Facetime camera not working in el capitan (thunderbolt display)

Same issue. 😟 Any solution?

I had succes whit rest-clan SMC RAM, to fix it. :-)

Sorry ... reset and clean SMC RAM

Had the same issue. MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012). This action fixed it immediately 🙂

Thanks for the tip. It worked perfectly.

This work! Thx!

OSX 10.11 El Capitan. Macbook Air

Tried the following, but "No video captures devices found" as yet.

1. Killed VDCAssistant [there was none running]
2. SMC reset.
3. Disk Utility fix
4. NVRAM reset
5. Logged in as Guest
6. Removed Skype.

So i guess, there is nothing more to do other than wait for the next OS update. 😢

Found a fix:

Open FaceTime - go to the Menu -> Video -> Select "Facetime Camera HD (Display)". For some reason it was stuck on the internal camera, and didn't automatically select the display camera after the El Capitan 10.11 upgrade.

That did it for me. On a MacBook Pro 15. Thx

Worked for me on my 2012 MBA running El Capitan.

Thanks

Same situation here, I think you are ricght and we should wait for some update. There is same place when we can do the request directly to Apple? Or you think they already noticed this (very bad) issue?

I know this is an old thread but, hey, it's clearly something Apple still haven't worked out or got on top of in all these years.

The key point about this issue is that FaceTime is documented, in Apple's own documentation, stating that a camera is only required when doing FaceTime video calling. The prerequisites for FaceTime are only a working microphone and speakers, allowing you to do FaceTime audio calling as well as Continuity cellular calling, with your iPhone.

This seems to be one of those bugs/inconsistencies, wrapped up in a perception filter at Apple, that keeps on causing problems for people, especially those of us who use Macs with no camera (Mac Mini and Mac Pro or Macbook Pro in clamshell mode) who try to use Continuity cellular calling, despite Apple's best efforts to mess with it. There is a plethora of posts about this issue across many fora, across many years. I have posted on this many, many times, over the years and even had a support case escalated within Apple where the outcome was, "This is by design". If your intent is to design badly then I would wholeheartedly agree, with that.

Interestingly I have had it work for extended periods but it seems to break with each new major release of macOS. The most recent break being when I upgraded to Monterey, having used FaceTime, with my Macbook Pro in clamshell mode, for months but only after many months of it complaining about no camera, after upgrading to Big Sur.

Whatever Apple have done "by design" seems to keep on coming back to haunt them, after they "fix" it!

More here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/use-facetime-when-mbp-is-in-clamshell-mode-2020-mbp-fyi.2240141/