- Everyday, more and more of
us begin video conferencing.
So, in order to stand apart
from the rest of the madding
crowd, it is important for us to up
our video conferencing game.
Now, in my opinion, the
best way for you to up
your video conferencing game is to improve
the quality of audio.
But a lot of you are also interested
in improving the quality of your video,
and adding a little bit of interest,
a little bit of panache to your video.
That's what we're gonna
take a look at today.
How do you add some panache
to your Zoom videos, on DottoTech.
(upbeat music)
Steve Dotto here;
How the heck are you doing this fine day?
As more of us are gravitating towards Zoom
as a conferencing tool as we are working,
increasingly from home and
having to do more and more
video conferencing, I thought
I would share with you,
actually, I didn't think
I would share with you.
So many people have been
asking me, in our comments,
in our other Zoom tutorials,
about how to use the green screen option
and how to use the virtual background,
and the different video options
that are built in to Zoom, so I thought,
we should do a video on that.
That is what we are doing right now.
So the screen that you see me in right now
is actually my Zoom screen.
I just don't happen to have anybody else
in the room with me,
but as a host of a room,
this is what you will be facing.
Down here, in the very
bottom of that screen
is your video options.
Now actually, there are two places,
within the room itself
where you can set up
different video options.
One is down here.
We go down to the bottom and click.
You can choose your different resources.
I have, for example, have
two different cameras
that are enabled on my computer.
One is my display iSight,
because I'm using a MAC,
so there's a builtin iSight camera,
which frankly sucks.
And my Logitech BRIO, which
is my camera of choice,
which you see me talking
to you on right now.
We can also go in to
the video settings here,
which open this dialogue box that allow us
to control the overall video settings
that we are displaying.
For example, if we want to
have the original ratio,
if we have a webcam
that doesn't necessarily
broadcast widescreen, or
if we're going widescreen.
You could also choose to
turn on and enable HD.
The default is not to have HD turned on,
and you'll see the quality
difference when I turn off HD.
I would think twice about turning on HD.
It's one thing for me now,
when I'm recording this demo
so I have good quality video on YouTube,
but it's an entirely other issue
if you are using your
bandwidth to upload your video
and you're in HD as you're broadcasting,
because, as there's so much extra stress
on our systems, you
might wanna think about
just broadcasting in standard definition,
because there's so much
bandwidth being used up
by all of the different
people who are online,
that bandwidth is
becoming increasingly dear
and I think we've all noticed
a degradation in service
of different applications.
So, turning off HD might be a good idea
for most video conferences.
Just food or thought.
You could also mirror your video here,
which basically flips the video
if it's important to you.
Especially if you're pointing to things,
and you're verbally saying,
to the right, to the left,
to the right, to the left,
and it's mirrored, so
everybody gets all confused.
Now, if I say to the right,
it is gonna be to the right.
If I say, to the left,
it's indeed to the left.
But if I turn it back to
regular, non-mirroring video,
then it's the opposite.
The right for me is your left,
if that makes sense.
I don't know why they do this,
but they also have this thing,
and let me turn on.
First of all, lemme just show
you what my video looks like.
Move off to the side; there's my face.
Hello, here's Steve's face.
Do I need to be touched up?
This is what touching
up my appearance does.
Is it softens the focus on my face.
It's sort of like when
they used to put Vaseline
on the lens for different Hollywood stars
so that you didn't see
the age wrinkles as much.
I'm ready for my closeup now,
Mr. DeMille, I might say,
but you can touch up your
experience if you choose to.
I don't know.
It's not something that's
very important to me.
But you can certainly do that.
What people are really
interested in is this.
The virtual background.
And we can choose it from
this dialogue box here,
or you can choose it
as a popup right here,
saying choose virtual background.
Now Zoom has the capability
to be able to discern
what your background is, relatively well,
and key that out.
In other words, block it out,
and bring another background in.
So, if I wanted, and they
give you these presets.
So if I wanted the Golden Gate Bridge,
I just choose it.
But as you can see when
I move my head around,
it doesn't do a very good job.
The reason, and it would do a good job
if say I had a nice white background,
but I have a very busy
background here in my office.
And I've set up my office just like this,
because I wanted to have a living set.
I wanted to have something
that brought people
in to my home environment and
made them feel comfortable,
and that's why I've got this set
that's set up to be an
interesting environment
that I shoot in.
But a lot of you don't
necessarily want that.
A lot of you wanna block off
the signs of your real life.
Perhaps there's a mess behind you,
or you don't think it's
professional to be seen
in your home environment.
So you have the option of
using the virtual background.
If you've got a fairly neutral background,
it will work well.
But if you don't have a
fairly neutral background,
then you wanna use a green screen,
and I'll show you the green
screen in just a minute.
