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Question Elgato Facecam webcam freezes when I'm gaming ?

Elfreda

Reputable
May 8, 2020
17
0
4,510
Hey,

Can anyone shed me some light on how to troubleshoot my webcam freezing when gaming?

If I Alt+Tab of my game and it background limits to 30fps or if I sent the in-game max fps to 30fps it's fine and the webcam is smooth. However, I don't really fancy playing a 2024 title in 30fps especially a first person shooter (Black Ops 6). Setting to 31fps troubles my Facecam it like lags or turns into slow-mo like its 20fps?

OBS Latest (no plugins)
Elgato Facecam (firmware up to date).
Windows 11

I have tried:

  • Lowering the resolution and framerate of the webcam in OBS (Elgato KB)
  • USB bulk and isochronous mode (Elgato KB)
  • Tried all USB 3.0, 3.1 ports (Elgato KB)
  • Having only a single USB device connected to check Bandwidth (Elgato KB)
  • Using current USB controller drivers (Elgato KB)

Only thing I haven't yet tried is a BIOS update. As per this Elgato support article regarding X570 chipset motherboards. I did however try setting the BIOS values to GEN 3.

Elgato are saying my 3070 Ti FE GPU isn't powerful enough (full system specs here). However, my friend has a weaker RTX 20 series GPU and he isn't having any issues?

I've just read on OBS Forums someone suggested and their fix was power saving mode and USB selective suspend setting so will try that in the morning. However, surely it's not that as my PC isn't going to sleep it's active in use playing a game? Will try anyway!


Thank you.
 
Look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Either one or both tools may be capturing some error codes, warnings, or even informational events just before or at the time of the webcam freezes.

Reliability History/Monitor is much more end user friendly and the timeline format may reveal a pattern of events.

Event Viewer requires much more effort to navigate and understand.

To help with Event Viewer:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

There are other tools that can be used. For now, just work with Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Take your time, be methodical, and look carefully at whatever information is provided.