Virtual Cam freezing in Zoom

[dave42]

I've been using OBS with the Virtual Camera feeding into Zoom for a couple of years now, without significant issue. Recently (last ≈2 weeks), I've had a problem with my Virtual Camera image freezing in Zoom 45-55 minutes into a meeting. The preview in OBS is fine, but Zoom just shows a freeze frame. Switching to a real camera (which works fine) and back in Zoom doesn't help. Stopping and restarting the Virtual Camera in OBS or even restarting OBS doesn't help, either. The only thing that seems to fix it is quitting Zoom and restarting, which is less than ideal when I'm leading a meeting or teaching a class.

I know this is quite possibly a Zoom problem rather than an OBS problem, but Zoom's support is face-palmingly terrible, so I'm wondering if anyone else here has encountered this issue and found a solution. I checked my most recent OBS log file, and there are no entries even remotely close to the time the problem happened.

System Details:

• OBS 28.1.2
• Zoom 5.12.8
• MacOS 12.6 Monterey
• Mac mini 2018 (Intel Quad-Core i3)

 

[dave42]

Update: I found some other recent threads (including in Windows support) that reported similar issues with Virtual Camera and WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and other programs. I tried downgrading to OBS 28.0.3, and that seems to have solved the problem, at least for now.

 

[videorhetorik]

I can confirm the same behaviour (freezing virtual cam in Zoom) with a similar configuration:

• OBS 28.1.2
• Zoom 5.12.8
• MacOS 12.6.1 Monterey
  on a MacBook Pro 2015

 

[PVANDORS]

We are having a similar problem with OBS/virtual camera and Zoom. OBS is actually fine for awhile. We can switch scenes in OBS, but Zoom will not accept the switch. Only if we continue using the same scene (changing camera angles works fine), can we continue. We have even stopped using OBS, just transitioning between cameras directly in Zoom. This is our current workaround.

We are on OBS 29, latest release of Zoom, running on Windows 11 with a NVIDIA Quadro P1000 at current release. Memory and CPU utilization are quite low according to Task Manager.

 

[jackonaboat]

We are having a similar problem with OBS/virtual camera and Zoom. OBS is actually fine for awhile. We can switch scenes in OBS, but Zoom will not accept the switch. Only if we continue using the same scene (changing camera angles works fine), can we continue. We have even stopped using OBS, just transitioning between cameras directly in Zoom. This is our current workaround.

We are on OBS 29, latest release of Zoom, running on Windows 11 with a NVIDIA Quadro P1000 at current release. Memory and CPU utilization are quite low according to Task Manager.

Having exactly the same problem for the past few weeks on v 29.0.2. Video feed from OBS freezes in Zoom and OBS no longer shows up as a choice in Zoom for video source.

 

[jackonaboat]

Have gone back to 28.1 to see if that helps.