1720 Webcam Issues

Hello all,
I just received my new Inspiron 1720, and everything works fine except for some problems I'm having with my webcam. No matter what settings and resolution I choose, the webcam is extremely slow, running at 7-8 fps, freezing up completely at times and lagging behind the audio feed from the microphone. Needless to say, this makes skyping a real pain. I've updated every driver I could think of that would cause such a problem, and I've reinstalled the webcam as well as the included software suite to no avail. Has anyone had experience with a problem like this? Advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

my webcam works just fine.. call dell

 

What resolutions are you both running at? Mine is slow at high res' too, but obviously when I drop the resolutions it runs much faster.

 

how many programs are open when running the webcam? is the comp overloaded with programs/processes?

 

I called dell, they just ran me through another reinstall/driver update process. They offered to replace the laptop, but I'm leaving on a 9 month trip to europe very soon and I had just spent the whole day moving my data over so I didn't feel like waiting. Like I said, it's a problem with all resolutions, even 160x120 is limited to 8 fps, which makes me suspect it's a limit of some sort, because if it were really limited by performance factors, i should see some sort of improvement at resolutions that low. The computer is brand new, not loaded up with apps at all. The webcam was one of the first things I checked out of the box, so I'm fairly confident it's not something I did. I checked my running processes thoroughly, and I can't find anything out of the ordinary. My CPU load while trying to record stays around 5%-15%, and I have over half of my 2 gigs of ram free. Thanks for the replies, I understand that this is an unusual problem to have with Dell's laptops.

 

Sorry to hear that bro.. have a nice trip

 

I'm new here so hello all. I have a 1420 w/ integrated cam. The same issue was bugging me so I researched it a lot. I do most if not all my web camming in the evening. I thought about the exposure levels. Sure enough, if you do not have enough lighting in the room where you webcam then the fps will be 7-8 fps regardless of resolution chosen. Go into your brightly lit kitchen and watch the fps shoot up to 30'ish. Better yet try it during the daylight hours. I just tried SightSpeed with good lighting and you get the full 30 fps unlike Live Messenger/Yahoo/AIM for video conferencing. Have a safe trip!

 

I am having the same issue, both with Skype and Sightspeed. I only get about 8 fps even in a well lit area. I tried the webcam software itself and tried recording myself, the fps on the screen only gets to 8 fps. I tried tech support yesterday with no resolution. I am formating and trying a fresh install to see if that helps, I am also going to try to disable the mic this time around to see if it helps. If this is the best this webcam can do then back it will go since video conferencing is the reason I bought it for my folks. I went to Best Buy to check out an HP and Toshiba and thier cameras seem fine.

 

I'm having the same problem with my webcam, it started out working great, but now the video is lagging behind the audio. Very disappointing. Any fix for this yet?