If you are planning to host a Zoom session for a class you are teaching, a webinar, or
some other interaction, you want to present a professional image.
There are a few simple tweaks you can implement that can make a big difference in how your
viewers perceive you in a Zoom session.
They just take a little forethought and a few simple adjustments.
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First, let me quickly mention a couple of basic filmmaking preparations that apply to
a zoom session and that is lighting and audio.
You should place your computer between a light source and yourself so that your face is properly
lighted.
Here, I'm facing a window so that my face is lit by diffuse natural light.
Also, you may need to prop your computer up higher or tilt the screen so that the camera
is near your line of sight.
Second, get close enough to your computer's microphone to be clearly heard.
If you are hosting a lot of zoom sessions in your profession, it might be worth it to
get a good external microphone.
You might use a headset or earbuds or a higher quality external microphone as you see here.
You also want to ensure there are no distracting movements happening behind you and no distracting
sounds in the room or outside.
Let's now look at how to adjust the Zoom settings on your computer to improve the quality
of the video.
So first hover your cursor over the screen and go over to video and select video settings.
And this opens up a menu and one of the first things you can do is to select touch up my
appearance.
And what that does is it smooths out your skin tones and basically just drops a filter over
your image.
It's very subtle, and you have to toggle back and forth to actually see what it's
doing.
Unfortunately, it doesn't remove wrinkles or gray hair, but it will smooth out your
image a bit.
Let's next consider the background for your zoom session.
And you can use a real-time background, which you would select none.
I'm currently using a virtual background.
And it's an image that I took in my house.
In fact, I walked around my house and took images in my study.
Various images.
And that will allow me to host a zoom session from virtually anywhere in the world and it'll
look like I'm presenting from my living room.
Or my study or my office wherever I want that to be.
You can also select an image of an outdoor scene.
This is an image from one of my study sites in Belize.
And if I were presenting, hosting a zoom session with colleagues who are familiar with this
type of setting, they might appreciate the view.
And I put in a few others that I've taken from various locations where I've worked.
You can also use a video as a background.
And this is one I downloaded from the internet.
You can find such images, both still images and video on various websites.
You can just do a search to find them.
You can also reverse the image if that make sense.
If you have a green screen, you want to select this box and then the system will be able
to take that into account when it sets up your virtual background.
Another option is to blur your image background like this.
And this may be in a situation where you want to give the impression that you are in an
office or a laboratory or someplace like that.
but you don't want people to be able to read the labels on bottles or the titles of
your books or whatever you might have behind you.
You can blur an image in Photoshop if you have it.
But there are online apps that you can also use.
Just do a search and you'll find several.
The downside of virtual backgrounds is that the edges of your image can look unreal.
You'll just have to decide what looks best for your particular situation.
Now let's look at audio settings.
Good quality audio is essential for a successful zoom session.
So it's a good idea to check these settings before you begin.
Let's look at the speaker first. And you can test your speaker by tapping this bar.
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If you don't hear the music, then doublecheck and make sure the speakers that you want to
be using are selected.
And you can also adjust the output volume by using this scroll bar.
Now going down to the microphone, again you want to make sure that the microphone you
want to be using is selected.
And I'm going to switch to my USB audio microphone and to test it you simply talk
and the response is shown here in the input level bar.
If you don't see anything, again you want to check and make sure you selected the correct
input microphone.
To adjust the volume, you have to deselect the auto adjust volume and then you are able
to access the scroll bar and adjust the volume input.
You can also access all these settings over here.
You can see you can select a speaker.
Test your speaker and microphone from this point without opening up the settings menu.
If something goes wrong during your zoom session and you need to make an adjustment, you can
do it from here.
The same with the video you can switch your virtual background for example from this point.
Well, those are just a few ways to ensure quality audio and video when conducting a
zoom session.
This is the scientist videographer.
Thanks for watching.
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