Teams user's webcam is showing black for remote participants

[greggdw]

we have a user who has an issue with the teams client on Windows

Whenever she participates in a call (one on one or group meeting), she can turn on her webcam, and sees herselves.   In the Teams settings, the webcam is availlable under "devices" as well

While she has her webcam turned off, other participants in the call see her initials.   As soon as she turns on her webcam, the other parties involved just see a black screen. No video image, no user initials.   as soon as she turns of her webcam, the remote participants get the users initials again.

No other applications are using the webcam, and in the privacy settings of Windows Microsoft Teams has access to the camera 

When she uses teams on the web, the camera is working just fine.  Also when using the  ZOOM application for attending to a meeting, the camera is working just fine. Ath that time , other participants can see the videofeed.

Troubleshooting done so far:

- reinstalled webcam drivers

- reinstalled Microsoft Teams

- Teams client version on all sides: 1.6.00.4472
- Updated all available drivers for this computer

- PC was originally running Windows 11 build 21H2 with patches installed up to the patches released on February's patch tuesday.

- we formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 11, but with build 22H2, and february's patch tuesday updates.  Updated drivers again

No difference.

She is the only user in the company experiencing this.   We are using a Microsoft 365 tennant with Microsoft 365 E3 licenses applied to the users.

We don't have any custom policies applied to this user, nor to other users. All users are using the same settings.

Any advices on this would be greatly appriciated.

[#2]

@greggdw Sounds like you've tried everything other than plugging in a usb webcam? Tht would prove the issue is related to the specific webcam/drivers.

I'm pretty sure I've heard of this before, maybe search the forum forthe specific manufacturer/device, but I doubt there was a solution, jsut some incompatability between how Teams captures the output and how the camera works.

[#3]

Hello @StevenCollier will definitely try the external webcam as a test, but as we have 235 computers of the same model (ordered in one batch) AND it has worked in the past. (we've had this machine over 4 years now.

[#4]

@greggdw Did you mention what CPU? Because I have the same problem, starting a couple weeks ago, and I have an AMD Ryzen. And this thread seems to indicate that this freezing/black camera issue is new, and happens on AMD CPU machines. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/camera-freezing-possibly-after-an-update/m-p/...

[#5]

Hi @KenGlad , its an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz

[#6 · Accepted solution]

I was able to resolve this using this command in an elevated command prompt

echo {"RtmCodecsConfig":{"CapturerApiForce":"1"}} > %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams\SkypeRT\persistent.conf

After this the camera keeps on working

[#7]

@greggdw Sadly, that didn't work for me.  In fact, I noticed something strange. I made a backup copy of that 11KB persistent.conf file before overwriting it, just in case.  Then I used your command to overwrite it with your tiny version.  But shortly thereafter, Windows or Teams or something put back the same 11KB worth of data into the file.  Meanwhile, as a workaround, I've been using the browser version of Teams under Edge, and that's been working fine.  I also just saw a post on another thread, that some people have solved this by turning off GPU Hardware Acceleration in Teams Settings. So I'm gonna try that as well...

[#8]

they maybe it is a different problem. The problem dit not return for my user.