MacBook Air 2013 with Mavericks 10.9.1 has Facetime HD Camera issues

Question

Hi, I've been using a new 2013 MacBook Air with 10.9.1 for the last 3 weeks (I used to have a 2010 Macbook Pro 15 with Mavericks) and the Facetime HD camera is having issues being detected by different applications.
In my case I mainly use Google Hangouts, Skype, and sometimes Facetime. The problem lies on that the camera sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.
I usually reboot the camera with 'sudo killall AppleCameraAssistant' and that makes it work, but it shouldn't be like that.
Please note that this was not happening with my 2010 MacBook Pro with Mavericks. I changed to this new 2013 MacBook Air only 3 weeks ago. Nevertheless, people that I work with (who use retina macbooks with Mavericks) are not having this issue.
Last week I had to install a plugin (in chrome) for a new online site similar to Hangouts called BlueJeans. Bluejeans very seldomly recognizes the cam, only when I reboot it with the 'line' above or reboot the machine. The people I work with didn't have any issues, so I suspect this has to do with 2013 MacBook Air's Facetime HD cameras which might be different to the rest, or too new on the market.
It's as if when I start using it in Hangouts and then hang, later it might not work in Skype, or viceversa.
If you can help, that'll be great, and I appreciate it. Nevertheless, I feel Apple must take care of this in the next Mavericks update (many people are having camera issues).
Jimmy

Answer 1

Hi Jal1980
I had the same pb...
On my MacBook Pro Mid 2012 I Had a problem with my video on skype, facetime, photoboot....
I have tried all the solution offered in every forum and never got to a satisfying result. I downgraded to mountain lion from mavericK without result. I reseted the Pram or SMC (I forgot), and other things, I played with the plugin /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/, I tried several version of skype.... NONE of this solution worked....
Until that day a friend came to my place and installed AppleJack for Mac, a free software (http://download.cnet.com/AppleJack/3000-2094_4-40293.html) that totally solved this issue amongst others...
Here is the full page of the program http://applejack.sourceforge.net/man.html
And here quick instructions on how to use the program. Have fun!
Restart your computer. After you hear the startup chime, press and hold down the
  Cmd and s keys together (this will put you in single user mode). You should soon get a Terminal-type screen with a dramatic garble of indecipherable messages and a shell prompt that looks something like [root#]
2. Now, type applejack at the prompt. (If you’ve installed applejack manually, or have not created an alias to applejack for the root user, you may have to enter the full path to the script at the prompt.) You will be guided through a series of steps that will repair your drive and delete possibly corrupted files. Options are selected by typing the number corresponding to the task you want to perform, and then hitting the return key. For example, when you see a few different options, like this:
[1] Option One [2] Do something else [3] Another task [4] A useful task
From time to time, in interactive mode, you will be asked to answer yes or no to a question. To answer yes, type y and hit the return key. To answer no, type n and hit the return key.
An advantage of using the interactive mode instead of auto mode is that you are given options for also cleaning out user-level caches and preference files. If you would like to clean out your main admin user caches, for example, you will need to use interactive mode.
3. Auto mode: If you want to leave
  applejack to do it’s own thing, just choose option [a] when the script starts. You can also start right up in auto mode by typing: applejack auto at the prompt. applejack will run through all the basic cleanup tasks in order. Alternatively, you can also type applejack auto restart which will tell applejack to do the cleanup tasks and then automatically restart your computer. Other options are: applejack auto shutdown which tells AppleJack to shut down the computer after running its tasks, or applejack AUTO shutdown which tells AppleJack to run automatically in "deep cleaning" mode (see above) and then shut down.
I hope this helps. It completely solved my issue.