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 ...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC