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"There is no connected camera"

Hi, I just purchased a Macbook Pro 13-inch (mid-2012) about a month and a half ago. Since, I bought it, I've had issues with the built-in Facetime HD camera working when it wants to. The built-in camera works right away once I turn on the computer, but if it's been on for more than a day, or at least on standby during the day, I'll get an error message saying "There is no connected camera" when I try to launch programs like Photo Booth or Facetime. However when I reboot the computer, I have no issues.


-Also, I looked in "System Information" to see if the computer was recognizing the camera on the list of USB interface, and it is.

-I upgraded to OS X 10.8 - Mountaing Lion in hopes that it would fix this issue, but it didn't.

-After careful research, I came across some posts about an "SMC" reset. I went ahead and performed one, but it didn't do anything that rebooting the computer didn't already do (make it work for a day)


All help is greatly appreciated. This is my first mac, and if this is a serious problem, I wanna get this computer to an apple store asap. Thanks again!

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 9:32 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 19, 2012 1:17 AM

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)

51 replies

Sep 5, 2013 6:58 AM in response to kri.rsingh

kri.rsingh wrote: ... Any idea what else could be the problem?


Try the other relevant suggestions from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2090, too.


(Over time, Apple has changed the built-in camera's name on newer Macs from "iSight" to "FaceTime" and then to "FaceTime HD." Regardless of the name of your Mac's built-in camera, the same info and troubleshooting applies.)





Message was edited by: EZ Jim



Mac OSX 10.8.4

Oct 12, 2013 9:51 PM in response to itsbgilbro

Hello, I have a Macbook Air and last night, it updated a few stuffs but since then, the camera refuses to work on any app or any other user account.


I would be most grateful if someone could help me sort out this problem, please.


These are the 4 updates, after which my camera is not even detected:

MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update

MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update

iTunes

OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update

I am wondering if any of them triggered this because the camera was fine before the updates! I have tried resetting the SMC or the solution proposed by Madam's end but nothing works 😟

Mar 19, 2014 1:07 PM in response to itsbgilbro

Thanks to @madams end


That command has worked for me repeatedly:


sudo killall VDCAssistant


Also, killing the app from Activity Monitor has worked repeatedly:


1. Start the Activity Monitor app from the system dock

2. Make sure you select "All Processes" from pull-down

3. Enter "

VDCAssistant"
in filter bar (upper right-hand corner)

4. Hit "Quit Process" red button

5. Select the "Force Quit" button


The VDCAssistant process will restart, but with a new Process ID (PID)

May 20, 2014 5:12 PM in response to itsbgilbro

I replaced a 2009 iMac with a late 2013 iMac, both running Mavericks. Several weeks later I noticed that the iSight camera was not working with any application. I tried several different solutions including rebooting, repairing permissions, resetting SMC, killall VDCAssistant, etc.


What ultimately fixed the issue for me was removing two items from the system startup: The APCUPSD daemon, and the TivoDesktop. (To be honest, one of those was likely the fix, but I made the mistake of removing both at the same time. I suspect APCUPSD as most likely as it was generating a USB error, though not the other common "bandwidth error" reported.) These were both listed under /Library/StartupItems. After removing the items, and rebooting, the camera has worked fine.

"There is no connected camera"

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