Many problems require different solutions, thats the case when your webcam starts to lagging when streaming with OBS Studio or with Streamlabs OBS. Behind the case there are many possible issue, that can be caused by the webcam, the software, the OS, or the hardware itself (your PC). In this guide you will find various steps, which will help to solve, but at least narrow down the possibilitys that can cause the problem.
When webcam lagging in OBS or Streamlabs, the first and foremast could be your Webcam, which software not updated or not compatible with the OS. Secondly OBS Studio or Streamlabs OBS is not updated, and there’s a mismatch updates between your streaming software and the webcam.
1. Update your Webcam driver and Streaming Software
Most of the Streamlabs and OBS Studio problems can be fixed by simply updating the software, especially If the problem occured recently. Many updates about new features but comes with varity of hot fixes. First of all, let’s update the Webcam driver. Logitech, Razer or other webcam driver regularly updates their software as well as the driver too.
The next step is to update OBS Studio or Streamlabs OBS. Make sure, after the installation you reset the PC too. If these steps didn’t solve your porblem, then hop on to the second step.
2. Turn off Webcam features
This solution is based on software issues. The streaming software and the webcam driver, comes with many features, like HDR, “Beauty me”, Color grading, etc. Some of these options are not problem, like color-grading, or color balance, which are changes directly the webcam. The issues comes when some software based changes happening, when more layers added to the webcam picture.
So let’s go to the Webcam software settings and turn off any plus features, what mentioned above. Also, If nothing happened find the reset device option in the webcam driver, and you can do it in the Windows or MacOS settings center too. This option will fully clear all of your settings, before that make sure turning off the features didn’t helped.
Also If you’re using Windows, there’s a hidden options that probably you can not find in the system settings by default. To change these settings go the the Properties of the webcam in OBS or Streamlabs, and click on the Configure Video option.
After a little window should popup where you can find many options to set to your webcam. You can discover these, but what we are interested in right know is under the Camera Control tab. There’s an option named Low Light Compensation, whiches a feature that automatically controls the brightening and darkening options based on the image. This is a software feature and can cause big-time lagging. Take out the pipe and hit OK.
The second point of this step is to go ahead to the software and turn off any filter that you added to the webcam. Especially HDR Tone Mapping, Colour Key or Sharpen effects, which can use your hardware massively.
3. Changing the Webcam Video Format
The default video format when you add your webcam to the streaming software is any. When you’re not determining the settings of the webcam, the video format will be the basic as well. Changing this setting on Logitech C920 or Logitech Brio to MJPEG from H.264 or Any will basically solve this issue. For this right click on the Video Capture Device and select MJPEG option, then click OK.
This solution based on the software rendering, the different formats using different solutions to use your hardware, the PC and the Webcam. The options will probably change, but the image quality does not should be.
4. Uninstall any third-party software that interact with Webcam
You may using some software like VTube, or other face masking solutions that creates a new source or modify the image of your webcam. If these softwares are enabled do not be suprised If your webcam lagging. When a feature like above is working, It uses many hardware resources to instantly change your camera picture and send to another software. Also, with the help of the Windows resource manager, If the software not used or not in priority mode, than the OS freeze it, so not giving enough compute power to it. This can be happening when you’re gaming.
If you have software, that changes your webcam behaviour and running behind, uninstall them or at least stop running while you’re testing.
But If your webcam lagging and you would like to use the software, you can adjust your mic delay to it. With this option, you can change the microphone to wait a different amount of time between the recording and the streaming. So let’s popup OBS, and click on the gear icon under the Audio Mixer. After that, the Advanced Audio Properties should appear. Between the Balance and the Audio Monitoring you will find the Sync Offset, where you can adjust in milisecond every audio device that you have, sources as well. Change the Microphone delay, and play with it until you match with the webcam lagging.
5. Reinstall the driver, delete the Webcam software
The last step is to simply uninstall and reinstall the webcam software. This is a necessary step to delete all the config file, that maybe responsible for the lagging. Also you can start with uninstalling the webcam software. Some of them not the quite best, when comes to streaming and using constantly the webcam, and maybe the brand “streaming software” can cause the situation.
After you uninstalled, make sure you reboot your computer before install the driver again.
Do you have any other solutions? Share with us in the comments!
