Microsoft Teams Video Lags on Microsoft Teams for Mac app

Copper Contributor

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

30 Replies

@jmmsas I am having the same issue.  Camera works fine in Zoom as well however in TEAMS all of a sudden I am in slow motion.  Weird thing is this same camera worked fine in TEAMS two weeks ago.  This just started.

@Matthew_Koenig This is a known bug. Most of external webcams behave like this. This is because of MS Teams is still no native M1 app but runs in Rosetta 2. Blame Microsoft for not getting this done in time...

Same here...worked at the end of December and then stopped. I used another lower resolution 720 webcam and it works fine. It seems to be challenged by higher definition webcams.

@jmmsas I am having the exact same issue and the M1 point doesnt totally make sense as it worked fine in early Dec while I was using an M1 mac.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

thanks.

@hughwellman It is not just an M1 problem. I can confirm this. I have a 2019 16" almost maxed out (i9, 32GB Ram, 8GB Video, 2TB) which is why I didn't upgrade to the M1, still waiting on M1 Max to get here. 

Starting recently video is choppy. I found that if I open a secondary app that uses the camera, like OBS, the video gets smooth, even if I don't switch the device input to OBS cam.

@jmmsas Just so all you wonderful M1 owners don't feel too special, I am experiencing this on a 2019 MacBook Pro with Intel chip. I didn't experience it prior to an update in the past two months or so--I didn't watch closely when it started.

I have also started experiencing this issue on my M1 Macbook Air over the last week -- no problems prior to this -- and only teams is impacted. I have tried switching hubs/docking stations and tried plugging directly into the machine.

 

Also, I had tried clearing the MS Teams cache and reinstalling the application.

@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. 

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...

 

 @jmmsas 

@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.

@Xials I have the same!

 

The issues started only a couple of weeks ago, I use USB video. And exactly (!) what you said, if I open quicktime in a window using the camera, without even recording, just in the background, it's suddenly smooth.

 

Best

Markus.

 

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.

@jmmsas Also, it seems to work in the Browser version on all my macs.

Hello, thanks for the response. Do you have a link to the workaround you mentioned?
Works better in the browser for me as well...just hate the idea of having to use anything but the Mac app.
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.
If your camera is also a nexigo, that could be the common factor. I’m not familiar with webcam standards to know if it’s normal to return an ordered array based on quality and frame rate or not.
Interesting. I too am using a Nexigo webcam. Still seems like Teams ought to expose some options for video settings so if the default is terrible, like it is in this case, then the user can do something about it.