Conferencing Tips
What makes a good videoconference?
There are many factors that can affect the quality of your videoconference experience. Consider some of the following tips when you use ZoomCall or any other business videoconferencing products:
- Make sure to focus the camera the best you can before placing any conference calls. On most web cams, you can manually rotate the lens to focus the picture.
- Make sure that there is adequate lighting on you and particularly, in front of you. This is one of the biggest factors in the quality of the video image. Poor lighting can lead to a very grainy or pixilated image
- Make sure that you are not backlit by a strong light source or by bright daylight from a window behind you. Background light can cause your image to look darker than normal.
- Treat the conference just like a meeting at the office. Dress neatly and appropriately to enhance your image on camera. Avoid very intense colors, such as reds, as they tend to "bleed" on screen. Shirts and blouses in pastel colors look better than bright whites do. Avoid all-light or all-dark clothing, which might trick the automatic brightness control of most cameras. If you are wearing too much light-colored clothing, the camera will automatically darken the picture, making your face appear shadowed. Also, avoid plaids, stripes and prints because the other conference participants might watch your clothing "move" rather than listen to what you are saying.
- Sit comfortably in front of the camera, and make sure that your face, shoulders and the top part of your torso are on camera and centered.
- Try not to make too many sudden moves on camera while in a conference, and do not move the camera after the start of the conference. Excessive motion on camera tends to overload your network bandwidth and may lead to choppy video, and even loss of audio.
- Try to find a quiet and comfortable place for your videoconference, without excessive background noise.
- If you are in an open environment, consider using a pair of headphones and a separate microphone to reduce the extraneous noise in your videoconference, as well as, be courteous to those around you.
- Speak clearly and into the microphone. However, there is no need to shout, as most microphones (including those built into cameras and PCs) are powerful enough to pick up normal speech. If you are not sure about the level of your microphone, or how loudly you should talk, go to the Setup / Hardware screen in your application, and use the Wizard to test your microphone and speakers.
