Webcam and capture card unable to work at the same time

[obli14]

I've started using OBS on a (pretty old) Windows laptop recently. Everything seemed to work smoothly, I've streamed my Switch with no problems using a cheap capture card and both game sound and video were working.

Yesterday I tried adding a webcam (a simple HD 1080p webcam) as video capture source and the problems started.
I can't seem to make both webcam and capture card work at the same time. First time I start OBS, the webcam image is showing in streaming preview, but the capture card image is not there. If I restart the program, they "switch places" and I can't see webcam image but I can see what the capture card is picking up. If I can manage to make both video sources show up in the preview, the capture card audio doesn't work, so I can stream but without game audio.

I've seen other similar threads and I tried some of the proposed solutions, but I am rather new to OBS and maybe I'm still doing something wrong?

 

[obli14]

use another USB port not 2 Videodevices on one USB root hub its not enaugh bandwitch
use this programm to check it

USB Device Tree Viewer

every first tree is an USB root hub

Capture card and webcam are connected to different ports, on opposite sides of the laptop (the capture card is a bit wide so I can't use the USB port next to it), one is connected to one of the USB ports on the left and the other on another one on the right side. Could they be on the same root hub even on opposite sides?

 

[obli14]

jep look into the treeview tool you would see if it so

Checked yesterday, but they are not connected to the same hub!

I managed to make both videos work, but there is no way to get the capture card audio into OBS.
Further explanation on what happens:
- I start OBS once, capture card video and audio work, webcam doesn't
- I start OBS second time, capture card video works, webcam video and audio (mic) work, capture card video doesn't

I already tried:
- Adding a separate audio source for the capture card
- Adding capture card audio as additional source in audio settings
- Checking "use custom audio device" under capture card properties and selecting "USB Audio"
But no luck!

 

[Alexlynamgaming]

So I’m having the same issue! From what I can gather I believe the capture card and webcam are both running as webcams !! Haven’t found a solution yet !! On the settings of my capture card it states it’s a webcam!

 

[Zentach]

use another USB port not 2 Videodevices on one USB root hub its not enaugh bandwitch
use this programm to check it

USB Device Tree Viewer

every first tree is an USB root hub

This did it for me. On my laptop I removed it from the USB port (even though it was also on the opposite side of the lappy as my capture card) and put it in my eSATA port (which can accept a USB male). Bob's your uncle now I can see both. Thanks for the help.

 

[Rusty Morpheys]

I have the same problem. I tried the USB tree viewer, and it does say its on the same hub. Sometimes tho, when I fiddle with things, add and remove then re-add one or both devices it suddenly works. However, when I shut down my laptop for the night or restart it for some reason the problems return. I have a new webcam, the old one broke, bought the same one again. But the first one never gave me any problems at all. This all says to me that there should not be a problem at all.
I've updated all my drivers etc, this issue drives me nuts! Even switched from Streamlabs to regular OBS for this.
Is there really no way to fix this? Because this just really kills the joy of streaming...

 

[Rusty Morpheys]

After some research I found out that this is not necessarily a driver issue or a device issue. But more a USB port version issue.
As @cyclemat states, you can't use two video sources on 2.0 ports as both video sources will utilize too much bandwidth. And maybe that goes for 3.0 ports too if you're using high quality devices that use up a lot of power.
However, for me, activating the 3.0 version of those ports does enable me to utilize both video sources at the same time.
Check if you have USB 3.0 ports on your computer by simply checking if the port has a blue color instead of a white one. Alternatively, you can either check that in Device Manager, or with the USB tree viewer.

It turns out, my laptop was running all the USB 3.0 ports as 2.0 ports, this was also apparent from USB tree viewer. After some unplugging and re-plugging the devices the laptop seems to activate the 3.0 version of the USB ports. This explains why sometimes it did work, and most other times it didn't. I guess this switching from 3.0 to 2.0 versions and back has something to do with energy saving, especially on laptops.

If you do find yourself having USB 3.0 ports, and you have the same issue as me or @obli14 you could try the solution below.

What fixed it for me was:
-Turn off computer
-Boot computer into BIOS
-Search for USB settings
-Search for Legacy Support (Your BIOS might not support that option)
-Disable Legacy Support
-Save and Exit
-Reboot Computer

Turning off Legacy Support will make sure your computer always boot with the 3.0 version of your USB ports enabled.
After doing this, I tried several restarts and unplugging and plugging in devices and whatever I throw at it to confuse it, it works 100% of the time.

 

[FerretBomb]

As an additional note, it isn't USB Hubs you need to separate, but USB Host Controllers. A hub is just a 'splitter'; everything connected to that hub has the same shared bandwidth.
The problem is, most laptops only have ONE Host Controller running all the ports. So unless you have a PCMCIA slot or other expansion card to add another USB card in, you can just be boned.

Additional bonage: USB 2.0 devices have their own bandwidth space. USB 3.0 devices have THEIR own bandwidth space. This should be a good thing. Problem is, some cheap "USB 3.0" devices actually communicate over USB 2.0, and eat up that (much smaller) bandwidth. They do this because the USB 2.0 spec is dead easy to code for, and 3.0 is very much not. So lazy device firmware coders will do what lazy coders will do, and use the easier spec if they can get away with it.

