Windows Studio Effects

Windows 11 includes a set of AI-based camera and audio enhancements called Windows Studio Effects that can help improve your audio and video calls. These enhancements include:

Background effect. This video effect is used to blur your background during video calls. You can set it to a standard (heavy) or portrait (light) blur.

Eye contact. This video effect makes it appear that you are looking directly into the webcam when you are looking at the screen under the webcam.

Automatic framing. This video effect uses a set of hardware-dependent capabilities to zoom and crop the image sent from your webcam as you move around in front of the PC during a call.

Voice focus. This audio effect mutes background noises so that the other people on a call can hear your voice better.

Unfortunately, these effects require a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), a special AI processor that is quite uncommon at this time. So it’s possible your PC cannot support these features.

Windows Studio Effects is supported on PCs powered by the Intel Core Ultra family of processors, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor, and other modern processor chipsets only.

Check to see whether your PC supports Windows Studio Effects

To quickly see whether your PC supports Windows Studio Effects, open Quick settings and try to locate a “Studio effects” quick setting button. If you see it, then your PC supports at least some of these features.

To see which features are supported, click the “Studio effects” button.

If you see camera and microphone icons at the top right of this view, your PC supports video and audio effects (mostly likely all of them). If you only see a camera icon at the top right, then your PC only supports video effects.

Even if you don’t see the “Studio effects” button in Quick settings, it’s worth looking in the Settings app too: First, open Settings and navigate to Bluetooth & devices, Cameras. Then, select your webcam under “Connected cameras” to display its settings page. If you see a section under the video preview called “Windows Studio Effects,” then your PC at least supports video effects.

If you only see a “Basic Settings” section, then your PC does not support Windows Studio Effects.

Next, navigate to System > Sound and locate your PC’s speaker or other sound output device under “Choose where to play sound.” On the page that appears, locate “Audio enhancements” and see whether “Microsoft Windows Studio Voice Focus” is available. If so, the PC also supports this effect. But if “Device Default Effects” and “Off” are the only choices, your PC doesn’t support Voice focus.

If your PC doesn’t support any of these Windows Studio Effects, it’s likely that your PC, webcam, or microphone maker includes software features with their products that work similarly. For example, most modern webcams support background blur, and most premium PCs include AI-based noise reduction capabilities.

Configure Windows Studio Effects

You configure each of the Windows Studio Effects in the Windows Setting app. But as noted above, The video and audio effects settings are found in different locations in Settings.

Configure the video effects

The video effects are configured by navigating to Bluetooth & devices > Cameras and selecting your webcam.

Configuration is straightforward: All three effects have On/Off toggles, and Background effects can be configured to Standard blur or Portrait blur when enabled.

Configure Voice focus

Voice focus, the lone audio effect, is configured by navigating to System > Sound and selecting your default audio playback device under “Choose where to play sound.” After ensuring that “Audio enhancements” is set to “Microsoft Windows Studio Voice Focus,” expand that option and set “Voice Focus” to “On.” That’s it.

Toggle Windows Studio Effects on or off

You may sometimes wish to toggle one or more of the Windows Studio Effects while making a video or audio call. Some apps support this directly–for example, the Camera app that’s included with Windows 11 has a handy “Windows Studio Effects” button that lets you configure the effects on the fly–but you can’t always rely on that.

Because most apps do not integrate directly with Windows Studio Effects, you can instead use its quick setting button to make configuration changes. To do so, start an audio or video call in Microsoft Teams or whichever app you use, open Quick settings, and click the “Studio Effects” button.

Now, you can use this small interface to toggle individual features and configure the Background effect, and the changes will occur instantly in the calling app your using. When you’re happy with the results, just close Quick settings and get on with the call.

Check out the Quick settings chapter to learn how to add buttons like “Studio Effects” to Quick settings if you don’t see it there

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