Why does my Softdrive computer lag when screen sharing?

Issue: The Softdrive computer runs fine while running a heavy application, but immediately starts lagging when screen sharing.

Cause: This issue is likely caused by high GPU utilization. When you screen share, your local computer has to encode and transmit video, which can put additional strain on your GPU. If your hardware is not powerful enough to handle video conferencing, screen sharing, and running Softdrive simultaneously, you may experience lag.

Solutions:

1. Close idle applications

   • On your local PC, turn off all unnecessary applications except for your video conferencing tool and Softdrive. This frees up system resources.

2. Run the meeting on Softdrive

   • Softdrive's GPU utilization is generally more efficient than video conferencing tools. Running the meeting directly on Softdrive can improve performance.

3. Adjust FPS and Visual Quality

   • If the above steps do not help, try reducing FPS to below 30 and lowering the visual quality to 1% in Softdrive settings. This reduces the graphical load.

4. Enable YUV444 Chroma Subsampling

   • If you continue experiencing lag, switching to YUV444 (4:4:4) chroma subsampling can help.

   • What does this do?

     • YUV444 forces your local PC to use the CPU instead of the GPU for video decoding. This can be beneficial if your GPU is under heavy load.

     • The default chroma subsampling format for most video conferencing applications is YUV420 (4:2:0), which offloads work to the GPU. If your GPU is struggling, switching to YUV444 shifts the processing to the CPU, potentially reducing lag.

How to Change Chroma Subsampling:

• You have the option to select between 4:4:4 (YUV444) and 4:2:0 (YUV420) in your Advanced Video Settings, try enabling 4:4:4 to see if it improves performance.

If none of these solutions resolve the issue, consider checking your network connection or upgrading your local hardware to better handle video encoding and conferencing tasks.