I'll set mine up.
I'll go through the
process of setting it up.
It's a pain in the ass.
I don't like doing it all that much,
but I'll do it just for you.
Just because I know you wanna see it.
But before we do that, they
give you a whole variety
of options here, small
selection of options,
of backgrounds and
videos that you can play
in the background if
you want to kind of up
your background game.
And you could also put
your own backgrounds in.
If you have a branded
background that you want
for your business, or you've got an image
that you think is a good idea,
you could upload that image.
Now I did, I went on my walk today,
I took a lovely picture
of the marina by my house.
And there it is.
So there I've got the marina in place.
So you could put your own picture in.
Now you can imagine if
you're a corporate identity,
you might wanna have your
logo and your corporate
information here, so you can
use it from a professional
or from a comfort and
kind of a personal basis
of adding these images.
Plus, if you do a search online,
you're gonna find dozens of other services
that will allow you to download
and purchase backgrounds.
So, you can have yourself on the bridge
of the Starship Enterprise,
or any other environment
that you choose that you want.
You can license and you can
purchase background images
that are pre-baked for you.
But as I say, looking at
the quality, and it does,
it looks kind of, it looks hokey,
because it keeps cutting in and out,
because it's having trouble
resolving the background
that I'm against.
So let me show you how it looks
when we set up the green screen.
So I guess I better set
up my green screen first.
Just give me a minute here.
It'll take me a few seconds.
I got one of these popup green screens.
It's got a metal band running through it
that's steel that pops open.
It maintains a memory
and it holds it taught.
You could also get green
screens that are pipe-based
that's basically just
a cloth that you pull
in a pipe and you stretch out.
Those are even more awkward
to set up than these,
but this is kind of an explosion.
Farley, the dog, hates it when I do this.
I better get my stand ready for this.
So this has got a single point stand
that I can open up.
What I do for you guys.
(squeaky laughing)
Here we go, got it, nobody was hurt.
I'm fine, I'm fine, don't
worry about it; it's all good.
There we go.
I need that.
Okay, we got it, I just
gotta get it centered.
Just give me a minute here,
and I'll get this figured out.
And I gotta go this way here.
There we go.
All right, oh, the dog's here.
Okay, Farley, get out of there.
Get out of there.
You're gonna mess everything up, Farley.
It's not great, it's not terrible.
Oh gosh, okay.
So I'm just gonna show you
how the background looks now,
once I use the green screen.
And you see how much better it is now?
Oh, wait a minute.
Lemme get to.
Oh, Farley, off!
He just made a break for it.
(dog barking)
Okay, so now I've got it set up.
So let's, so we can see
the green screen here
behind me and what I
did is I actually zoomed
my camera in a little bit.
I used my camera settings to zoom it in,
because the field was too wide.
So that's something that
you're gonna have to
pay attention to.
But now I can choose that nice background
that I had and look a
the beautiful background.
And you see how now,
because the green screen
is in place, as I move
around, it keys it out nicely,
and looks very natural.
It looks really good.
It looks almost realistic.
Now I should point out
that you may have trouble.
It may not pick up the
color of your green screen
right away, and if it does,
there's a little eyedropper
tool here that, this is
what could happen to you.
You could end up with something like this,
which is, when you go to create it,
which is it's picked up the wrong color.
It hasn't recognized the
color of your green screen.
And you could use a different color.
You could use a blue screen.
Or you can just use the color of your wall
at that particular case.
But if you puck up the color,
all you do is you go in
to the settings here,
you choose this kind of
little crosshair tool,
and then you click on, turn it on again,
click on, see how that little plus there,
you click on the green screen,
and that tells the computer
what color to key out
in the background.
And you can have something
like a still image,
as we said, or you could
have, this is very cool.
Look at how cool the Aurora borealis
looks behind me now.
That is pretty awesome, I think.
So, it's pretty easy for you
to change out the background
if you wanna improve the quality
of your video conference.
I think where this is
really most important,
it eliminates boredom
for us in a lot of cases.
But where this is important,
where it works well,
is if you have branding
or you need to set some sort
of a corporate identity,
and you wanna include that
and since we don't have the option
of welcoming people in to our offices now,
we can project our office
out in to cyber space
to whoever it is we happen
to be visiting with.
I hope that you found this useful.
Looking forward to your
comments and suggestions.
I read each and every one.
Make sure you give this video a thumbs up.
If you found it valuable,
share it with your friends.
And if you've not yet subscribed
to the DottoTech channel, please subscribe
and make sure your ring
the notification bell
so you hear when any new
videos are published.
We've got a whole series of videos
on how to use Zoom.
I encourage you to watch those
and again, share those.
Till next time, I'm Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle.
