Zoom crashes if camera is disconnected during meeting

[gingerpeach123]

I used to have frequent problems with Zoom freezing up during a meeting and had to restart the program whenever this occurred. I eventually traced the problem to use of an external camera and found that if the camera is disconnected during the meeting, Zoom crashes. I think the original problems were due to an unstable USB hub, but I can reproduce them by deliberately turning off the port on the USB hub or by unplugging the camera from whatever USB port it is plugged into, whether on a hub or directly on the laptop. I obtained identical results testing with a second external camera. Once the crash happens, only a restart will fix it, even if the external camera is reconnected. I have no problems when using the computer's internal camera.

I think that by plugging the camera directly into the laptop, I can get a USB connection stable enough to make this problem relatively infrequent. But does anyone know why this even happens? Is there a setting I can change that would make Zoom less sensitive to the camera connection?

Thanks!

[storyhub]

Use of a USB hub, especially a USB 2.0 hub, is not recommended and is known to cause all kinds of instability issues. Also, keep in mind that although Zoom only uses 640 x 360 from the camera the USB port still needs to handle the full bandwidth of the camera. So if the camera is 4K it needs a USB 3.1+ or USB-C  3.2 port. Other situations will be similar.