How do you look your best on Zoom? in this Zoom tutorial which is the first in a series of
three we shall especially be focusing on the camera including lighting the type of camera
and how to use your phone as a webcam you will further discover how to use the software that
comes with your webcam to make you look your best on Zoom I'm Simon and this is computer tutoring
great so we've got a lot to get through make sure you subscribe and click on that
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okay before we get started what are the basics well before you start just think
about what you would do before you would meet somebody face-to-face I mean you'd
wash and comb your hair you'd have a shave or maybe put put on some makeup you know at
least maybe put on a shirt and in that way you're showing that you're being courteous
once we're all spruced up how can making best use of our camera help us look our best on zoom
I think the best way to help us understand how the use of our camera can help us look our best
on zoom is by looking at the worst position in our room so let's have a look at the worst position
for using zoom okay here we go at what I can safely assume is one of the worst positions when
it comes to a zoom meeting to position yourself your back is to the biggest light source which is
the window the light is streaming into your camera lens and therefore people are just it's just going
to be bright on their screens people aren't going to be able to see your face yeah this is not good
plus as well if you look that I'm looking down on the camera and give myself a bad neck plus as well
and end up with 50 million double chins it's not great at all so you might be thinking well I can't
do that I have to sit with my back to the window my my room is like that I can't change it around
so if that's the case your goal is to minimize the amount of light that's behind you shut those
blinds shut those curtains and try and get some light ahead of you let's see if we can do that
and improve this image slightly so there we go I've put some lights on in front of me facing me
and I've closed the blind I've closed the blinds on my windows here so it's muting the light it
also stops people looking over my shoulder at me here and in that way you can actually now see my
face of course the best position is to face the window the Sun is always going to win so if you
can arrange it so that you can face the window okay now I've opened my blinds and I'm facing
the window and as you can see the light is a lot better so the next thing you can do is raise up
your laptop basically if you're working from a laptop or if you've got another camera raise
that up so if you see here I mean sometimes people are really sort of close here and then they're
sort of looking down you know like so especially on the lap as well it's just not a great angle
you're just looking straight up and you end up seeing how many nostril hairs your friend
has it's not great so try and get some books and encyclopaedias, boxes anything to raise up the laptop
there you go so you're not looking up something so it's a little bit more natural I mean if you
imagine if you had you know in real life he had this conversation with somebody and you're ending
up looking up their nose you know this is the ridiculous isn't it so try and raise that laptop
up here so you want it to be sort of eye level really you don't want it to be too high so it's
looking sort of completely down on you so you're looking not up not looking down you're looking
straight at it it just makes it look a little better okay the next thing you might need to do
is invest in a separate webcam now the webcam I'm using at this moment is the one that comes with
the laptop I mean how can you call this a camera I bought a Logitech c920 and I've installed it on
my computer and you can swap the cameras down in the bottom left-hand corner here and I'm going to
choose my HD Pro webcam and let's have a look at what the difference is so it the colouring
the quality is just so much better and it also includes extra features such as autofocus there
we go if I just focus in on my rings here you see and if I just start moving back you can see it's
automatically focusing if I take out I'm a bit out of it and then I'm in focus the webcam the
Logitech one I've got here even comes with its own microphone so say you're plugging or trying
to use this with a desktop computer you don't need to add an extra microphone right now that you have
your camera set up what are some other things you can do to make you look your best on zoom
well the first thing is if you are delivering a presentation a speech or lecture make sure that
you look into the camera now it's all too tempting to look at the screen because on the screen is
where all of the participants are in their faces and you want to see their reactions and trust me
you will be looking at the screen sometime it's just natural but where possible try and force
your eyes up and look into the camera and in that way you will be truly making eye contact
with your audience so just imagine I mean it could be that you want to give a presentation and you're
looking people when you wanted to welcome them you can say planet hello everyone I would like
to welcome you to the meeting let's try that by looking into the camera hello everybody I'd
like to welcome everyone to the meeting so do you see the difference that makes so even though the
camera is an inanimate object and it is sometimes so hard to look at something our eyes to look at
something inanimate our eyes are naturally drawn to movement so when we see movement on our screen
that's where we want to look so to make sure that you look your best on Zoom when delivering
a presentation looking to the camera as much as you can if you're using zoom with multiple
screens like me I've got a screen on my left and one in front of me try to place your zoom window
on the same screen as your webcam so if you've got an external webcam place that webcam on the
same screen as your zoom window and in that way you will be looking at least facing your zoom
participants often I see people place their webcam in front of them while the zoom window
is on another screen so when those people are talking to you you just see the side of their
head sometimes the camera the screens are quite far apart so you end up seeing just the back of
the person's head so try to put your webcam and your zoom window on the same screen did you know
that zoom has some camera options to help you look your best what do I mean well if you click down in
the bottom left-hand corner at the pop-up menu that says stop video if we go and now click on
video settings here we can enable HD so we can see I've enabled HD here let me just move me to
the side and moving close if I uncheck enable HD let's have a look at what happens so sometimes I
do this if I my internet connections are a bit slow HD takes more bandwidth meaning it needs a
faster into speed let me put that back on here's an interesting checkbox touch up my appearance so
if I go closely you can see that my look okay here but now I'm going to uncheck this I can't
believe I'm doing this on YouTube so now you can see all my freckles and my lines so if you
want to look your best on Zoom make sure that the touch up my appearance checkbox is ticked
great so I finished that so I'm just going to click on the cross in the top right hand corner
