Improve Zoom Resolution with this Hack

have you spent time getting your graphics together and really wanting to level up your presentations in zoom by using a virtual camera only to discover that the quality for the other people on your call just isn't as good it's a little bit blurry people can't see everything that you put together so obviously you can go towards having larger print that's easier to see but really it would be nice if there were ways to have that higher quality image without necessarily having to have a business or an enterprise zoom account and requesting that hd and there are some tricks now today we are going to talk about a hack and i will say this is a hack it is not perfect it's not without its problems but with some little testing i have seen that it is a potential option so what is the hack well essentially there are devices that use zoom rooms so usually when we're on a computer we download zoom meeting client but there's also something called zoom rooms and there are specific devices that are compatible with zoom rooms and that use zoom rooms technology and one of those pieces of technology is the facebook portal so there are actually many companies that make zoom room compatible devices for example workplace zoom room devices that you would set up in a conference room or a meeting room so you can have remote meetings there are companies like lenovo and logitech in hp just to name a few but there are also options for your home so if you look up zoom rooms for home you will see that companies like facebook and google and amazon have all jumped on board to try and facilitate ways that people can have a zoom meeting with a portable or a smaller device so i decided when i saw a sale on the facebook portal last week that i would give this a try i have seen it tested before and i've seen it work where it boosted everyone's video quality on zoom so i decided what the heck let's test it and let's tell you if this actually works or not if you're joining me live right now i would love to know if you have tried this or if you have seen this in action maybe you didn't have it but someone joined a meeting using one of these zoom room devices and you saw the quality change so i would love to hear if anyone here has experienced that before so what i have done is i've got this i don't want to say little setup but i'm going to take you through generally what's going on today so i have a zoom meeting going on so i'm running the meeting from my main computer so this is my imac with my second monitor i've joined the meeting from my laptop and i have that connected so i'll be able to show you the what this looks like i've joined from my ipad to make sure that there are at least three people joining this call because that impacts the resolution and then we are going to join using this here so this is the facebook portal and this is the 10 inch version and you can see if you look at the back that it's got a little stand you can either have it hor you can have it vertical or you can have it horizontal and it will update and have a horizontal so those are the options that you have there it has a built-in camera the camera actually can follow you so if you are let's say just was having a conversation with a family member using the video chat feature i can walk around and the camera will actually stay with me although i have not tested that a lot and it has a microphone and you can actually switch these off completely so i can hide the camera i can disactivate or deactivate the microphone and then i can turn those back on when i want to use them so that's a quick peek at the actual device that i will be using today and the way i have it set up i have not joined the meeting yet so what happens is we have a zoom meeting that is going on right now i'm going to show you the resolution currently and i am then going to join the meeting with this device and we will watch and see what happens to the video quality the other thing i wanted to say for because i wanted to avoid one of those infinite loop issues that i am using obs as well so i'm streaming with ecam as i usually do which allows me to change my scenes in camera but for the purpose of the zoom call i am using obs so if we take a look i'm going to show you my laptop so i have my laptop connected right now and if i go over to the laptop this is what you will see so there's a delay which i i appreciate that's awkward we'll just have to deal with it so right now i am sending this obs virtual camera to zoom and this is what it looks like on the laptop as someone watching and so you can see right now that i have a sidebar here but i also put together a picture and picture and if you take a look at this right now in the meeting you will see that i have a little screen share this is actually an image that i took from the facebook portal device page and if you look at this i don't know about you you can let me know it is it's not great quality i i find this blurry on my device you can see right now what i am seeing on my laptop and it's not great you can still see it you could probably make it out but it's a little bit fuzzy and this would be hard on most people's eyes now the other thing that i want to show you is the actual resolution so if you have never done this before when you are in a zoom meeting you can actually pull up your resolution so i'm going to show you how to find that and we're going to go on my main