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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.

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  • This webcam is in fact still sold at a quite high price, at it is able to povide FullHD video over USB 2.0. There are still no consumer webcams sporting usb 3.0 available, so FullHD via H264 is still the limit in consumer sector. The camera also has quite large optics, which almost none of the other FullHD webcams have. I guess USB3.0 webcams would exceed this camera's performance, but cameras using USB2.0 just can't get much better.
    – dronus
    Dec 1, 2015 at 11:58
  • Agreed. But isn't it weird that I haven't found any software other than Logitech Webcam Software that can record video smoothly (even on a blazing fast computer with a solid state drive)? How on earth is this still the best webcam to buy but I can't get it to record a decent video in any software other than LWS? I feel like I MUST be missing something. But I've tried reinstalling drivers many times so I'm looking to others' ideas at this point. Thanks. :-)
    – Ryan
    Dec 2, 2015 at 5:05
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    I have this same issue with Camtasia 8. VLC plays these H.264 MP4 files fine...very fluid. In Camtasia 8, the are choppy. The audio playback is smooth, but the video playback stalls for a second, then runs super fast for a second, then stallls again, over and over. It's not just a simple rendering problem either. If I produce a video with those settings it is messed up, even in VLC!
    – Dave
    Sep 17, 2016 at 15:53

2 Answers 2

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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.

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  • Unfortunately Adobe Premiere Elements and YouCam have similar problems as Camtasia. I agree with your earlier comment that this webcam seems to be one of the best available on the market right now... so I'm wondering how to actually use it. What software would I use? The Logitech Webcam Software works (has smooth video instead of choppy), but the software lacks any decent features. And I'd really prefer not to need to first record videos using LWS and then import those videos into other software for editing. That has been a pain in the butt. I'd love to get it to record smoothly in Camtasia.
    – Ryan
    Dec 2, 2015 at 5:03
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    If several applications have the same problems, maybe they use the same video decoder (maybe provided by Windows, or by the camera software if installed) and it fails. Essentially, an application can decide to get the compressed stream from the camera and decode it iself, or let the Windows API do that. Depending on that, a viable H264 decoder is needed in at the right place. You may look for the media codec list in device settings if a H264 codec is listed, and see if it could be replaced by some other one.
    – dronus
    Dec 2, 2015 at 11:26
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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

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  • Thanks for your answer. Assuming that works, it's pretty cool that you figured out this workaround. What would be great would be a solution that allows easy start-and-stop and doesn't require me to know ahead of time how long I'll want to be recording.
    – Ryan
    May 2, 2016 at 17:32

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