@silas (and also others)
I’m not Tobias, but given that I encounter similar problems I now tried CVB 14.00.002 with Python cvb-1.5 which I didn’t go for because of his post mentioning that it would work.
I was able to open devices via open_port again in our setup if all cameras being configured are connected and available. So far, so good…
If camera on port 0 is not available I end up with the same (to me unclear) exception as @augas111 mentioned in the initial post for all camera ports. Even if I request opening port 2 while 0 is unavailable I get the exception which now reads RuntimeError: C-API call failed; try getting a log by using CVB LogGUI/silogutil: {"Name": "LoadImageFileW", "CVC_ERROR_CODE": 1}.
If any other camera on a port != 0 is offline, there is an exception when opening that one (RuntimeError: failed to set port) which is way better as connecting all cameras except the one being offline works.
Looking for a solution I found a rather old post mentioning that this may be because of the driver always opening port 0 first regardless of what is requested. This is rather annoying and difficult to understand on first encounter as one camera being offline renders the whole setup useless even if it this one is not opened at all.
The second solution from this thread (using AutoSwitchEnable=1) works even worse as this leads again to crashes without even having a message/exception when encountering the port which cannot be opened (regardless of its index).
Another thing as it was mentioned in the initial post: Rotation of acquired images:
Rotation settings are saved to GeniCam.ini (located in C:\ProgramData\STEMMER IMAGING\Common Vision Blox\Drivers) when set in GenICam Browser, but are not evaluated in the integrated viewer. They are honored when opening the stream with my scripts, so the problem here is only the Device View part of GenICam Browser which IMHO should behave as the old Device Configurator in Management Console which did rotation as configured.
To sum up: CVB 14.00.002 works better than 13.04.005 in my hands/scenario, but still room for improvement.