Why is my new PC giving me a hard time streaming video in Google Meet?

October 2, 2020 10:55 AM

My new PC is having a hard time in Google Meets, especially when sharing a Google Slides presentation with an embedded YouTube video.

I am a middle school band teacher who is teaching at home. While I do have a decent laptop provided by school, I I recently bought a new prebuilt computer (an Acer Aspire TC-895) for some light gaming, Roll20, and to hopefully also use for teaching. My gamer friends assure me is a powerful enough home-office computer.

When I use my school laptop (a Dell 3390) I have no problem running a Google Meet with a bunch of particpants and sharing a Google Slides presentation with an embedded YouTube video. Even though Chrome / Meet is a huge resource hog, this runs fine on that computer. On my new PC, however, it stutters all over the place, freezes up, etc. unless I turn off my camera and turn the YouTube video quality way down.

If it weren't a brand new PC I would assume this was just Chrome being heavy on resources, but the fact that it works OK on my work computer gives me pause.

I have tried:
-- updating all drivers, including the latest video drivers
-- confirming that it's not my network (school computer works fine on my home network)

Things that it possibly could be?
-- I am using iVCam to use an old iPhone as a webcam. However, I have successfully used this with the school laptop as well and it worked OK. Still, would it be worth looking into a dedicated real webcam?
-- something else?

posted by rossination to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

This could be a hardware acceleration issue with chrome, where it tries to use your GPU to take some of the weight off of the browser, and that backfires and makes things laggy. I had this problem at one point, so I would try following instructions to toggle your hardware acceleration setting and see if that helps. It seems to default to weird things based on hardware, so just try the other setting from what it is now as an experiment
posted by JZig at 11:14 AM on October 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Is the iPhone directly connected, or over a wireless network?
posted by nickggully at 11:20 AM on October 2, 2020

Response by poster: @nickgully - it is over a wireless network.
posted by rossination at 11:22 AM on October 2, 2020

This does smell like maybe a problem with the hardware acceleration on the video. A different browser might help.

I'd also make sure your new PC is connecting to the wifi via 5 GHz and not 2.4 GHz. If it's a networking problem then plugging in via Ethernet directly might fix things.
posted by neckro23 at 12:21 PM on October 2, 2020

Not all webcams are equal. I've juggled many in the course of setting up home remote learning for our child.

The best all-around performers have been the Logitech C922x and C930. They're tough to find, due to demand. The C930c is sometimes available, and it works, but it's intended for the Chinese market so the driver name comes up with chinese characters. Still works fine though. The C922 has a narrower field-of-view. The C930 is wider and that works nicely for one I have setup on a mic stand for a downward view of a piano, for lessons.

You've got several complicating factors. Wireless to the PC being one, any chance you can switch to a wired connection? If just for testing's sake? Do a check on your network speed. Visit a speed test website. Test from the PC as wireless and then as wired. If there's more than a few percentage points difference you may have wifi problems (lots of other networks nearby, poor coverage from your wifi access points, etc).

Likewise for ivcam, use a USB connection and take that out of the equation.

If both your PC being wired, and the phone being connected as USB don't solve the problem then the video acceleration issue might be a factor.
posted by wkearney99 at 4:19 PM on October 6, 2020