1

I have a brand new Windows 10 PC with tons of memory and a fast solid state hard drive.

I have a Logitech HD Pro C920 Webcam.

It works fine only when using Logitech Webcam Software. But that software is quite limited in features.

So I wanted to use something such as Camtasia Studio 8. But I've been unable to smoothly record video via Camtasia at full resolution (1920x1080).

There are 3 options for "Color Space / Compression": MJPG, RGB24, and I420.

MJPG allows me to choose 1920x1080 resolution and 30 frames per second. But if I choose RGB24 or I420, the frame rate option gets limited to 5 frames per second.

But in all 3 cases shown here, the video gets recorded in a choppy way. It's unacceptable.

  • 1920x1080 resolution, MJPG, 30 frames per second
  • 1920x1080 resolution, RGB24, 5 frames per second
  • 1920x1080 resolution, I420, 5 frames per second

So then I even tried uninstalling the official Logitech driver (version 13.80.853.0, dated 10/22/2012, which is supposedly the most recent one). And in its place I installed the Windows generic driver called "USB Video Device".

Then I restarted my PC and opened up Camtasia again.

Then a completely different options menu was available (since I wasn't using the official Logitech driver anymore).

For "Color Space / Compression", I could choose from these 3 options: YUY2, H264, and MJPG.

  • 1920x1080 resolution, YUY2, 5 frames per second
  • 1920x1080 resolution, H264, 30 frames per second
  • 1920x1080 resolution, MJPG, 30 frames per second

But when I try to choose H264 at 30fps at 1920x1080, Camtasia Studio has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.

This crash happens every time.

This webcam is supposedly the best in the world, and I have a brand new blazing fast PC and the most recent version of Camtasia, so how can I record smooth video at 1920x1080?

I'm so frustrated and confused.

Thanks for your help! :-)

P.S. Also posted here.

Ryan
  • 2,388

2 Answers2

1

I guess it is a problem with Camtasia, as the full quality requires the H264 format to be used, because USB 2.0 is just to slow to deliver FullHD with acceptable frame rates without strong compression, like H264 does. As most smaller cameras only deliver the much simpler formats like YUV (almost uncompressed) or MJPEG (a quite simple JPEG compression) I guess Camtasia is not tested well for H264 support.

So you better contact Camtasia support.

dronus
  • 1,978
0

I was able to capture smooth h264 from a c920 using ffmpeg on Windows 10. I uninstalled the Logitech driver and used the built-in Windows driver and ffmpeg version ffmpeg-20160428-git-78baa45-win64-static. Then I ran (-t 300 captures for 5 minutes):

ffmpeg.exe -f dshow -video_size 1920x1080 -framerate 30 -vcodec h264 -i video="HD Pro Webcam C920":audio="Microphone (HD Pro Webcam C920)" -copyinkf -vcodec copy -t 300 -rtbufsize 100000k out.mp4

elijahbuck
  • 101