PD17 Crashing with Logitech Webcam, but YouCam 9 has no problem with it

Highwinder

Member Joined: Jun 29, 2011 21:45 Messages: 73 Offline

Solved by

Sep 05, 2020 21:19

I have a Logitech C920 webcam that works just great. It's a well-established, respected webcam. The problem is that it works just great in CyberLink's YouCam 9 but not PowerDirector.

YouCam 9 works just great but I'd much rather be using PowerDirector because YouCam feels like little kiddie toyware.

When I fire up PD17, and click on the "Capture" tab, and then select the camera I'm using and set it for 1080/1920 (the default for the camera), PD hard-crashes with the "oops" message popping up.

I suppose I'm going to get another one of those "its your video driver" responses, like it always seems to be for everyone, but if that's the case, I have never seen a product with so many crash-prone behaviors because a video driver wasn't perfect. I mean, NOBODY ELSE's software ever has video driver problem like this. Seriously. The sad thing is that a CyberLink product of arguably little relevance uses the camera great while the app that crashes is CyberLink's flagship product.

Anybody got anything for this?

Thanks

Bob

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 05. 2020 21:42

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Sep 05, 2020 22:20

You're certainly entitled to your opinions on what constitutes good software and what doesn't, although I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare "(EVERY)BODY ELSE'S apps to something requiring a finely-tuned machine to function properly.

Of course Word or Solitaire don't need a perfect video driver - they let Windows do all the display work for them; but PD has to interface with the GPU hardware directly through the installed driver, and mismatches there can and do cause serious issues.

Sometimes it's absolutely the app's problem, but sometimes it's the hardware and sometimes it's a critical driver or how the system is configured. The only way to determine what's happening is to run the DxDiag test and share the results.

If you're willing to run that test and attach the results we're happy to volunteer our time to see if we can help you out. Also please let us know the exact PD17 version you're running.

Highwinder

Member Joined: Jun 29, 2011 21:45 Messages: 73 Offline

Sep 05, 2020 23:21

Actually I think I figured out the problem, though I have no idea why this is happening:

1. Start PD17.
2. Click the "Capture" tab.
3. LET POWERDIRECTOR SIT FOR A WHILE BEFORE MAKING ANY CHANGES - PowerDirector is still trying to figure things out. Though PD will allow you to go right in and make camera settings changes, once you click "OK" to save them, PD will crash. You must let PowerDirector "figure things out" for a while, and when it finally does, you will see a colorful camera image on the screen when it's ready for you to make your changes. If all you see is a black box where the camera image should be, it's not done yet, so don't attempt to make any camera settings changes or PD will crash. It can take PD quite a while to get this figured out, so be patient.
4. Once you see the colorful camera image on the screen, make any camera changes you want. Once you do, you will then see the live feed from your webcam displayed in PowerDirector and you can make settings changes and start recording.
5. Now that PD has figured everything out, every time you start PowerDirector from here on out, if your webcam is hooked up, PD will automatically bring it up whn you click on the "Capture" tab and it's ready to go.

So to be fair, it wasn't a video driver issue, thankfully. But I do still point out that $30 YouCam 9 brings the camera up instantly with no issues on the first try and had none of these issues and didn't waste half my day.

Thanks, hope this helps someone else.