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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Fusion 11.5 turned my Mac integrated webcam into slooooooow and ruined

Funny a year ago I upgraded to V11.0 of Fusion and this happened. Then I read this was fixed so I just bought 11.5 because I put in Catalina and that was a gong show -- and the Webcam does the same thing. I use this for demos and it's quite important - surely the VMWARE folks 1 year later didn't leave this unfixed. Is there a fix, am I doing something wrong. I really need help here!

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RickShu
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi paulzikopoulos,

What kind of VM are you running with, Windows, Linux or Mac?

Regrds,

-Rick

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Sorry.  What did you mean kind? it’s running Ubuntu. It’s not a problem with Windows. It’s same issue on v16 and tried it in v18. Let me know what you need.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Is the webcam close in the guest or in the host?

If it's the host, it may be starved for resources.  What's the host and guest CPU and RAM configuration?

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RickShu
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi paulzikopoulos,

This is a known issue that camera does not work well in Ubuntu VM. The engineer team is working on the fix, sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Regards,

-Rick

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

i appreciate the reasons but guys ...

Look I reported this defect in May 2019. Still a problem!

Worse you tell me only supported version for Mac Catalina is 11.5. I try to use 10.x and screen is black with unsupported workarounds that I can’t get to work. How is this normal?

Why is 10.x no supported?

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RickShu
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi paulzikopoulos

You can refer to this kb article regarding Supported host operating systems for VMware Fusion.

Regard,

-Rick

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It says what I just said.
Why is the only version supported on Catalina not able to support a webcam with Ubuntu 6 months after the defect was opene?

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Ubuntu ... multiple versions

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I didn't catch the meaning of the first sentence. I have a lot of RAM and CPUs but below in the thread it is noted now it is still a bug in Oct 2019 on 11.5 that it was when reported in May 2019 11.1

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Can't speak for VMWare, but they've been full out trying to get catalina support added to Fusion, and smaller niche issues probably were reprioritized.

Keep in mind that the Fusion 10 was only supported on Sierra (not even high sierra).  Apples in the process of making some fundamental changes to how OSX works behind the scenes, and it breaks things like Fusion, so that's why there's a steady path of upgrades.  This year 11.5 is a free upgrade from 11, which is pretty cool given the work they had to put in.

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I’m not trying to be difficult. But honestly. Either support 10.5 Fusion if you know you break every web cam using Ubuntu it fix the bug in 6 months For 11.5.

Put a fix for 10.5 so you don’t hack screen recording to get it working.

I don’t know. I was left disappointed.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, just pointing out that there will never be a patch for 10.x - it went out of support when 11.0 was released, just has 11.0 now is out of support.   Any fix will only come in 11.5 - that's the nature of software development, particularly for inexpensive products.

To be fair to VMWare, Ubuntu is a small percent of the user base, and webcam use inside the VM is a small portion of those.  I'm sure it's in the queue, but where it's prioritized is another question.

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paulzikopoulos
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Some fair points. I do get software dev since I was in the lab for 12 years Smiley Happy

I am likely bias since I’m doing data science and computer vision and that’s Ubuntu and a webcam!

I still feel they missed the mark big time. But alas... I DO appreciate your POV!

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Understand - it's frustrating to have a known bug not be addressed (I've a long lists that I've submitted to Apple that still exist).  Hopefully it'll be included in a future release!

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bighuskysf
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi

just to add to the original post and the following, mostly frustrating answers is, that this is not a problem with Ubuntu only. Most major Linux distributions are affected by this and cause the webcam to be unusable in all vmware versions since 11.0, all the way to the current tech preview.

As you can see from other threads, such as Webcam performance inside VMasked by rakshak_r on October 14 2018 4:29 PMI am getting (approx)1 fram...

this is a well known issue at VMware and so far they have shown zero interest in 'fixing' this issue, which affects quite a bit of users. Running containers natively, etc. are much more interesting features to work on for the engineers, than fixing long term existing and reporting issues.

At this point your only options are to downgrading your Mac to at least Mojave and run 10.5 or move to any of the competing virtualization products. We certainly sadly have given up to use fusion for anything linux desktop related and moved to other products for those needs. It is also sad, that for a paid product that isn't very 'cheap', it is impossible to get any support from the company. Only option is this community forum, for which we also get practically no support from related company employees.

Regards

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Have you tried the technical preview to see if it's been fixed there?

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bighuskysf
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes, as mentioned in my reply above "...in all vmware versions since 11.0, all the way to the current tech preview..."

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Missed that - oops!

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bighuskysf
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Just as an update, the situation is unchanged at the end of 2020 and all the way to fusion pro 12.1.0 (on latest Catalina and latest BigSur).

There is a good indication that VMware doesn't seem to give any love/care to Linux hosts for a while now and the focus seems solely on Windows and MacOS guests.

Some of this is emphasized that we are not getting any feedback on any forum posts/support requests regarding the bad audio and camera performances (aside of a comment a long time ago saying 'it's a known issue and being worked on').

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