Question / Help C920 Not capable of streaming at 1080?

[Manny Lopez]

As the title says I have a c920 webcam and for some reason sometimes it won't give me the option for 1080p and other times it defaults to it. When I do get it work in 1080 as of this morning it now freezes and removes my webcam from the system. everything is plugged in fine but even in device manager it goes away untill I unplug it and plug it back in. The resolution issue has been recurring even before I upgraded to windows 10, but it freezing is a new issue and it is not because i upgraded. I upgraded when windows 10 was released and have been streaming fine until this morning!! Any Suggestions??

 

[FerretBomb]

Make sure it's on its own USB host controller (control panel, device manager, view devices by connection. drill down to the USB host controllers, move stuff around until the c920 is on its own, with nothing else). Also make sure it's plugged into a USB 2.0 port; people report problems with them and USB 3.0 ports. Make sure you have the latest drivers installed.

The c920 definitely can run 1080p@30fps. But it's well-known for choking the bus bandwidth (why it needs its own controller). The intermittent problem sounds weird though. Make sure you're using the I420 output format, that it's set as a Global source, and that nothing else that uses the webcam is running (only one program can use it at a time, and if something like Skype grabs it, it screws things up badly).

 

[Manny Lopez]

Ok so an update on my situation I have currently did a full restore on my pc and now the device will stream at 1080 all the time but it still keeps shutting off. I have attached the log of my last stream which lasted around 45 min. My next step is to get a new webcam and see if that fixes it. If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.!

 

[Sapiens]

Did you do anything that @FerretBomb suggested? Lots of good advice there, and you didn't mention the results of any of those steps.

Also, does running the webcam at a lower resolution make a difference? That would at least help verify that it's USB controller/bandwidth related.

 

[Manny Lopez]

oh yes I forgot to mention I did all the steps the one that made the biggest difference for me was changing the usb port from a 3.0 to a 2.0 but even after that I had to do a restore anyway for other reasons. Also changeing the resolution dosnt work I tried every resolution option. it last the longest at its default which is 420 for some reason but it still eventually shuts off and after a couple of times of de activating and reactivating in the new obs multiplatform it will just say it can't find the c920.

 

[ChowYunMatt]

Is there any fix, as I have been having these same issues. I stream for a bit, and webcam just freezes, and lights go off. Sometimes, I can disable and re-enable the source, and it will fix it. Lat night though, it completely froze OBS software and I had to restart. This happened a couple of times. I will mess with it a little more tonight and provide a log.

 

[Boildown]

Mostly I advise people with any USB webcam (and C920 especially) to use a lower resolution mode, like 1280x720 or even lower. And then they don't respond any more so I assume the problem is solved.