lys bedsores

Problem

Background

I have two video capture devices feeding into my ol pc: an EVGA capture card powered by two USB-A cables; and a very cheap UVC going into an HDMI-to-Micro-HDMI cable, going into a camera running on a dummy battery. (So, both devices are USB powered.) I switched three months ago from two cheap UVC cards to one UVC and one EVGA. It has, for those three months, played fine together. Whenever I start a stream, the game capture always works, and once I turn on the camera and tap the shutter button a few times, the camera works. Until three days ago.

The Problem: Cannot Capture Two USB Video Devices At The Same Time

When OBS is booted up, only one video device can be displayed at the same time. It's always the EVGA which takes precedence; the UVC card will display nothing, the SMTP bars, or the last photo taken on the camera (the latter two are normal).

just today, my system started having an issue where if an hdmi cable is plugged into the graphics card display port, the whole system will stutter every second. even if it's set to single-display mode. which is uh weird.
i have rolled back and rolled forward my nvidia drivers to no avail. geforce 1050ti. i am looking into upgrading my OS from ubuntu lts 22.04 but i don't have enough fucking space in boot even after cleanup (purging old kernels, compressing initramfs, etc.). before i boot from liveusb to repartition my /boot, does anyone have any ideas about this problem.

edit3: i have fully updated my operating system and there's still hitching. additionally, i ran from liveusb and there was no hitching. so... something's going on software side.