Poor performance viewing video from USB Video device in VLC

Question

In VLC, on Windows 10, I'm having trouble viewing 1080p video at reasonable frame rates from a USB video capture device (HDMI source).

When I use OBS Studio, everything works fine: The video is at full resolution and runs at 60 FPS with no noticeable latency. There's some tearing but it's no big deal.

However, when I use VLC -- as well as when I tried it with some security camera DVR software (iSpy, which I just downloaded to test) -- VLC defaults to 800x600 (with poor latency), and forcing it to 16:9 1920x1080 plays it at about 10 FPS with about a half second latency.

The way I'm using VLC to view the capture device video stream is:

1. Media → Open Capture Device...
2. Select "DirectShow"
3. Select USB capture device for video and audio; enter 1920x1080 resolution and also force aspect ratio to 16:9 (in advanced settings).

Are there some additional settings I need to tweak or something? I can't figure out what OBS Studio is doing that VLC (by default) and that other software aren't.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem with the vlc player but not the fps one.My problem was that the resolution was poor,even if I set the 'Video size' option to '1920x1080' and the 'Picture aspect-ratio n:m' to 16:9.I think they are both about 'performance'.In OBS studio it is fine,playing 1080P video like below: vlc player and OBS Studio

After I changed some options,my vlc player's resolution was improved obviously.Try:

1. Open VLC player
2. Tools
3. Preferences
4. click 'All' ComboBox in the bottom
5. 'Video' in the left tree
6. Output modules
7. Change the value of the ComboBox from 'Automatic' to 'Direct3D9 video output'
8. Click 'Save' button
9. Restart your vlc player
10. Click Media->Open Capture Device->Check the 'Show more options' and set Caching from 300ms to 0ms.
11. set video and audio source,and video size as you always do.Then try to Play.

PS:My vlc player version is 3.0.18 and GPU is NVidia 1660S.

Answer 2

For whoever coming across this using Linux, TLDR don't use OpenGL output.

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I had this exact issue but on Linux:

• VLC video feed looks pixelated
• VLC snapshot image is clean
• OBS v4l2 capture is clean

So I knew it wasn't a capture card issue.

It turns out it's the default OpenGL output that's problematic. I'm still on Xorg so I simply changed the output to XVideo output (XCB) and restarted VLC. Problem fixed.

I haven't tested Wayland, but I suppose you would just pick Wayland shared memory video output instead, and everything else would be the same.

Answer 3

If we are talking about very cheap "HDMI Video Capture" devices or with a similar generic name. My is identified as:

USB\VID_534D&PID_2109&REV_2100&MI_00

Specs are: max output 1920x1080 60fps, max input 3840x2160 30fps.

I found somewhat working settings for VLC, but I recommend to use OBS. VLC is able to get the stream quite smooth, but after a few minutes it starts to lag again. OBS configuration is more straightforward and it plays smooth for long periods.

The key part is MJPG chroma, as VLC set this to YUY2 by default. As is written on this forum, these devices might be just fake USB 3, and we are limited by USB 2 throughput, so we need some compression.

Back to VLC, here are the settings that worked best for me:

:dshow-size=1024:768 :dshow-aspect-ratio=4:3 :dshow-chroma=MJPG :dshow-fps=59.944 :dshow-audio-channels=2 :dshow-audio-samplerate=44100 :dshow-audio-bitspersample=16

You have to adjust it for you, as my video source device is 1024x768 res, 4:3 ratio and 59.944 fps. Audio settings should be fine and default for most cases.

Probably easiest to get to your best settings is to open Capture Device, choose Video and Audio device. Click 'Show more options', the 'Edit Options' now contains device names, you can also adjust caching (0 is fine). Then after that, paste the settings adjusted before.

You can also make a shortcut for this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" dshow:// :dshow-vdev="USB Video" :dshow-adev="Cyfrowy interfejs audio (USB Digital Audio)" :dshow-size=1024:768 :dshow-aspect-ratio=4:3 :dshow-chroma=MJPG :dshow-fps=59.944

Answer 4

I had the same frame rate problem before, and eventually I solved it by setting the "Video input frame rate" to 30 in "Advanced Options" under "Open Media -> Capture Device":

ScreenShot

Hope this helps.