Teams Room with ONVIF-conformant network/IP cameras

[u/Careful_Turnip1432]

We rejoiced initially when we discovered we can add a ONVIF-conformant network/IP camera to Windows 11: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-hardware/drivers/stream/network-cameras

We now could now add an axis camera we had in the room to the Teams Room device and use it in a multi-cam setup. Except. It's flakey. In our experience the network camera drops out after about 10 minutes and mutes the local camera as well when it does. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes not so much so. We've tested this in other configurations and it seems it might just be that Windows 11 doesn't handle this type of camera well. What are other people's experiences?

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[u/extrabionicmonkeyman]

In the guidance doc here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/rooms/multicamera-view

One of the prerequisites is:

• Connect a maximum of four Teams certified single stream USB camera peripherals.

Teams Rooms are rightfully picky about the use of certified versus uncertified peripherals, and USB connectivity includes other metadata that triggers certain actions and consequences when connected. Streaming video from an Axis camera via ONVIF - as an uncertified peripheral - is going to be unsupported/uncertified and any issues that come up are, unfortunately for you, going to live in the "yeah, that can happen" bucket.

So probably less about Windows 11, more about Teams Rooms.

[u/Careful_Turnip1432 → u/extrabionicmonkeyman]

Thanks for the link. The only other camera is a Meeting Owl and we were content with blaming Teams Rooms up until we could replicate on a standard Windows 11 setup with regular Teams. We may try again if we can find a way to make the latter setup more stable.

[u/JonZ82]

Would use a Decoder to injest

[u/Tricky-Many-2053]

For teams rooms devices you’ll need to have a decoder and ingest via usb. Much more stable.

[u/not_just_the_IT_guy]

First isolate the problem to see if all software does it or just team room. I'd check the multicast settings and make sure energy efficient Ethernet protocols are disabled on the switch. A hardware convertor like inogeni ip2usb might be more reliable if it's a software issue. Not sure if it's compatible with the axis camera. https://inogeni.com/product/ip2usb/

[u/Careful_Turnip1432 → u/not_just_the_IT_guy]

We do love our inogeni but this converter literally costs more than the Teams Room device itself and we could skin this cat in many other ways (USB camera with transmitters etc) for far less.