The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

Thanks for you guys' hard work for such a brilliant player and server solution. The latest version crashes my windows xp when capturing the webcam, but 0.7.2 works well. I checked the forum, and it looks like a common problem. Do you guys have some patch to fix it?

Thanks a lot,
Derek

It is a general and well known fact that an operating system should not crash due to what any application does. you should request a fix from microsoft, or more likely whoever developed the driver for your webcam.

But VLC 0.7.2 works well. So there must be some incompatiblitie between the latest VLC and the dirver of my webcam or windows xp. Don't think I can get fix from Microsoft or the company who makes the webcam. I'm just waiting for the next release of VLC, and hope it works.

Thanks,
Derek

What do you mean by webcam? A generic USB camera? I run XP SP2, both a USB camera and a separate PCI framegrabber. No problems other than that I made sure to get the latest DirectX and camera driver software.

Have you tried deleting vlcrc (the vlc initialization file)? It sounds like you have maybe toggled between versions and yes, there can be incompatibilities, so you might have a bad setting in a 0.7 vlcrc relative to using 0.8. vlcrc's location is listed in the vlc FAQ.

Yes, a general USB camera. I'm also running XP SP2. I bought the web camera recently, and installed the accompany driver.

I downloaded 0.8.1 first, but it crashed my laptop several times. I forgot whether I tried 0.8.0. I searched this forum, installed 0.7.2, and it worked. But I need some feature added in 0.8

SP2 required some vendors to specifically upgrade their drivers -- for instance my Intel graphics chip.
Check for any PC vendor updates, then for the graphics chip and the Webcam software.

Also, try selecting "Device properties". If you have any choices for Color space/chroma, pick I420. Make sure you have an Output size that your device supports. (If you use Device properties, that opens whatever DirectX control panels the camera vendor has made available -- if you don't see anything, that's a problem)

(My Webcam's a $20 CompUSA -- doesn't get more generic than that . I'm streaming the Webcam, with audio input to the framegrabber -- mixing both input types -- no issues.)

Thanks for you reply. I will try it later.

I have to say 0.8.1 crashed my XP SP2 when capturing web camera. Later, I installed 0.7.2 on the same machine, and it worked very well.

There were updates to directshow code in VLC, since 0.7.2. There were a lot of devices that weren't working previously, that now work. That's why checking for vendor software is important, and checking the settings in whatever applet the vendor has.

I got the answer

Both version 0.8.1 and 0.8.0 work well after I set the video size as 640 x 480. I checked the website of the webcam company, and got to know the camera supports 640 x 480.

One tricky thing is that we have to leave a space character between the two numbers. VLC crashes my windows XP if there is no space, or the video size is not set at all.

I want to expand on what derekli has discovered.

I was having the same problem.

Windows XP sp2
V-Gear minicam 2 USB webcam (Cheap)
latest video drivers
latest DirectX
latest drivers for the webcam
VLC 0.8.1
8 to 10 hours screwing around trying to figger this out (shoulda dug through the VLC forum first) :(


File>Open>Open Capture Device...>Refresh List>Choose USB Webcam>OK>Computer Reboots Immediately.

This started after I attempted to stream the webcam accross my home network. It was working absolutely fine before that. Also, it worked afterwards with every program I tried EXCEPT VLC. If I tried to open the webcam with VLC it would reboot immediately. No Messages, No error codes, except the Windows XP "OMG you just recovered from a Serious Problem" pop up box.

soo.....
to make a long story a little longer...

File>Open>Open Capture Device...>Refresh List>Choose USB Webcam>

and make sure the entry in the "MRL Open:" box looks like something like this:

dshow:// :dshow-vdev="DEVICE NAME" :dshow-adev="" :dshow-size="640 x 480" :no-dshow-config :no-dshow-tuner

The important part is the :dshow-size="640 x 480". More specifically "640 x 480" WITH SPACES!!!

You can change the numbers to whatever your device supports, but on my system, leaving the dshow option without parameters or entering a number without spaces causes an immediate reboot.

My solution was to make a dos cmd file with the correct parameters so I don't reboot my computer by accident. That way, I don't have to open VLC, I just double click the cmd file and away it goes.

Note: I have no idea if this a bug with VLC or with Windows or the webcam drivers. I would appreciate some feedback, I will submit it as a bug unless someone can enlighten me as to why it isn't.

Also, I have not attempted the streaming with the webcam again yet, I will update if I feel it is necessary.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention that there is a box where you can enter the size of the output in the GUI. The same thing about spaces goes for this also.

AND, it seems to have nothing to do with streaming. Probably just a coincidence that it started when I first tried to stream (user error).

Streaming works great.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention that there is a box where you can enter the size of the output in the GUI. The same thing about spaces goes for this also.

AND, it seems to have nothing to do with streaming. Probably just a coincidence that it started when I first tried to stream (user error).

Streaming works great.

I can verify that it's not just a problem with webcams. I have an ATI TV-Wonder PCI TV-tuner card and I'm able to stream just fine using 0.7.2, but not so with 0.8.2 (BSOD ensues). I'm meddling with the size attribute you alluded to, but with little success thus far.
Do you have an example of the DOS script you created by the way?

I had the same problem with an USB tv tuner from pixelview. It was solved with the :dshow-size="352 x 288".

Now I can see tv channels, but the cpu is around 70% (which is a P4 3.2Ghz with 512 RAM).

I want to stream this feed to the network encoded with h.264. Needless to say, it does not work because the cpu is very high just to watch. Even if I just stream, not playing locally, the cpu is very high..

I have reseted the prefs file and I have reinstalled 0.8.1.

Don´t know what to do more to solve this. Any ideas?

*bump*

This was very helpful to me and solved a random reboot I was having with a logitech Quickcam IM. My old Quickcam Express worked fine, but the new one (which I purchased for my work, who want it for a sort of closed circuit security camera) kept exploding.

I was nearly to the point where I was going to rip apart the new one and insert the innards from the old one.