Microsoft recently released the Anniversary Update bringing a lot of new features and improvements to Windows 10. Alongside, it also has some things broken. One of the new issues that popped up recently is, the Webcam freezing issue. This bug won’t let you make Skype calls if you’re on the Anniversary Update. Users say their cameras are either not working at all or freezing constantly after the update along with webcam based applications like Skype and more.

According to one member of the Microsoft's Windows Camera team, the problem is caused by the Anniversary Update removing support for two video compression formats, including MJPEG and H.264 codecs on Windows 10, and opting to support YUY2 encoding instead.
The company claims that the decision was made to prevent performance issues due to the change on how Windows Store apps can now access the camera features with the Anniversary Update.

In the Anniversary Update, Microsoft allows multiple apps to access a single webcam at the same time. The problem with MJPEG is that multiple apps could then decode the stream at the same time, which would reduce system performance unnecessarily.
It appears Microsoft’s simple solution of disallowing compression formats led to a much bigger problem. Potentially millions of webcams were suddenly broken, since they would freeze after failing to enable the blacklisted formats. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem, but says they will not be issuing a permanent fix until September.

How To Fix the webcam freezing issue on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Windows 10’s Anniversary Update just broke millions of webcams. Microsoft supposedly has a fix coming in September, but there’s a registry hack you can use to fix the problem and get your webcam working properly today.

Also Read Windows 10 Registry Tweaks to Enable hidden features and optimize performance

How to resolve the freezing issue on webcams on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Press the Windows key + R Key together to open the Run command

On the Run searchbar type regedit, and click OK to open the Windows registry

Now Browse the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\ Platform




Right-click on the right side, select New, and click DWORD (32-bit) Value.

Following this the pop up window will ask for a value name. Name the new key as EnableFrameServerMode

Click OK.



Now double-click this newly created key and set it its value data to 0 and also make sure that its base is selected as Hexadecimal Once done click OK

Restart your computer to complete the task.



Once your computer restarts test your USB camera one more time, perhaps making a Skype video call, and now you should no longer experience the freezing issue. Make a note of this change for later in September when the official fix comes out so you can undo this fix if necessary. In case it is still not resolved you will have to wait for the official patch to arrive

  This is the only temporary fix available for now and it works. However, lets hope Microsoft releases the fix soon, till then try this workaround and let us know in the comments if it works.