Forum Discussion
Microsoft Teams Video Lags on Microsoft Teams for Mac app
Hello Everyone,
I'm using an M1 Macbook Air and I have a Lenovo FHD webcam that is connected to the laptop via a dock. When I try video calls with the Teams Mac app the video appears laggy, almost like I'm in slow motion. Oddly enough, the video appears fine when testing it out in FaceTime and Microsoft Teams online on the same computer. Anybody run in to this in the past?
Thanks
- Same issue for me, running MS Teams on a Macbook Pro (16-inch, 2019), and everything was working fine until a few weeks now, I would say it started mid-december. Video is laggy or in slow motion. Never had this problem for years using MS Teams on Mac. Probably a bug with the latest update. Hope MS will fix this soon, it's very annoying. I don't have any lag when using any other app using the webcam (Zoom, Google Meet).
I also had this issue on my Intel Mac Pro 2019. It seems solved after I did the following:
Close Teams. In Finder navigate to <home folder>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams and clear out all the folders with Cache. I don't know which one solved it, but I just removed all contents of all folders with Cache in the name. It now is not stuttering anymore.
Pietert1905 Problem has been fixed with the latest version released in March (1.6.00.7354). From the MS Teams : "The product team has developed an update which is expected to be part of an update to the Teams client expect in early March which should address the issue which was related to a change to enable dynamic composition where we skip the composing of a frame if there are no changes. For Mac we need to lock the CVPixelBuffer that represents the composited frame. There was an issue where we were potentially missing the unlocking of a locked pixel buffer before we presented it to display. This resulted in the visual artifacts."
Problem is indeed fixed for me, no more video lag!
- did anyone find a solution?
coreylien The problem appears to be that Macs are forced to transmit low-res video (640x360) using software acceleration, whereas Windows computers transmit higher-res video using hardware acceleration. I cannot make my Mac use hardware acceleration at a higher resolution, so I am stuck with 640x360 !
- I’m experiencing the same issue. Using a M1 MacBook Air and a Creative Live! Cam (1080p). It is really infuriating as it’s clearly a software issue in the Teams app seeing as it works perfectly in everything else.
- I'm having the same issue on my M1 Mac Mini and a Papalook webcam. Running the Teams app rather than in a web browser. Video is really laggy and like treacle on Teams, but every other video app on the mac works fine, including Zoom, WebEx etc.
It did work for a while after Christmas, but it's broken again.
Might be the specific combination of certain USB webcam drivers and how Teams interacts with them, because I have a colleague with a Logitech webcam, but otherwise identical setup and she hasn't had this issue.
I experimented using my Elgato CamLink 4K, which allows me to input any external hdmi source, and that does NOT have the same issue with laggy video and teams.
Either way, Microsoft need to fix this.- techoptimist I have experienced exactly the same issue as you.
My Papalook camera, at home, is laggy and my Logitech one, in the office, is fine. It started around the new year for me as well.
I can also work around this by opening-up Zoom settings, however, sometimes I have back-to-back meetings and it's not viable every time. C'mon Microsoft! My setup works in Zoom, my setup works in Facetime, my setup works in Google Meet, my setup works in the teams web browser version.... But not in the one Microsoft app I actually really liked (until now). It seems a bit childish to punish Mac users.... JUST FIX IT techoptimist
- I'm experiencing the same issue as well, although the workaround isn't helping. If i open zoom and check my video preview while on a Teams call, then my video preview in teams gets better, however, watching the call statistics on the teams call shows that i'm running 360x180 and sending only 5 fps.
compared to when i use the built in cam on the macbook, i see 30fps and 1280x720.
super frustrating. jmmsas Also, it seems to work in the Browser version on all my macs.
- Works better in the browser for me as well...just hate the idea of having to use anything but the Mac app.
- Yes, I too am having this problem on my Intel Mac. I just about returned my new web cam over this, but I'm glad to see this is a software problem. I'll use the work-around someone mentioned about getting some other app to fix the capture settings. I hope Microsoft can release a fix soon.
- Hello, thanks for the response. Do you have a link to the workaround you mentioned?
- So it’s not super specific as a work around. I find that I can open anything that can use the camera (I was using OBS, but I found that other programs work too) and that should get things moving.
I am running a nexigo webcam and I think that I have a better grasp on what the problem is.
Recently I downloaded the nexigo webcam settings app from the Mac App Store. When you use that app and click preview it will show you a preview. That preview will also be what teams sees. When you preview it gives you a list of options for resolution, and it starts with 640x480 30fps.
It has a number of options, the second to last is 1920x1080 30fps. The LAST option is 1920x1080 5fps.
I am guessing Microsoft it just asking the cam for its last setting, assuming that is the highest quality.
So when you co-opt the camera with another app that properly chooses the quality setting, it forces teams to do the same.
jmmsas I can confirm this is not isolated to Apple silicon. I have recreated this issue on both a new MacBook Pro M1 Max and a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) 3.1 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7. This is a recent issue since I have used a Sony a6600 as my webcam since shortly after the pandemic started. This issue is not present with the internal camera on the notebook or the display camera from my ancient Apple Cinema Display.
I will also add this issue is not present on Zoom, so I think this is an issue with Teams.
This is so Microsoftie... Just when I started publicly praising MS Teams on Mac, they made my killer USB webcam setup completely unusable. Fuzzy images and dropped frames... You see Satya, this is why you can't have nice things...
- fix it
jmmsas I'm having the same issues on my M1 =Macbook Air using a generic HDMI USB 3 capture card from my Fujifilm X-T4 camera. Everything was fine until December and now it's super choppy and almost like slow motion. It's Teams only, none of my other software does this.
