The Multimedia settings in Power options can vary depending on whether your system is “On battery” or “Plugged in”. Let’s say you’re playing a video on your laptop while it’s plugged in and then the power goes out. In this case, your laptop will enter sleep mode faster than when it would have been plugged in. However, you may find it rather annoying if you are watching a movie and your computer screen keeps going off. If you want to change multimedia settings on Windows 10, this guide can show you how to do it with PowerCFG.
PowerCFG is a command-line tool that lets you manage several aspects of power plans—you can create, edit, and delete power plans. Moreover, you can enable, customize, or disable certain power features, including hibernation and the power button. This tool is also useful in troubleshooting battery and energy performance. In your case, PowerCPG will be used to change Multimedia settings in Power Options.
How to Change Multimedia Settings Using PowerCFG Tool
Under Power Options, you will find three different Multimedia settings:
- When sharing media
- Video playback quality bias
- When playing a video
Here’s how to navigate to Multimedia settings in Power Options:
- Click on the Start menu and go to Settings, then click on System.
- In the left pane, click Power & Sleep.
- In the right pane, click on Additional Power Settings to open the Power Options window.
- Click on Change plan settings, then on Change Advanced Power Settings.
- In the pop-up box, scroll down and click on Multimedia settings to see the three different settings.
- All three settings have separate settings for when your computer is “On battery” and “Plugged in”. Whenever you’re on battery, it keeps the computer from going idle, video performance is excellent and video playback is smooth.
Using the powercfg /list command, you can access and modify your system’s existing power schemes. Nevertheless, the following is the format of the command you will type to change these Multimedia options in the Command Prompt.
powercfg /setacvalueindex {Power Scheme GUID} {Power Subgroup GUID} {Power Setting GUID} <Value>
“Power Scheme GUID” will be replaced with SCHEME_CURRENT to change the values for the current power settings.
When Sharing Media
When your computer is functioning as a server, this option lets you choose what happens. If you do not want your computer to sleep while you are streaming, you can select “Prevent Idling to Sleep”. If you don’t want to keep it awake, you can select “Allow the Computer to Sleep” or you can select “Allow the Computer to Enter Away Mode” instead.
Based on the above command format, the “<Value>” or last number (1) in the below-mentioned command is what you use to set the option:
powercfg /setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 9596fb26-9850-41fd-ac3e-f7c3c00afd4b 03680956-93bc-4294-bba6-4e0f09bb717f 1
With this command, when the last value is 0 it means to take no action, 1 means to prevent your computer from sleeping, 2 means to enable away mode.
When Playing Video
When playing a video, you can select whether your computer should Optimize Video Quality, Optimize Power Saving, or Stay Balanced. Multimedia setting “When Playing video” is useful when you want to change configuration quickly on battery power but don’t want to compromise on video quality. Based on the command format mentioned earlier, the “<Value>” or last number (2) in the command below is what you will use to set what happens when in battery mode:
powercfg /setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 9596fb26-9850-41fd-ac3e-f7c3c00afd4b 10778347-1370-4ee0-8bbd-33bdacaade49 2
With this command, when the last value is 0 it means to optimize video quality, 1 means video playback performance bias.
Video Playback Quality Bias
Your computer can choose video quality at the expense of power and battery life, or save power while sacrificing video quality. The two options available are Video Playback Performance Bias and Video Playback Power-Saving Bias. Throughout our commands, we used SETDCVALUEINDEX which changes the option when on battery. When plugged in, everything is on maximum, so there is no need to change it.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap, we hope you were able to use the PowerCFG command-line tool in Windows 10 to change your Multimedia settings. Use the comment box below if you have a question or you want to contribute solutions.
Also, if your system throws up red flags now and then because of incompatibility issues or outdated functionality, you should check out Driver Updater. There may be problems with some devices, such as your printer, scanner, or other external devices that won’t work as it is expected to. Driver Updater scans your computer for any possible driver problems and gives you a report on outdated or missing drivers that it finds. This tool also allows you to automatically update them to the latest manufacturer-recommended versions.
