Forum Discussion
Solved
MS Teams Video quality is terrible
I am a MS fan for the most part, but you guys need to fix this Teams video quality issue. Our teams have been using it for weeks now and people are regularly getting blurry and poor audio / video quality. We have been pushing people to Teams for the collaboration, etc, but they are pushing back to use Zoom. Here is a video I put together showing this issue. Please MS fix this asap.
[SOLVED]
I called with microsoft. The problems could be solved when you deleting the cache of Teams!
o Close Teams (dont forget the background process)
o Go to %appdata%\microsoft\teams
o Delete all files and folders here
o Start Teams again
The preview stays very bad quality, but when a call is made, the other end has "better" video. But it will be max 720P in teams.
40 Replies
I had this issue on a fully updated Windows 11 / M365 laptop in Spring 2025 -- and this worked for me... thanks
Hello.
Recently had this problem. My video for others looks very pixelated. Looking at 'call quality' on the desktop app the resolution is 320. Old solutions point to settings on the original teams version and the functionality has been removed with the new teams version.
Internal IT services have tried everything. Graphic driver reinstall, reinstalling teams, clearing the cache, etc.
The workaround to use the browser version of teams produces a higher resolution output, but this is not great.
Looking across other forum posts, there are people having the similar issues but no solutions.
Its not the webcam as I have tested it on a different laptop and in the browser version it is fine. Though I live in an area without fibre optic internet, its not the bandwidth as my wife's laptop is fine. When in the office, the resolution is slightly better but not great.
It's as if Teams is using the resolution of the thumbnail preview and sending that out instead of a higher resolution image. The field of view on the outgoing image looks reduced giving a slightly zoomed in effect, whereas on the browser version its the FoV I would expect.
Any suggestions for a workable fix that doesn't include getting a new laptop or going to Zoom.
Thanks
Be sure to check, in Teams admin portal, ALL the Meeting Policies. If you want maximum resolution for everyone the bitrate needs to be set to 16000. Also, the Teams admin will need to make sure there's not a specific Meeting Policy that is set to a lower bitrate for specific users/groups. There can be Meeting Policies for a variety of needs or for limits too, including RTMP/NDI, etc..
Additionally, make sure there is not any rate limiting on any streaming IP ports used by Teams, at least to the level stated above at the gateway/firewall. Perform single stream Internet speed tests too, this may reveal some network/gateway issues, a single stream should be able be reached/sustainable to 16Mb.
Last week I did a fresh video quality test between Teams and Zoom with identical equipment (a Windows, i7 7000 series processor and Owl Labs 4K plus and an older iPad Pro) and video quality was better (less video noise, truer colors and a little better sharpness) on Teams from both sources.
I did have a two-party Teams meeting with an outside company about a month ago and the video quality with the remote person was very low resolution, there was no mention from the other party how my video was. But I have had other meetings that were very good quality, so I suspect it's network issues/rate limits getting in the way most of the time or again, a Meeting Policy getting in the way.
I'm having the same issue. I initially thought this was limited to my new Logitech Brio 4k camera but i've also just now noticed that my older 720p camera also is being transmitted it lower than 720p resolution when using the Teams desktop app. The drop in quality is more extreme with the Brio 4k camera which Teams won't even transmit at 1080p on the desktop client. I'm not sure how Microsoft and Logitech can market the devide as certified for MS Teams - although it does appear to be an issue with the Microsoft Teams app rather than the Logitech device which works better on the Teams web app.
Farook_Naji, et al,
I have seen a marked improvement in Teams video quality, not sure what exactly changed but my org is now seeing 1080P when all variables are of adequate quality, especially available bandwidth and low latency of local and Internet connectivity. I have tested one-to-one with other staff and a meeting including a Microsoft Teams room, all participants had high quality video. The quality of video was very detailed, so much so you could see single hair strands now (provided camera was seeing a head shot, like sitting in front of a desk monitor).
Be sure to check Meeting policies and allow a bit rate where you'd like to aim or control bit rate too. I have set our tenant general policy to "16000" (16Mb).
Here's a couple of good links to review:
Prepare your organization's network for Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
Microsoft Teams Bandwidth Usage Deep Dive | My Teams Lab
Hope you see an improvement too. Our Teams meetings appear regularly to be better than Zoom now.
