test Mode to run a modified driver that's protected by WFP.