Logitech C920 glitching in online meetings on MacBook M1 Pro

In online meetings (Zoom/Teams), my video will glitch (flicker) every couple of minutes, mostly affecting the bottom of the image.

This issue is not the well-known lighting problem with a constant strobing/flickering effect with the Logi C920, and it doesn't seem to happen at a predictable frequency. Just every minute or two, there's a little glitch.

I'm using a powered USB hub to connect the camera to the computer and have swapped hubs. I even tried using a UPS just in case it was some kind of weird home power issue. No matter what, the glitching remains.

Here's the key: it only seems to happen when I'm in a meeting. Not when the camera is on and it's just my video. But it happens both in Zoom and Teams. Is it possibly a hardware issue? An OS issue?

Running MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GB, Ventura 13.5.1

Thanks to anyone who can help.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 13.5

Posted on Aug 28, 2023 1:50 PM

Top-ranking reply

PrimeSpectra

Level 1

20 points

Posted on Dec 4, 2023 3:13 PM

Yep, I've been encountering this too. Logitech C920 plugged in to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro processor. The video stream will occasionally contain a frame that looks, to my eye, incomplete. Here's a short test video demonstrating the issue in two separate frames. Here are the two frames with the issue:

I've tried several troubleshooting steps:

I've removed various USB hubs between the camera and the computer, and now have the camera's USB-A connector connected to an Apple A1632 USB-C to USB-A adapter, which is connected directly to a USB-C port on the MacBook Pro.
I've disconnected all other physical connections to the laptop, leaving only the webcam attached to the USB adapter.
I've tried several different applications: Google Meet via Chrome, Photo Booth, FaceTime, and QuickTime, which I used to capture the video in this post.
I've also purchased and swapped in a brand new C920 camera.

In all of the above cases, the issue persists. Other troubleshooting notes:

The issue does not occur when the webcam is connected to my Windows 10 desktop.
The issue does not occur if I preview, or record, using 720p rather than 1080p — for example, by choosing quality "High" instead of "Maximum" in QuickTime. This adds circumstantial evidence to my theory that the camera is occasionally exceeding some bandwidth bottleneck when transmitting at maximum resolution.
In hopes of finding some smoking gun, I've watched the system logs in Console while also previewing the video, and looked for some relevant logs that occur at the same time as the incomplete frames, but have had no luck.
I've contacted Logitech support, and they suggested purchasing a new device, which as I noted earlier did not help.

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Logitech C920 glitching in online meetings on MacBook M1 Pro

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