I am a videographer for my company. We often do interviews on video which we then post to our website. To keep them from getting monotonous, I use three cheapie 1080p video cameras on tripods, each recording independently of the others, that will give me three different angles and zooms of the same scene. Then I have to copy the video from each camera to my workstation, use Adobe Premiere Pro to select the scenes and line up the action, to make the final video.
OK, so I had the bright idea to use a laptop with three Logitech C910 1080p cameras, and I found some inexpensive software that will record multiple video sources at once. (Got the cams at Sam’s Club for an amazing $49 each! One-half of what Best Buy charges.)
Problem is, Windows gets confused if you try to run more than two identical cameras plugged into USB ports. The program will crash, and sometimes the computer will lock up entirely. It seems to do all right with two, but a third one screws everything up.
I did a BUNCH of online research about this, and haven’t found a resolution to this problem. But I have found that I am far from being the only person who wants to do this. There’s lots of us out there. There may not be a way to do this, but I would like to ask you computer geniuses for your advice.
One of the ideas that I had, which I don’t know how to implement, or even if it’s possible, would be to have three video drivers loaded that will recognize each camera separately. I don’t even know if that’s possible, but if it is, I figure somebody here can tell me how to do it. I did see somethng about that on some hi-tech site about another USB device, changing something in the Registry to make the system think the drivers were different, and assign each one to a particular device. I don’t have the expertise to figure that out, and again, I don’t even know if it’s possible or advisable to do that.
I would even switch to Linux if it will afford me a way to do this.
Does anyone have any ideas? I figure if you know how to do this, you’re probably well beyond Mensa requirements.
Thanks!
Neither is true, it depends on the driver, and the porting implementation of that as a DirectShow component. A Virtual Machine is totally unnecessary.
The Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 and Microsoft LifeCam HD Cinema are among the ones confirmed to work in identical pairs.