Hello Charles, we have support volunteers here. What is the actual problem?

Hi,

The people who answer questions here, for the most part, are other Firefox users volunteering their time (like me), not Mozilla employees or Firefox developers.

If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.

Now that most websites are removing Flash Player support, how do I use multiple webcams and switch between them easily? Some sites don't even label the different ones I have. Some of them (ManyCam) create virtual webcams that make it easy to switch but leave a watermark that I do not like and most sites prohibit. It used to be very easy. Now I am constantly having to fight the browser to get the right one. Most of the time I give up because it says it is broadcasting but not accessible to the page I am on. I hate it!

Hi Charles, is the problem that only one site can use a particular camera at a time? Or the site only sees one device?

I haven't tried any pages that want to switch between cameras. Maybe I can find a demo site somewhere.

I do recall that some users were not able to select a new camera after granting permission for the first one. In those cases, it usually works to revoke camera permission, reload the page, and change the camera in the permission prompt. However, that isn't very seamless. Other browsers might handle it in a different way.

For ManyCam, see this article on removing the watermark: https://help.manycam.com/knowledge-base/remove-watermark/

This page demonstrates how to write code to switch cameras or microphones with current APIs: https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/devices/input-output/

If the site you are trying to broadcast on doesn't work that way, I don't know whether you can inject similar selectors into the page.

jscher2000 Thanks for that page. You can see the camera source choices. There is no way for me to choose a different source using the available choices. Including the one I am trying to use, the built in webcam on my laptop.

Hmm, has another program been using that camera?

I noticed if I select the integrated camera in the Zoom app for Windows while that demo page is open, then I cannot select the integrated camera in Firefox. That makes sense.

However, even after releasing it and even after exiting the Zoom app, Firefox is not able to switch to the integrated camera. If I reload the page, the integrated camera completely stops appearing in the device list in the permission panel. That could be what is happening in your screenshot.

It seems once Firefox has been told a device is not available it has trouble forgetting that and checking again. I don't feel like restarting Firefox right now, so I think it will be "stuck" this way for a while.

Hopefully other browsers handle this better and you can use one of those to work around this until someone finds a solution.

There is nothing else using the webcam. There are supposed to 6 webcam sources available but only one is showing up. And this is my problem which has frustrated me since the demise of Flash Player...

There are workarounds. I hate all other browsers. I am a die hard Mozilla user. (ever since it beat Mosaic out) Thank you all for your help.

Just one last question:

The select in the page lists all of your video sources, but five of them do not come up on the permission panel so it is impossible to switch?

(This is all new to me since COVID, so I have only a vague understanding of what Firefox is doing. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can look into why Firefox knows about those devices but won't make them available.)

Right. As the previous attachment shows. The web page sees all the sources and lists them. But Mozilla is only allowing the one source. I can refresh the page and chose a different source on page but then Mozilla will show one of the other sources... But always only one. If I keep refreshing and changing it will eventually show the correct source I am wanting but it is a lot of work. It is never the same. I have had it say Webcam source 1; Webcam source 2; Webcam source 3; etc... That is a challenge too. The only hope is to remove all those other sources and then it will always work.

Any difference if you grant the site persistent permission through the Page Info dialog?

Cancel the address bar prompt, and then call up the Page Info dialog. Either:

• Ctrl+i (for Mac, Command+i)
• right-click a blank area of the page > View Page Info
• (menu bar) Tools > Page Info

When the dialog comes up, click the Permission icon at the top to show that panel.

Scroll down to "Use the camera" and uncheck the "Use default" box, and then select "Allow". Repeat with "Use the microphone."

You can close the dialog now and reload the page. You can always remove this permission through Page Info, or the boxes on the Options page listing the persistent permissions.

In this case, the visual cue about whether Firefox was able to use the device selected in the page is whether the "recording" icons appear. If they disappear, that's a sign that Firefox isn't using that device. Which I guess would be obvious if you remove the lens cap, unlike in my test.

This does seem to work on that page. I will need to try it out more on the others I use to find out if those work also. THANKS!