"There is no connected camera"

I have similar symptoms on a 2012 13-inch MacBook Air: "There is no connected camera", a reboot usually fixes the problems, a camera is listed in System Profiler, Skype can always see the camera while Facetime, Photo Booth can't, worked perfectly in Lion but only started after the upgrade to Mountain Lion.

Going into Terminal.app and issuing

sudo killall VDCAssistant

seems to fix it. What's happened is that some process has reserved the camera for use and then didn't release it. You can also find the VDCAssistant in Activity Monitor and kill it that way.

How I found this might be the cause was by searching for 'camera' in Console.app messages. I found lots of

VDCAssistant:  Found a camera (0xfa20000005ac850a) , but was not able to start it up (0xe00002be -- (iokit/common) resource shortage)

I don't speak English but I trie to explain the way i fixed, I format de disc Macintosh HD and install de software without anything completely empty and then I have the pc right from the start then my camera worked

I also am doing this regularly on mine (sudo killall VDCAssistant). I have upgraded about 25 MacBook Pros (mine included) (I work as the support technician for 2 middle schools), and since swapping HDD (hard disk drives) with SSDs (Solid State Drives), this problem has been popping up among a handful of them. I don't suppose all the teachers I've upgraded are using their cameras, so it is hard to tell if it is across the board or not. Please give us a better solution, Apple!!

I spent nearly 24 hours trying to get my Facetime HD camera to work on my 27" imac....... it used to work OK... OSX Sierra

I did all the suggestions, including reloading Sierra from Apple, then from Time Machine.....

Then I found this...

worked a treat, I now have my camera back.

Only downside, 24 hours wasted, including updating last 3 days Spreadsheets, then for some reason having to format all my TM's to do a full backup.... 5 times !!!

Anyway..... here is the solution, that worked for me when all else failed !!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2hhjaojucvsfsu9/iSightConfigure.app.zip

I spent nearly 24 hours trying to get my Facetime HD camera to work on my 27" imac....... it used to work OK... OSX Sierra

I did all the suggestions, including reloading Sierra from Apple, then from Time Machine.....

Then I found this...

worked a treat, I now have my camera back.

Only downside, 24 hours wasted, including updating last 3 days Spreadsheets, then for some reason having to format all my TM's to do a full backup.... 5 times !!!

Anyway..... here is the solution, that worked for me when all else failed !!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2hhjaojucvsfsu9/iSightConfigure.app.zip

I've got the same problem. It always fixes itself after a reboot, then works for a few hours, maybe three. It didn't happen at all before the upgrade to ML.

This is on a Mid-2012 13 inch MacBook Pro. Quite dissapointing.

Have the same issues exactly

MacBook Air 13, mid 2012 model.

OS X 10.8.1. System profile always shows it, but after sleep, camera is 'not conected' (restart always fixed it).

As per madam's end, I wonder if some process hangs on to it (iChat?) and thus doesn't release the VCDAssistant. This started a few weeks ago, but was not present at the beginning (and prior to 10.8, possibly 10.8.1).

Has anyone called support yet or filed a bug with Apple?

I took in my computer yesterday and they thought it was a hardware problem. They ended up replacing my air and 1:1 tranferring all my data. I got a brand new MBA and it worked at the store but when i took it home, same problem as usual. It is a software issue. How do we report this to Apple, maybe they don't know.

Resetting computer's SMC helps. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro updated to Mountain Lion, the issue with camera started after the update.

do you have by any chance USB external harddrive connected to your macbook?

Thanks Madams, this solved my issue. Great explanation as well, I think in my case, creating a signature in Preview is what hung the cam.

I bought my MacBook pro on July 1st, 2012 and since it came with Lion I know for a fact I never experienced this problem with that and even after upgrading to ML it was fine, I'm guessing 10.8.1 is the issue or I am experiencing this issue with delay. Whatever it is its killing me and a restart fixes it remporarily but then when I use the camera again it goes off-on a few times and then the ''There is no camera connected'' message pops up. When I tried Madam's command for killall it did not work as it said ''No matching processes were found''. If someone can help here it would be great. Apple needs to fix this.

I have the same problem wthe a Macbook 5,1 using 10.6.8 after the last abdate the cam is not anvalebal.

Do you have a idea way?

It happened to me to. Update SMC reset. Kill all..... nothing happened

Anything else?