Question / Help I want to collaborate with a friend. How do I add his webcam?

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MerynMoon

New Member
Here's a list of things I've tried:

1. Window Capture does NOT work because it just comes up as a black square that shows nothing on it.

2. I've tried getting his cam through websites like Facebook and Discord, so I tried Browser capture and it does NOT work.

3. I tried ^ that same step but in a different web browser (Chrome and Internet Explorer) and they both don't work.

4. I installed the new NDI by NewTek plugin to try to capture his camera through Skype, and nothing comes up.

5. I tried all these things on Xsplit as well and they don't work there either.

I know 2 solutions that are out of my reach. It could work if I had an Nvidia GPU, but I don't have the money for it. And it could work if I had a 3rd Monitor, which I also don't have. Know any other way?
 
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Agamemnus

Member
Hey mate, in all of those circumstances (except the NDI one, which I don't know how it works with Skype), Hardware acceleration interferes.

Go to Chrome, Settings, open the advanced section, and go down to the "system category" and turn off the option for "Use hardware acceleration when available".

There is also a way to turn this off in Skype, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.

Give it a go and pls post back here if that works. It might help others. If that doesn't work, you can route an RTMP stream manually through a server you install on yours or your friend's computer. It does introduce a delay however, could be between 2-4 seconds, so it's not ideal.
 
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MerynMoon

New Member
Turning off hardware acceleration worked! Thank you very much. But what will turning that off do for other programs? Will it negatively affect something else?
 
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Agamemnus

Member
Thanks for coming back to us!

Yes, it means that watching the videos in apps (or browsers or whatever) without hardware acceleration will use more CPU.

The hardware acceleration means it offloads the work to another chipset that can do it more efficiently. Believe it or not, but playing video uses power, and some chipsets are designed to do so very efficiently. Your graphics card has many different video decoders for different video formats. The drawback is that the hardware keeps the data in a private memory section, and OBS can't reach it! Turning hardware acceleration off means your CPU has to do the work, which it can do just fine but inefficiently so. However, now the data is in regular RAM and OBS can see it :)

EDIT: It only affects the app for which hardware acceleration is disabled. You can turn it off for Chrome but still be on for Firefox & Skype & VLC Player.

Gimme a like and pass on your new knowledge one day!
 
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MerynMoon

New Member
Thanks again! A lot of that information kinda flew over my head to be honest. Was just wondering, when I'm not using the Turn Off Hardware Acceleration thing for my OBS shenanigans, should I turn it back on?
 
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Agamemnus

Member
Honestly, I don't think it really matters. Technically it does mean something but realistically, I really don't think it's worth worrying about.
 
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