no camera connected? FaceTime won't work and displays no camera connected message

I have managed to trace the problem to a conflict between Facetime and iChat. In my case, if iChat is open, Facetime says there is no camera connected. If I close iChat, the camera works again. Same with Photo Booth and iChat. However I was unable to find a fix for this. I have a late 2007 black MacBook running Lion.

tomba1960 wrote:

no camera connected? FaceTime won't work and displays no camera connected message.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2090

works for iSight as well as FaceTime cameras.

Message was edited by: EZ Jim

Mac OSX 10.7.4

This does not work.

Actually this problem happens when resuming MacBook from sleep.

I tried closing applications one by one and last time VLC was keeping camera busy.

It is not always the case that VLC keeps the camera busy. Some other apps do too. Safari also sometimes.

As a fix, i use Do Something When, an app that calls a script killing the VDCAssistant process (responsible for your iSight) when i open an app that uses iSight. The process is restarted by the OS when killed and the camera gets used by the first app that calls it after the restart of the process which is the app you are opening. With Facetime on incoming calls, you can still use Do Something When by running the script when it opens.