Effects quality, the device benchmark and CPU fallback EN

What Auto decides for you, why a CPU warning matters, and how to re-run the check.

Camera background effects, such as background blur or a virtual background, use an AI model to find you in each camera frame. The Effects quality setting controls how much work that model does. By default it is set to Auto, and Rekorder runs a short benchmark on your computer to pick the level for you. This article explains what Auto picks, what the CPU warning means, and how to run the check again.

Effects quality only matters when a camera effect is turned on. If your camera effect is set to None, this setting does nothing.

Where to find the setting

Click the Rekorder icon in your toolbar to open the popup.
Open Settings, then the Camera tab.
Find Effects quality.

Under the menu you'll see two lines:

Used level: the level your next recording will use. While the benchmark runs, it says "Detecting best level for this computer…"
Used GPU: the name of the graphics processor (GPU) Chrome is using.

The levels

Auto (recommended): Rekorder measures your computer and picks one of the levels below.
Best quality: uses the most detailed model and the richest blur. This gives the cleanest edges around you, but it's the most demanding level.
Balanced: uses a lighter model and updates the effect a little less often. Most computers end up on this level.
Best performance: uses the lightest settings. Recording stays smooth on slower computers, but the edges around you are less precise.

If you pick a level yourself, Rekorder always uses that level and doesn't use the benchmark result to change it.

Effects quality is separate from the Quality setting for video. That setting controls the video bitrate of every recording, and Rekorder never sets it automatically. See Resolution, frame rate and quality explained.

What Auto decides for you

The benchmark takes a few seconds. It answers two questions:

Where the camera AI model should run. The model can run on your graphics processor (GPU) or on your main processor (CPU). The GPU is normally much faster. However, on some computers, especially older laptops with built-in graphics, the GPU is slower at this work than the CPU. If the GPU isn't clearly faster, or Rekorder can't use it at all, the model runs on the CPU.
Which level your computer can keep up with. Rekorder times a demanding test and picks the highest level that fits. Best quality is only picked when the model can run on the GPU. Computers that can encode video in hardware get one extra step of headroom.

If the benchmark can't finish, Auto falls back to Balanced, or to Best performance on computers with few processor cores or little memory. Auto never falls back to Best quality.

The result is saved on your computer, so the benchmark doesn't run before every recording.

When the benchmark runs

Rekorder runs the benchmark automatically:

When the extension is installed or updated.
When you sign in.
When you switch between Offline and Cloud mode.
When Effects quality is set to Auto and your computer hasn't been measured yet.

It also runs when you ask for it, as described in the next section.

The benchmark keeps your processor and graphics busy, so you can't start a recording while it runs. If you press Start during a benchmark, you'll see Benchmark currently running with a progress bar. When the message disappears, press Start again. A small dot in the popup also shows that a benchmark is running.

Re-run the check

Run the benchmark again after you change something that affects performance. For example, you may have restarted Chrome after a graphics problem, updated your graphics drivers, or switched to a different monitor or GPU.

Open Settings > Camera in the popup.
Next to Used level, click Auto-detect.

Auto-detect always switches Effects quality back to Auto and measures your computer again. If you had picked a level yourself, that choice is replaced. Choosing Auto from the menu does the same thing.

The CPU warning

A warning triangle can appear next to the camera effect button in the popup. It can also appear on the control bar on the page you're recording and in the recorder tab. It only appears when all three of these are true:

Your camera is on.
A camera effect is selected.
The last completed benchmark found that the camera AI model has to run on the CPU.

It means the effect is running without GPU acceleration. You may see a choppier effect, a mask that lags behind your movements, or a less smooth recording overall.

Before you record, the tooltip says: "Camera AI model running on CPU, effect performance degraded. Click to run a benchmark that may restore GPU acceleration." Click the triangle to run the benchmark again. If the GPU is now usable, the warning disappears and the camera bubble switches to the faster GPU processing.

During a recording, you can't click the warning, because a benchmark would compete with the recording. The tooltip says: "Camera AI model running on CPU, effect performance degraded. Consider a browser restart."

If the warning comes back after a new benchmark, your GPU may simply be slower than your CPU for this work. In that case, running on the CPU is the faster option.

Troubleshooting

The warning stays after you click it: fully close and reopen Chrome, then click the warning again. Also check that Chrome's own graphics acceleration is on: in Chrome, open Settings > System and turn on Use graphics acceleration when available, then relaunch Chrome.
"Camera effects disabled": Chrome's graphics system (WebGL) isn't available or has crashed. Restart your browser to try to fix it. Rekorder turns off camera effects until then.
Effects are still slow on the CPU: set Effects quality to Best performance, or set the camera effect to None. None avoids the extra processing entirely.
You can't change the effect or its quality mid-recording: camera effects can't be changed while a recording is running. Stop the recording first.
The whole recording stutters, not just the effect: see Video is blurry, stutters or drops frames.