Mac Mini M1 using Virtual Camera causes problems with stream or recording quality

[js212]

There are no dropped frames in OBS, CPU usage ranges from 30-50%. Stream quality according to YouTube and Restream is excellent. Preview is clean.

Unused sources and tools are turned off.

If I turn on Virtual Camera while streaming or recording, quality of output degrades (preview still clean, no dropped frames or bandwidth issues etc)

I’m still testing and troubleshooting, but has anyone else experienced similar behavior and notes any causes or solutions?

Thanks,
JS

 

[solsehjee]

Also curious.

I have 13" MacBook Air with base level M1 chip (8-core CPU, 7-core GPU) with 8 GB of RAM.

I'm happy with my streams to YouTube. Usually my sources are a Brio webcam, several display captures (iPad, MacBook Air, and desktop monitor), and a YT chat browser.

But turn on virtual cam and try to dual-stream to Discord, then OBS's CPU usage shoots past 100% and my output frames get very choppy. Even if I don't dual-stream and I'm only streaming virtual cam to Discord, it acts the same.

Can't recall if my preview frames get choppy. I can test tomorrow.