<![CDATA[Knabe upright out for repair, computer out for repair, but life goes on!]]>My living room, formerly known as the piano room, seems empty now, though a favorite woven octagon rug has been an eyecatcher on You Tube. While I’d hardly been playing the singing nightingale Knabe piano before its departure due to unremiting downweight resistance, it remained a nice companion to Steinway M, 1917–dimming the grand’s ultra brightness! (packed hammers, so lid down!)

Knabe is now en route to a factory tech in the southern USA who’s planning to address the downweight issue (85-90 grams without pedal) before returning it with a lighter load on the hands.

Meanwhile ole reliable iMac 21, (2011) decided to tank just as the newly purchased upright was hauled away.

My rooom before the evacuations!

Lucky for me, my second mini-Mac, a MacBook Air 2019 model that I’d purchased for You Tube forays and movie streaming with an HP display sidekick, was called by emergency to sub-in for the Big Mac— though it had an untimely problem with QuickTime.

A recording event in progress using Logitech webcam C-920, (new Movie record) came to a grinding halt after only 23 seconds–the biggest stretch being 3 minutes– just enough time to lay the groundwork for a budding tutorial before my hands-on keyboard demo.

Ironically, Imac 21, had successfully mastered an uninterruped record in progress to You Tube just before it had screen spasms and froze into flat pink. After several reboots and shutdowns, it was rushed to the Mac Berkeley infirmary, a private mom and pop computer rehab that welcomed what Apple 4th Street rejected! (A case of Age discrimination!)

Young and storage-free Mac Air, the undependable understudy, looking grainy on its face time/internal screen had short circuited Logitech C-920 HD1080 delivered footage. Yet it could record indefinitely on QuickTime using only internal cam.

Compensating for what was plainly out of my control, I eked out a drag/drop upload to my You Tube Channel, offering a hand-wringing framed intro.

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A tech happy life at the piano seemed to be on indefinite hold after 4 grueling hours of fruitless Online Apple Support.

Finally, after 2 treacherous days of bottomless pit options, a tech savvy student rose to meet the challenge. He undertook systematic and meticulously methodical steps to troubleshoot his wife’s 2019 Mac Air that exhibited comparable QuickTime related problems to mine. Once immersed in the depths of research plus trial and error maneuvers, he emailed me a treatise, that by increment, led to a link that dug me out of the trenches.

To benefit those who’ve been to hell and back with issues like these that compound the effects of the pandemic, I’ve copied the tail end of the document. (P.S.The complete text is available upon request)

“It’s not a CPU performance issue as your MacBook Air is way more powerful than your old iMac. It’s not a USB adapter issue (see above). It’s not a C920 firmware issue because the camera works fine on other computers. So I can’t see it being anything other than a bug with QuickTime and/or the UVC drivers on Catalina.”

WORKAROUND

“So, I did find a workaround (sort of). Logitech has developed their own Capture app. It’s in beta and is available here:”

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/capture

To cut a long story short, I’m now able to mobilize the keyboard view that’s most pedagogically sound (Logitech webcam C-920) while having an uninterrupted recording phase to conclusion.

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