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Microsoft reveals dramatic power saving on Microsoft Teams video meetings

Microsoft has recently announced that it has been working on a whole host of improvements for its Teams video conferencing platform aimed at improving the overall experience for Windows PCs. 

With the use of video calling being a core component of the Teams software, Microsoft decided to focus its efforts on reducing the overall power consumption by reducing the CPU and graphics loads when on video calls via the application. 

Since June 2020, Microsoft has claimed to have reduced this by 50%. The Microsoft engineers have been hard at work looking to optimise the camera to cut the load on the CPU and improve the overall GPU usage across video meetings particularly for meetings that have 10 or more users on. In addition to this, Microsoft have also looked to improve the code for automatic features like exposure, white balance as well as aliasing. 

One of Microsoft’s program managers at Microsoft Research, Robert Aichner went on to add that Microsoft has been constantly testing power consumption for video calls as well as screen sharing which produces high energy hungry processes during the whole process of video calling end to end. 

"Isolating and optimizing each of these processes enabled us to reduce power consumption up to 50% for energy-intensive scenarios such as having over 10 users in a meeting when everyone has their video turned on”, added Robert Aichner who focuses on the use of machine learning to improve both audio and video quality. 

Better still, Microsoft revealed that major ground was gained by recreating how Teams handled grid videos that used many participants. 

Aichner went on to reveal that “A simple 3x3 video grid once required nine distinct rendering operations. By combining the streams and composing them into a single video, we have been able to consolidate operations in video rendering and significantly reduce the power requirements for each device used”. 

It doesn’t come as a surprise that the market in which Teams operates is extremely competitive where performance is one of the most important elements to improve in order to gain and retain users on Microsoft Teams. 

Next Steps? 

If you are a business that is looking to implement Microsoft Teams or require some extra Teams training or are looking for help with anything else Office 365 related then please give our team of IT experts a call today to discuss how we can help your business. 

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