Hi everybody, Paul Richards here. In this Vlog episode 21 we're going to talk
about Windows 10 breaking lots of millions of webcams.
Yeah so they're there are a lot of unhappy campers out there we're going to
cover some updates that came with the anniversary edition of Windows 10 here.
Stay tuned!
So Windows 10 on the anniversary of Windows 10. Yeah so Windows 10 as everybody
knows it was free,
you didn't get a choice on updates, Windows 10 anniversary edition comes out
when you have to start paying for Windows 10 if you didn't do the free
upgrade, and lo behold a bunch of users with the automatic updates came in
to find that their software or their webcam no longer saw each other.
So I guess you know, the MSDN message boards have just been a flutter and there's
tons of information and plenty of misinformation as well that's kind of
floating around at the moment. So we decided we'd talk a little bit about
what Windows was trying to do which is actually pretty cool, talk about when
it broke, what it really broke and then maybe a little surprised at the end, so
in the beginning here what Windows was trying to accomplish and this is really
neat, they're trying to make it so that you plug in any webcam, any video source,
doesn't matter what compression algorithms it's using whether it's h.264,
MV-12, YUY2, RGB-24, the list kinda goes on, that you plug this in and that you will
basically have windows transcode that file for you. So you might think this is no big deal.
However if your developer for Windows and you can rely on any video source
being one of two formats, it makes your life wonderful you're not having to sit
there figuring all sorts of odds and ends out or working with different
streams from different types of cameras. So in theory this sounds great, its going
one step further their virtualizing your webcam. Your webcam now becomes available
to multiple pieces of software, its no longer you bring it up and skype for
business you cannot bring it up and zoom it's literally allowing you to bring it
up in multiple sources.
Unfortunately the execution was not as good as the idea. So Windows
currently cannot properly decode h.264 or motion jpeg. Motion jpeg they're
currently working on and I think the wording was h.264 will be coming at some
point. So yeah, that this whole idea, yet again
fantastic, unfortunately for a lot of people if your camera outputs h.264 to
achieve its you know, proper bandwidth over USB 2.0 and your software calls for
h.264 these two things will no longer work. This poses a real problem for a lot
of people who design software or design cameras, in the end it's really
going to be a problem for nobody once they figure it out, but yeah, at the
moment a lot of people are left high and dry. Here PTZ Optics were lucky as we
actually supply the one native compression color space method that
Windows is working
fantabulously with, YUY2. This is going to be one of the native formats it works
in, so in the future when you plug in a PTZ Optics camera and you have it set
to YUY2, its going to put less of a burden on your PC because you're not having to
transcode between h.264 to YUY2 or motion jpeg to YUY2. That being said we
do have h.264 and motion jpeg also available in our cameras, so if you're
having problems with your current setup keep in mind a good PTZ Optics might solve
your problem. So I was reading a little bit about this Matt and they said
that they might fix mjpeg before they fix H dot 264. Yes that's almost a
guarantee, main reason being more of their partners software developers that
they've been working with work with motion jpeg. If you think of guard
stations where they take your picture and badges a lot of those systems
actually utilize motion
jpeg. So you can imagine there's a lot of broken systems out there as it currently
stands if they migrated to windows 10. So that means a lot of Logitech webcams are
not working currently as they only do h.264 as far as I know. Well so somewhat
true. A good example would be the C930e which was their big kind
of splash with h.264 it's a USB 2.0 camera,
it uses h.264 to achieve 1080p30 over that USB 2.0 connection. Now, that camera
also has YUY2. However if you put it into say 720p even not even 1920 x 1080
but we're going to 1280 x 720 you're pulling 8 to 10 frames a second
it can't handle all of that data. So while their cameras still will function,
it's going to look a little stop-motiony, not not exactly what you want for a
fluid conference experience.
Well Matt I think that was a really good overview of YUY2, h.264, and mjpeg,
things that a lot of people glance over and myself included and now you wonder
you know how complex and you important they actually are.
Yeah well so you know we'll touch on the h.264 over USB just a little bit
because it is intriguing.
If you have an older pc a slower pc you can set our cameras to h.264 and easily
plug into a USB to port on an older pc and it is not such a burden to achieve.
So it has its place it has its values but unfortunately in windows 10 all
those values of just kind of gone away for the moment.
Well that's all we have today folks thanks for watching, please
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Yeah, Woo Hoo! Thanks for watching everybody! Take care!