My woodturning club had a local woodturner come in for the day to provide a series of demonstrations. The meeting went from 9am to 4pm and I used our system to provide various views around the lathe and to record the session. It all went very well except for the fact that one camera kept freezing and I had to keep restarting it. Let me explain our setup and then ask for any suggestions on why this happened.

We have a fairly new set up where all the equipment is new over the past 6 months. I'm using vMix on a brand new MSI laptop computer with 3 USB inputs. I use 3 Logitech webcams for video input and a separate audio receiver with remote mobile microphone plugged into the microphone input jack. Two of the cameras are plugged directly into the laptop via USB ports and I have a powered USB extender plugged into the third USB port. The third camera is plugged into the extender along with an external disk drive and an adapter for a mini-keyboard. I've setup shortcuts so I can walk around the room and use the mini-keyboard to switch among cameras and do overlays and not be tied to the laptop.

The camera plugged into the USB extender is the one that was giving me a problem. I thought it might be the camera so at lunchtime I went home and got a different webcam and used that one in the afternoon. However, it behaved the same as the other camera. The camera would be fine for awhile and then freeze. I had to then close the camera and then do an 'add camera' to add it back into vMix. Sometimes it was fine for 20-30 minutes and sometimes is was good for 5 minutes. No consistency. I had this problem at an earlier meeting and I thought it was the USB extender so I've replaced that as well.

So, I am stumped at this point. Can I run a camera into a USB extender and then into the laptop and use it in vMix? I have not tried running all three cameras directly into the laptop because the mini-keyboard requires a USB port. I could disconnect the external hard drive during the meeting because it is really only used to copy files and transport them between our meeting location and my home for post processing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jeff Fleisher

I spent some time with Jeff today via Zoom.

Jeff’s camera issue was caused by a 30 foot usb extension cable. Plugging the camera directly into a USB port let the camera work normally.
It might be a bad cable, or just too long when the camera cord is added. Some USB extension cables have built in boosters, that might help.

His cameras are all using the Windows UVC driver.