Question / Help Streaming with 4 webcams

[DerReichart]

Hey there,

I run a cooking stream and want to use four webcams for this. Sometimes OBS accepts three of them, sometimes only two and sooome times even four, but it’s like playing roullette everytime I start the stream. I tried to use an external USB Hub to give more power to the cams, I tried to connect them with my laptop directly, I tried to install/deinstall the drivers, I tried to use only the standard windows USB drivers instead of the webcam, I even bought four different cameras from four different labels Anybody here, who would have a proper idea how to solve this reliable?

Thank you so much!

 

[nicolas1203]

Hi DerReichart,

I had the same issue you described. I am under Linux and if I monitor usb entries with dmesg, when I plug in 4 webcam, I have insufficient bandwidth for all webcam to be used at the same time.

The workaround I found is to plug the usb camera one at a time. So you plug the first one, add it to OBS, then plug the next one and so on. With this method I can stream 4 webcam with OBS without issues, which is impossible if all webcam are plugged before I start OBS streaming.

Hope this helps,
Nicolas.

 

[Narcogen]

Some drivers won't work if you're trying to connect that many instances of the same cam.

Too many USB cameras on the same host controller will cause stutter because of insufficient device bandwidth.

Not sure how many host controllers your laptop has, but even if it has two, four cameras might just be too many.