My webcam is using a lot of CPU - Printable Version
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My webcam is using a lot of CPU by alegator on 03-28-2011 at 05:28 AM
Hi, whenever I start a video call with WLM the CPU usage jumps to almost 100% and obviously my PC turns very slow for other tasks. I'm using WLM 2009 build 14.0.8117.416 in Windows XP Pro SP3 with a Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000 (USB) and the latest driver provided by Logitech. Any hint? Thanks
NOTE: Same issue when using Skype for video calls 
RE: My webcam is using a lot of CPU by Arcticwolfx on 03-28-2011 at 01:05 PM
What are your system specs? Are you running a lot of other programs at the same time? Cameras may use a lot of CPU for video output. Often when a webcam slows down the entire computer and not just the program it's used in, it may be because you have an older CPU.
RE: My webcam is using a lot of CPU by CookieRevised on 03-28-2011 at 03:10 PM
quote:It can be a driver issue. Try to download and install a previous version of the driver to see if the issue still exists.
Originally posted by alegator
Hi, whenever I start a video call with WLM the CPU usage jumps to almost 100% and obviously my PC turns very slow for other tasks. I'm using WLM 2009 build 14.0.8117.416 in Windows XP Pro SP3 with a Logitech Webcam Pro 5000 (USB) and the latest driver provided by Logitech. Any hint? Thanks
NOTE: Same issue when using Skype for video calls
RE: My webcam is using a lot of CPU by alegator on 03-28-2011 at 06:43 PM
There's an issue that might be related to this one. Whenever I start a WLM video call with one of my contacts, there are two video screens in the chat window: the upper one showing my contact's video stream, and the lower one showing my video. The issue is that the lower screen will sometimes display my video, but most other times it'll display a webcam logo with a red cross on it. I've been unable to fix this issue and it seems the appearance of this logo instead of my actual video is random. The relation with this issue posted here is that when my video is displayed CPU usage jumps to almost 100%, but when the logo is displayed instead of my video CPU usage is normal (at most 20%).
NOTE: My system specs are P4 3.06GHz, 2Gb RAM. However I never had this issue before so I don't think it is specs related.
I might try a previous driver. I manually optimized my system for minimum resource waste, disabled all unnecessary services, startup options, etc., and no, when I'm in a webcam session I'm not using any other program, so CPU is only dedicated to the video call. And before anyone asks, my system is malware free.
RE: My webcam is using a lot of CPU by CookieRevised on 03-28-2011 at 06:56 PM
quote:Might be a long shot, but could it be that this is what is causing the issue? Maybe you've disabled an option too much or disabled a service which is needed or something. I had similar effects before (with other programs though) which needed a particular service to be running, and those programs would simply 'hang' trying to detect and/or start that service which I got disabled (took me ages to pinpoint).
Originally posted by alegator
I manually optimized my system for minimum resource waste, disabled all unnecessary services, startup options, etc.
RE: My webcam is using a lot of CPU by alegator on 03-29-2011 at 12:42 PM
Cookie, I went over the disabled services one by one and none of them are related to this issue. In my opinion most probably it's related to the driver.