OpenCV 2.4 setting camera resolution

OpenCV 2.4 setting camera resolution

I have web cams set up that can handle 1280x720 resolution and that is the
size i would like to capture. I am not a C/C++ or openCV programmer. I
basically got shafted and am trying to debug someone elses code. anyway,
The code currently implemented is capturing images at 640x480:
capture = cvCaptureFromCAMEx(devicePaths[bestIdx+i-1]);
I changed the code to look like this:
capture = cvCaptureFromCAMEx(devicePaths[bestIdx+i-1]);
cvSetCaptureProperty( capture, CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 1280 );
cvSetCaptureProperty( capture, CV_CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 720 );
but the images are still coming back as 640x480
I am using openCV2 2.4.0 in visual studio on a windows 7 machine
any ideas as to why it won't set the resolution to 1280x720