Most capture devices act as a webcam. Essentially that's what they are, they just take their video signal from an input cable, instead of a light sensor array.

 

[rothmedia]

Having the same issue. When I run the USB Device Tree Viewer, it looks like I have 3 hosts but everything is run through just one of them. Is it possible to change that?

 

[MasLegeis]

This did it for me. On my laptop I removed it from the USB port (even though it was also on the opposite side of the lappy as my capture card) and put it in my eSATA port (which can accept a USB male). Bob's your uncle now I can see both. Thanks for the help.

So crazy enough I was having the issue of my OBS would either run my capture card or my USB webcam, but not both at the same. The funny thing is, I have run both together at the same time many times before. Turns out it was a USB error. I had both of the USB cabled for the capture card and camera going into the same USB splitter. Putting them on the same splitter was a recent change. After I left 1 cord in the splitter and the other directly into my computer and restarted OBS it worked again. Thanks for the helpful comments!

 

[Héraès]

I found the consistant solution for me :

FACT #1 - Windows and/or OBS can't manage a Webcam and an HDMI capture card plugued in different USB ports at the same time, because of a lack of power supply in USB controllers managed by the MOBO.
FACT #2 - Changing randomly the ports can help, but sometimes it doesn't work anymore and you don't know why.

SOLUTION : if you have yellow “sleep-and-charge” ports (in my case, they are pink onm y ASUS P6T DELUX V2), make sure you use them for (at least) one of the two devices that can't work together ! Thus, enough power will be send to the device(s).

How did I figured it ? --> I noticed that during the randomization of the cables to try to make the two aforementioned devices to work, I never used the two pink ports because my Keyboard was pluged in them (I takes two ports).

 

[GoodV1b3z]

I've started using OBS on a (pretty old) Windows laptop recently. Everything seemed to work smoothly, I've streamed my Switch with no problems using a cheap capture card and both game sound and video were working.

Yesterday I tried adding a webcam (a simple HD 1080p webcam) as video capture source and the problems started.
I can't seem to make both webcam and capture card work at the same time. First time I start OBS, the webcam image is showing in streaming preview, but the capture card image is not there. If I restart the program, they "switch places" and I can't see webcam image but I can see what the capture card is picking up. If I can manage to make both video sources show up in the preview, the capture card audio doesn't work, so I can stream but without game audio.

I've seen other similar threads and I tried some of the proposed solutions, but I am rather new to OBS and maybe I'm still doing something wrong?

FIX, I use a USB type C for my Webcam and the regular USB for the game capture and that does it for me! Good Luck. I am luck I had a type C hub laying around.

 

[YourLocalShuman]

After trying every possible issue for 4 hours, I realized I just had to switch around the order of the sources with the up and down arrow icons on the sources tab. I couldn't find anything about this solution online so maybe I'm not the only one lol.

 

[2Siders]

After some research I found out that this is not necessarily a driver issue or a device issue. But more a USB port version issue.
As @cyclemat states, you can't use two video sources on 2.0 ports as both video sources will utilize too much bandwidth. And maybe that goes for 3.0 ports too if you're using high quality devices that use up a lot of power.
However, for me, activating the 3.0 version of those ports does enable me to utilize both video sources at the same time.
Check if you have USB 3.0 ports on your computer by simply checking if the port has a blue color instead of a white one. Alternatively, you can either check that in Device Manager, or with the USB tree viewer.

It turns out, my laptop was running all the USB 3.0 ports as 2.0 ports, this was also apparent from USB tree viewer. After some unplugging and re-plugging the devices the laptop seems to activate the 3.0 version of the USB ports. This explains why sometimes it did work, and most other times it didn't. I guess this switching from 3.0 to 2.0 versions and back has something to do with energy saving, especially on laptops.

If you do find yourself having USB 3.0 ports, and you have the same issue as me or @obli14 you could try the solution below.

What fixed it for me was:
-Turn off computer
-Boot computer into BIOS
-Search for USB settings
-Search for Legacy Support (Your BIOS might not support that option)
-Disable Legacy Support
-Save and Exit
-Reboot Computer

Turning off Legacy Support will make sure your computer always boot with the 3.0 version of your USB ports enabled.
After doing this, I tried several restarts and unplugging and plugging in devices and whatever I throw at it to confuse it, it works 100% of the time.

Created an account just to say this worked for me, thanks

 

[2Siders]

HOWEVER... (following up on my previous message)
I had no sound so I had to redo the sound source completely:
1. DELETE previous sound source of the external device. Maybe for you it was simply tied to the previous CAM Source but I had to have a separate AUDIO INPUT CAPTURE.
2. Add new AUDIO INPUT CAPTURE
3. Make sure it's set to DEFAULT and not the actual USB source or whatever (important)
4. Still no sound because you have to go into Advanced Audio Properties of the new source in the AUDIO MIXER tab.
5. Set Audio Monitoring to Monitor and Output. You are now able to hear and record the external device's sound.
6. Unfortunately, you have to MUTE Desktop Audio otherwise there might be double sound with a slight delay.

 

[2Siders]

Disabling Legacy Support does NOT work anymore for me after a restart, even though I checked and it's still disabled. Weird. Sound also stopped working from the external device completely, even with my above method.

 

[swaggypkc]

So I'm having the same issue but I'm using the built in webcam that came with my laptop would the same fixes work or does it being built in change that?