Elgato Cam Link 4k Freeze

A problem that has plagued me for the longest time.

The Elgato CamLink 4k only worked when connected directly into my laptop. Any hub or dock and it would eventually freeze.

I've spent many hours trying to debug and search solutions - to no end. Cables, software updates, firmware updates.

The answer is as follows:

Hi, I'm the CalDigit Social Media Manager.

Is your MacBook Pro Apple Silicon powered? If so, we've been tracking an issue that matches your description. Basically, ElGato video capture devices (and some other video capture cards) do not work specifically with Thunderbolt 4 docks connected to Apple Silicon computers. We believe it has something to do with how the new M-series chips handle these connections.

This behavior specifically occurs in this configuration. Swapping out the M1-M3 computer with an Intel macOS computer or Windows computer alleviates the behavior. Swapping in a Thunderbolt 3 dock works perfectly fine too from our testing. We've actually been able to daisy-chain our Thunderbolt 3 TS3 Plus to a TS4 and everything works great. It's specifically the Thunderbolt 4 + Apple Silicon part of the equation that causes issue.

There's no concrete solution for this that doesn't involve bypassing the dock or swapping out one of the affected components unfortunately.

Source: Camlink not working with caldigit dock : r/elgato

So any Thunderbolt 4 dock or hub doesn't work.