http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mic...sue,32533.html

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which was the operating system's biggest update since it launched last year, seems to have caused many users' webcams to freeze. The issue comes from a change Microsoft made in how apps can access the webcam video streams, which Microsoft is now saying it didn't communicate well enough.

With Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft allows multiple apps to access webcam streams concurrently. Before, that wasn't possible without hurting streaming performance. Microsoft?s Mike M. from the Windows Camera Team said that the change was necessary so things like the Windows Hello webcam authentication or HoloLens would still work even when, say, Skype is running.

To make this possible, the company made it so that the stream goes uncompressed into the app (rather than having each app decode the same stream). Then, the apps can manipulate the data in a way that won?t impact the streaming performance of other apps.

Apps that use the webcam would have to support this change, otherwise they would stop working. Apps that only support encoded H.264 and MJPEG formats would freeze users? webcams. This issue seem to have affected millions of users, as one commenter said on Microsoft?s MSDN website.
?We have a working product running for years and millions of unhappy users that are unable to use it at all after this update,? said ?Dacuda,? a commenter on MSDN.
"We use the jpeg frames from the camera in order to scan. Our application is not able to use the camera, and our customers are in huge numbers daily complaining since the update was released," he added.
"We are eagerly expecting windows update with a fix for this issue. Please make it with highest priority,? he pleaded.
?After spending days finding a solution we also stuck with the Anniversary update. Thousands of our customers can?t use our product now to process their payments by e-banking! We and especially our customers - which are your customers too - are really reliant on MJPEG!! Please fix this issue as soon as possible so our support is not overwhelmed with inquiries all day and we cannot offer another solution than downgrade Windows. Thanks a lot,? said Stephen B. on Microsoft?s MSDN website.
?So yes, MJPEG and H.264 being decoded / filtered out is the result of a set of features we needed to implement, and this behavior was planned, designed, tested, and flighted out to our partners and Windows Insiders around the end of January of this year,? said Mike M. from the Windows Camera Team.
?We worked with partners to make sure their applications continued to function throughout this change, but we have done a poor job communicating this change out to you guys. We dropped the ball on that front, so I?d like to offer my apologies to you all. We?re working on getting better documentation out, to help answer any questions you may have,? he added.