OBS to Zoom Freezing

[Al Beatty]

Hi Group,

I'm running into a picture-freeze problem. I'm pushing 2 webcams, a DSLR, and a laptop camera from OBS to Zoom and encountering picture freezing problems. I recently upgraded my Zoom account to business with HD capability (expensive but good when it works). My WiFi is 35mbs download and 3.5 uploads. My laptop is a gaming computer with an Intel Core i7 processor. I must be missing something because I think the combination I'm using should work. Any thought from all of you here on the forum? Take care & ...

Tight Lines - Al Beatty

 

[Grzegorz Bieniek]

how do you push the obs picture to zoom? via obs virtual camera? or do you use a seperate plugin? is your picture freezing in your preview on the zoom call or do people in your zoom call tell you that the picture is frozen? might be helpful to get more details, to nail the error down, where exactlly it happens.

 

[Al Beatty]

how do you push the obs picture to zoom? via obs virtual camera? or do you use a seperate plugin? is your picture freezing in your preview on the zoom call or do people in your zoom call tell you that the picture is frozen? might be helpful to get more details, to nail the error down, where exactlly it happens.

Hi Grzegorz,
I'm sending the picture(s) to Zoom via OBS Virtual Camera. The pictures (scenes) froze in OBS so it also froze the picture(s) in Zoom. I was the instructor on the Zoom presentation so to continue with the class, I closed down OBS and changed cameras in Zoom via the program's camera menu system. I really prefer using OBS because when it works, it's incredible. These problems have only surfaced since upgrading to the HD Business Account. The account allows the use of both 720 and 1080 HD and I was using 720 at the time. The picture this account allows is very sharp compared to the picture I could "send" to students using the regular Zoom account. The first 38 minutes of the Zoom (with OBS Virtual Camera) worked perfectly and then a total "freeze up!" I hope this additional information helps. Thanks for your response. Take care & ...
Tight Lines - Al Beatty

 

[Grzegorz Bieniek]

Hi Al,
this helps to nail it down. Due to the point, that i have no experience with the virtual camera, i can not help you with this case.
It might have to do with Ram getting filled up, not enough CPU power, due to the point Zoom is also quite CPU intensive.
It could help, when you exit Studio mode, so OBs has to render only one Scene on screen.
I just can tell you a workaround with NDI I use in such cases, especially because the Audio and video are in sync.
I use NDI - Tools for OBS and create an obs-Programm output and with NDI tools i use virtual input, to use the obs-programm output as a virtual camaera. also i can set then the Audio in as NDI. So i am sure that all my show is in sync with all effects in zoom.

For troubleshooting your situation it might help if you could do a test with your setup, and then post a log, when the freezing comes back to zoom.
Also it is good in such situations to have a look at the task manager, if something in your system is a bottleneck.
Due to the point, that OB is open source, it is neccesarilly to do a lot of testing, to get experience to use it in a professional setup.
Good Luck.