Webcams often have very bad default settings. In this guide I'll cover some of the ways in which you can make your webcam picture smoother and look better.
That's it! You can play with some of the other sliders available, but generally they won't need much adjustment. Note that exposure and white balance can change with the time of day if you sit close to a window. Manual adjustments can be a bit tedious because of this but the alternative is a choppy stream with ugly colours. If you want none of that, I suggest investing in a camcorder with live HDMI output coupled with an HDMI capture card, but this will easily cost $600 or more.
EDIT:
Addendum - MJPEG Decoder
If your webcam supports MJPEG and you followed the earlier advice of enabling it, you may encounter poor performance (juddery motion) and/or washed-out colours. This is a result of Microsoft's own MJPEG decoder being forced to load instead of any third-party filters you might have installed, even if their "merit" (DirectShow's filter priority) is higher than Microsoft's MJPEG decoder. To fix this, first install a suitable MJPEG decoder if you don't already have one; I use ffdshow. If you already have ffdshow you may need to enable MJPEG in the config:
Then, get Win7DSFilterTweaker, click "Preferred decoders", and set MJPEG to decode using ffdshow:
Then click "Apply & Close".
- High Definition, MJPG
So you bought an HD 1080p webcam, but the picture looks suspiciously soft? Often the default resolution reported to OBS is not the maximum supported. Additionally, the default format is often uncompressed, so only a low framerate is supported at higher resolutions (USB cannot transmit high def video at 30fps without some form of compression).
To unlock both the higher resolution and smooth framerate, check Custom Resolution, check Use Preferred Output Type, and set the dropdown to MJPG. Then select your preferred resolution, and make sure that FPS is set to 30.
- Auto exposure
So you've followed the above steps but your webcam still looks like it's only capturing at 10fps? It does this because the auto exposure wants the picture too bright while gain/brightness is set too low by default. As a result, the exposure time becomes longer than 1/30th of a second, and the stream becomes choppy (a side effect is that skin tones are probably washed out to white, as well).
Start off by configuring your webcam device:
In Camera Control, uncheck the checkbox next to Exposure, and inch the slider to the left until your camera picture stops stuttering. If the picture is now too dark, it means your room lighting is dim. Go to Video Proc Amp, drag Contrast all the way to 0, and then adjust Brightness (sometimes called Gain) until the picture is bright enough. If the image appears too flat, you can inch the Contrast slider back to the right a bit until things look good.
While this method will increase noise, most of the noise tends to get eaten by the x264 encoder when streaming to the internet, and I personally vastly prefer a slightly noisy but smooth stream over a stuttery one.
- Autofocus
Most webcams have autofocus enabled by default. I have yet to encounter one that doesn't continually keep refocusing the picture even when there is absolutely no need to.
Go to Camera Control and uncheck the checkbox next to Focus. Then drag the focus slider all the way to the right and inch it to the left until the important areas of the picture are sharp.
- Power line flicker
Most indoor lighting will flicker at either the power line frequency or a multiple of it. This manifests itself in the form of dark horizontal bands running through the picture. In Video Proc Amp, the PowerLine Frequency (Anti Flicker) setting should be set to the value appropriate for your region. If you travel a lot with a laptop, this may change depending on where you're staying. For the Americas and Japan, this should be set to 60Hz. For Europe, Australia and most other parts of the world, it should be 50Hz. If the bands don't disappear when you change the setting, you're most likely lit by fluorescent lighting (TL or energy saving bulbs) with an internal high frequency inverter, or by LED lighting with a duty cycle. In that case, the only thing you can do is raise your exposure time until the bands disappear.
- Auto white balance
Computer screens tend to emit an eerie blue light, which web cameras have difficulty to adjust to. Letting the camera decide what white balance to use usually results in either zombie faces or in worse cases smurf faces. In most situations you don't have to do much about your lighting (although good lighting is always a good thing to invest in), just take control of your white balance and make everything a bit warmer.
Go to Video Proc Amp and uncheck the checkbox next to White Balance. Drag the slider until your skin is a nice pink hue.
That's it! You can play with some of the other sliders available, but generally they won't need much adjustment. Note that exposure and white balance can change with the time of day if you sit close to a window. Manual adjustments can be a bit tedious because of this but the alternative is a choppy stream with ugly colours. If you want none of that, I suggest investing in a camcorder with live HDMI output coupled with an HDMI capture card, but this will easily cost $600 or more.
EDIT:
Addendum - MJPEG Decoder
If your webcam supports MJPEG and you followed the earlier advice of enabling it, you may encounter poor performance (juddery motion) and/or washed-out colours. This is a result of Microsoft's own MJPEG decoder being forced to load instead of any third-party filters you might have installed, even if their "merit" (DirectShow's filter priority) is higher than Microsoft's MJPEG decoder. To fix this, first install a suitable MJPEG decoder if you don't already have one; I use ffdshow. If you already have ffdshow you may need to enable MJPEG in the config:
Then, get Win7DSFilterTweaker, click "Preferred decoders", and set MJPEG to decode using ffdshow:
Then click "Apply & Close".
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