USB webcam + microphone in Windows guest

[TimothyW]

Hello,
Since Skype for Linux is pretty much dead I'm trying to get it running in my Virtualbox Windows Guest. I have a VF0640 Live! Cam Socialize webcam which is a usb camera and mic in a single device. Using a USB filter I can get Windows to recognise it and the microphone works but there is no image from the camera. After some reading I tried to use the webcam pass through. This was interesting because with the USB filter it appears Virtualbox takes exclusive control of the device so Linux cannot see the webcam while the VM is running. Disabling the filter allowed me to pass the webcam through to Windows (image works) but the microphone is no longer accessible. I think the problem is that each method takes exclusive control of the device so that the other functionality of the device cannot be used. Can anyone think of a work around for this? I'm fairly inexperienced in Linux but is it possible to grant two processes access to the same device at the same time?

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[TimothyW]

Well, I feel stupid... looks like Linux automatically passes the microphone through, I just didn't have it selected because the VM kept taking control of it. So, the solution is pass through the webcam and make sure the correct microphone is active in the Linux host.