Several people have complained about a weird bug in Microsoft Teams. The app apparently mirrors faces and video feed. Microsoft is reportedly aware of the issue, and could soon offer a fix for the same.
The “mirror camera effect” is a surprisingly common problem that professionals relying on Microsoft Teams, have complained about. Strangely, the Teams app does not yet have the simple feature to mirror everything.
Flipped webcam images in Microsoft Teams Meetings a common but randomly occurring bug:
Microsoft is planning to fix the flipped webcam issue in Teams Meetings. According to a recent comment on the Microsoft Teams UserVoice page, the company is finalizing a fix and plans to roll it out to users soon.
Alex from the Microsoft Teams engineering team said: “Thank you for your continued feedback, the team is currently planning for this work. We will share an update as soon as one is available.”
“Note: Your meeting attendees receive a non-mirrored video including the image of you and any text, whiteboards, etc. The image and video in your Call Monitor screen is shown to you only, as if you were looking in a mirror.”
Microsoft to address issues with flipped webcam images in Teams Meetings https://t.co/DoGKE4tHSC
— OnMSFT.com (@onmsft) June 21, 2021
What the Microsoft Teams engineering team is suggesting is that the app only mirrors the video in the preview that the presenter sees. The other meeting participants see the unmirrored view. In other words, everybody, except the presenter is seeing the correct webcam view.
Despite the clarity on the issue, many users have been complaining on Microsoft’s UserVoice and Tech Community forums about the webcam mirroring bug.
Hello! I am trying to teach over @MicrosoftTeams using a @HUEHD webcam to show writing. The camera image is flipped in my test call, which seems bad? The forums say that the webcam test call image is what my students will see. Any help out there @TeamsUG @MartinRGalpin ?
— Michael O’Neill (@CheMichael7) May 7, 2020
It appears some third-party cameras and older Windows PCs are prone to the mirror camera effect bug inside Microsoft Teams. One of the comments on the UserVoice post reads:
“Teams has issues with some Logitech webcams (mine is a BRIO) where video get flipped randomly and the experience is not consistent. So, the ability to flip video is also to deal with issues like this”.
Zoom and Skype for Business users can easily mirror everything:
Microsoft Teams does not provide any built-in option to reverse the mirroring effect during meetings. This means users are stuck with whatever webcam feed the platform accepts and pushes forward.
Some Microsoft Teams users have been fiddling with third-party solutions that sit between the webcam feed and the app. These solutions manipulate the webcam feed and send across a modified feed to the Teams app. Needless to mention, one of the features of these third-party apps is to offer a corrected image of the presenter.
Actually, it's disorienting because the picture is NOT flipped. The camera is pointing the opposite direction as your eyes, so left to one, is right to the other.
You should be able to check mirroring in your camera settings. This would happen with any webcam software— Rubellite💖Fae—🌻✊🏴🏳️🌈🇵🇸 (@RubelliteFae) September 28, 2020
It is not clear why Microsoft does not offer such a simple setting. Zoom and Skype for Business already have a toggle button to mirror everything that the webcam broadcasts.
According to the latest numbers, more than 4000 people have upvoted the post on the UserVoice forum that discusses the mirror camera effect. Although Microsoft has indicated it will offer a fix, there’s no confirmed timeline.
When the fuck did we decide that out-of-context quoting some random assholes on Twitter, interspersed with a handful of newly authored sentences, constitutes journalism? How are people getting paid for this? Guess I’d better go delete old tweets. clowns