what settings can you adjust with your webcam to help you look your best on zoom well as I
mentioned before I'm using the Logitech c920 camera and it comes with logy capture software
so make sure you install it it looks something like this and it allows you to adjust some of
the settings so what do I mean I can zoom in here and I can actually then pan the window to look at
a purser and part of me and all of this will be updated in the zoom window if I just minimize this
here you can see my zoom window obviously I'm zoomed in a little bit here it's probably not
the best view so I'm just gonna zoom back and just click on the reset button here go to yes
great so let's move down what else can you do well I've got my auto focus switched on I can turn that
off if there's any problem with that and actually have it manually focused sometimes you might want
to make sure you're able to focus it looks like there's some grease on the lens there doesn't it
let me switch auto focus back on I also have auto white balance switched on so if I click on that I
can adjust to make sure you give it a bit more of a warmer feel if I want to or looks like a sepia
look doesn't it all the way down to a very bluish type tinge let me turn that back on there I have
different image settings that I can change so if I wanted to decrease or increase my color saturation
to give me a glow just adjust it to make sure I look absolutely right I can adjust my brightness
as well if my room's a little bit too dark and my contrast okay and in that way I can get myself
absolutely perfect and look my best on Zoom here we go it's image sharpness that I have here so
brightness contrast sharpness color so I can get my best and again if I minimize it all appears and
updates in the zoom window what I must make sure I do in the zoom window is make sure that I choose
the logy capture camera it's like it's a separate camera in your zoom window so make sure you choose
the logic capture camera let me go back here you can also have a little bit of fun with this so
if I click on this little mad wand here I've got some filters so this is my standard filter here is
say for instance there's just too much Sun going on outside it's a little bit of overexposure oh
I remember when Zoom started way back in 2011 I think you get the idea with that this one is like
Technos like an old pop video maybe you know from the 80s Bam Bam Bam Bam ba bababa the one with the
black teeth right so or just you're in the Hall of Mirrors you know - "Eye Eye" - a little bit blue or
feeling a bit nostalgic I mean it's fantastic each one just to let you know let's just go to this one
here the old pop video if I minimize this all of this is reflected in the zoom window okay let's
just go back here and I'm gonna go back to normal view okay just back in the logic capture software
I'm just on the source one just at the top here if I go all the way down there's an option for
vertically flip source that makes me look upside down if I minimize logic capture this will aid
confusion won't sit in the zoom window in the logitech capture software window if I scroll
down there's an option for border and if I click on this yellowy type border notice I can write the
colors in hexadecimal here if not you can just choose standard colors and I can drag the width
of a border and it will add a border around let's have a look and see how that looks in zoom or you
can see that there let me just enter full screen in zoom yeah this will create confusion especially
if you are in gallery view because it will look like you're speaking I suppose this doesn't really
help you look your best but it's enormous fun let me exit full screen by clicking on the top right
hand corner and click on my logic capture window here and I'm just going to turn my border off just
I untucking source so just remember if you don't have your Logitech camera software open I closed
that down then you won't be able to see it in zoom and I get this symbol here so what I would
do is go down to this little pop-up menu here and just choose my HD Pro webcam c920 and that's fine
did you know that you can use your own mobile phone as a webcam a cell phone this is how you
do it okay how do you use your mobile phone as a webcam firstly you'll need to download the
droid cam software on your computer and on your mobile phone this is using droid cam although I
hear there is a version for the iPhone I don't use the iPhone I only have an Android hence I
will do this for the Android so you can download the droid cam from this website and install it
once it's installed you can open it up and here we go this will allow you to connect to your mobile
phone you will also need to download and install the app on your mobile phone this is how you do
it on your phone if you want to use your phone as a webcam you will need to allow USB debugging
on your phone it's not too complicated this is how you do it swipe down from the top of your
phone and click on the COG at the very top right scroll down until you see about phone and click on
about phone then scroll until you see software information and click on software information
then you need to tap the build button a few times and it eventually will let you know that you're
near to being a developer once it's released you need to add in your pin code and now developer
options will be available click on the little back arrow at the top click on the back arrow
again then if you scroll down all the way down to the bottom notice the developer options are
available click on developer options then we can scroll down until we find USB debugging and then
click on the slider to allow USB debugging and then click on OK this is how you would install
droid cam on your phone first you would go to the Play Store and find click on search for an
app type in droid cam there it is there droid cam wireless webcam then click on the install button
wait for the product to be installed great and now we can open the products open droid cam and we can
allow pictures and allow so now what we need to do now what we can do is we can now connect our
mobile phone via USB cable one connection in the bottom of the mobile phone and one connection to
our computer when the phone asks to allow data access I always click on allow so now I'm going
to click on the Refresh device just here and now I can see my Samsung here I'm going to use it for
video and audio and I'm going to click on start and now I can use my mobile phone as a webcam and
when I start in zoom so let me just click on zoom here at the bottom and start a new meeting just
maximize my window I now can choose if I click on this drop down list and choose droid cam source 2
I can now see them and start my video that would help I can now see myself and I'm using my mobile
phone as a webcam ok as I said this is the first in a series of three tutorial videos the second
we're going to look at how to make you sound good on Zoom for the third tutorial we'll be looking at
enhancing your Wi-Fi making sure that it's as smooth as possible what sort of things do you
like to do to ensure you look your best on Zoom please use the comments below we'd really like
to hear from you we're on Instagram and Twitter if you are to leave a comment we'd love to hear
from you I'm Simon from computer tutoring and I just want to say thank you so much for watching