I haven't seen any improvements, and remain on the latest client version. However, i have done some more testing and I think i may have come across the cause of the issue in my case.
I have conducted a Teams call in the desktop client by joining a meeting using my guest account on another Microsoft 365 Tenant. The video transmitted from the same device (and on the same network connection) on this call was much better. Looking at the call health, the resolution was hitting 1920 x 1080 and the sent video bitrate was much higher.
This leads me to believe that the issue in my case is with my organisation's meeting policy settings in the Teams Admin Center. Specifically the media bitrate setting is probably set much lower than is necessary. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-audio-and-video#media-bit-rate-kbps
Unfortunately i don't have the privileges to check this setting in the Teams Admin Center for my organisation.
The docs don't state that this setting should cause different behaviours between the web and desktop client so this may not be the real cause but there's definitely a difference in behaviour on the desktop client between meetings joined from different Tenants.
- I'm having the same issue with the Brio on an M2 Macbook Pro and Teams. The preview window quality looks like 4K, but the actual call looks horrible.
[SOLVED]
I called with microsoft. The problems could be solved when you deleting the cache of Teams!
o Close Teams (dont forget the background process)
o Go to %appdata%\microsoft\teams
o Delete all files and folders here
o Start Teams again
The preview stays very bad quality, but when a call is made, the other end has "better" video. But it will be max 720P in teams.
- I am having this issue too. I have tried updating Firmware, updating windows, checking driver versions etc - basically everything on these threads.
Teams App is still only broadcasting really poor video quality, but all other video meeting software I have tested (even Teams Web App) shows a high quality picture.
- 100% agree .. it is riduculous .. and everyone is spending soo much time "troubleshooting" .. MS Teams is overriding the resolution and the results are horrendous. Com'on MSF!
we are now 2021 November. .. jsquaredz - The issue seems far more severe with high quality cameras. My Surface Pro cam works really well, Standard 720p or 1080 webcams seem to work quite well. My Brio 4K camera produces a very blurry image - even when I change the settings using the Logitech Camera Settings app down to 720p (not sure how this setting actually works technically). Image quality from Brio in the Win 10 camera app is excellent at any resolution and image quality in Zoom is also really good.
The same issue! We made, and make a lots of meetings. We have MS accounts in our organisation (120+ user). We usually use the MS TEAMS, but we use sometimes Zoom. Your video show our error! Exactly the same problem.... We have a 4K event camera with 1000Gbit internet connection. And the TEAMS video quality is around 480p. TERRIBLE!!! But the Zoom (what use the same camera and internet) working fine. Like a pro app. I tried to figured out, what is the problem. I tried to use just the camera app in Windows10. But it is working fine, so it isn't a driver problem. The resoult is the same: the problem is in the TEAMS system.
exportakademia Do you had a solution for this already?
Have the same problem. 4K camera has in teams a very bad quality. If i open Teams in the browser, i have a good quality.
- I am not sure, but believe the video quality is OK in "the other end" (at the recievers), and that is the most important thing.
When previewing our own cam picture, i.e. before we connect to/join the meeting, the picture is still blurry when using the desktop app.
- Seems that if you use the Teams web-app instead of the desktop-app, video quality will improve significantly.
(As a temporary workaround.)
jsquaredz I've discovered that my webcam (Microsoft LifeCam Studio) was the primary reason my video was bad. It turns out it was back focusing terribly (focused behind me by at least a foot or two). I know for some this is not the issue, but be sure your webcam is working right. Turns out there are quite a few people apparently having focus issues with Microsoft webcams. I discovered it by using the Windows 10 Camera app and doing some testing.
The way to test, if your camera isn't fixed focus, is to put your hand about 6 - 10 inches from the camera, wait for it to try to focus, move the hand back another six inches and repeat. Observe the focus process. No matter where, except far away, the focus perfect for a moment but would lock in position out of focus.
Since webcams are in short supply I used a Canon - VIXIA HF R800 with a USB HDMI capture adapter and my video is much better now.
- I use a Logitech brio 4K camera. I’ve actually tried to push the video directly and through OBS and I can tell the quality from the camera is perfect like the zoom video shows.
