Microsoft released the Anniversary Update for Windows 10 earlier this month. Along with various new features, this update broke millions of consumer’s webcams. This update has made most of the third party USB cameras inoperable, preventing the consumer from using Skype and Webcam-related applications and programs.
The mess up occurred when Microsoft decided to make changes to the camera aspect to prevent an issue that was causing duplication of encoding the stream and resulting in poor performance. How did Microsoft decide to fix this issue? By no longer allowing USB webcams to use MJPEG or H.264 encoded stream and allow only YUY2 encoding. However, most camera applications support MJPEG or H.264 data. Oops.
A Skype video call would initially connect with low-quality YUY2 data, progressively the quality gets better as it would upgrade to better quality using MJPEG or H.264 data. BAM! The video freezes as the latter two codes aren’t allowed with the Anniversary Update, crippling many apps which use these codecs.
The Anniversary Update is Windows 10’s second big update after the update last November. Also, know as version 1607, this update brought in major changes, from the introduction of Windows Hello to Windows’ own Linux Command line, Windows 10 is revamped.
In its official statement, Microsoft acknowledged that many users have reported unexpected behavior after the update. They are currently working on a fix for MJPEG bug, which will be available in September. The users with webcams relying on H.264 codec need to wait even longer.
However, if you recently installed the Anniversary Update, you can revert back to a previous version within 10 Days.