computer if i share my screen and i go into zoom and open preferences i know it's a little bit cut off just because of the way that the screen is shared but if you can see in the top left corner i'm opening my zoom preferences i then go to statistics on the left hand menu so i go to statistics and then there's video so it might open on overall but you want to click on video and so i'm actually because i don't have my camera on for the other people in the meeting i'm not receiving anything but you can see right now that the resolution that i am sending out to other people is 640 by 360. so that is the quality that's going out and if we take a look we can do the same thing here so if i go to my zoom preferences and i pop down to statistics and video you can see i'm also receiving 640 by 360. so that is the current resolution and i can see a question here from patrick what's god's evil twin's name well it's just evil twin just evil twin so this is the resolution so you can actually see what is coming and what is going out so if you have never seen that you can always open that at any point in a zoom meeting before i go on i do want to say that if you play around with this so take a look at when you go into speaker view versus gallery view that affects what you will send and receive also if you are in full screen versus if you're if you're lower down so for example often on a zoom call on my computer i'll actually compress people into smaller windows towards the top of my computer so that i can then see if i'm taking notes or i'm working on something that will impact what's coming and going so you do want to try to have it as big as possible and to get a better resolution you usually want to be in speaker view which is what i am in right now on these devices so hopefully that makes sense now we're going to do the test so let's actually go back to i'm going to close the settings here let's go back to my macbook to see the quality so let's take another look this is we've got two scenes that i've set up so one is just having a sidebar which you can read this it says testing the quality and resolution of the virtual camera it's readable but the quality it's a little bit grainy around the edges it's just a little bit blurry it's not very crisp if we take a look at the picture in picture you'll see same thing you could technically make it out but that small print really really difficult to see so i'm going to leave it on this screen i'll really quickly i'll do one quick thing over here with the facebook portal i just want to make sure i don't share any private information like my pin so if we go over to my overhead shot i can't pull this too far away but you can see that i've opened up zoom so there is a zoom app that is set up on this facebook portal device so i'm going to click on join and it's pretty hard to see there's an option for you to join a meeting so i'm going to go here we're going to watch this screen as i join from this zoom room compatible device so i will i've already got it set up so it's quick to join i'm going to enter my password and let's watch the quality so i'm going to confirm on the portal i'm going to join without video because nobody needs to see that angle so now i've just joined the meeting and let's take a look at the quality do you notice a difference let me know in the chat i'm looking down so i'm actually not seeing it right now on my laptop and what you're seeing too that quality does not actually look great to me let's change this is a sneak peek at the pros and cons a con is that i find it's inconsistent however let's go to let's go to my main device and we look at these settings you will now see what i'm sending it has gone up so before i showed you that it was 640 by 360. now it is sending 1280 by 720 and you'll see the frames per second has changed slightly so it but even though yeah i agree right now it's not looking like it's changed so let's see if if i do if i change the view i wonder it sure doesn't look like it changed um let's check over here so let's go back to this which i agree it doesn't look consistent let's open the preferences again yeah okay so it's still receiving that lower amount so this is this is one of the cons it's inconsistent let's go into full screen so i'm already in speaker view and let's do full screen and let's do that do we notice a difference here let's open up the settings and let's see if that changed anything aha okay putting it into full screen now is receiving a resolution of 1280 by 720 on the computer and if we put this away does it look clearer and then let's do a little toggle so does this look any different to you i think this looks a little bit crisper it's not quite as blurry this looks like a higher quality print and then if we go here to this page i think it's a little i think it is a little bit better okay i'm seeing a few of you are saying that there's a difference so scott is saying that he sees a difference paul is also saying that it is better with this one robert's also seeing it so what i did here is i went into full screen so now what i'm sending out you can actually see this in the higher quality when it's in full screen so that is a that's what it looks like and this is this is one of the cons is that i have found that it's inconsistent so yesterday when i got so i got the portal in the morning and it was right before i was running one of my monthly student q a calls and i co-opted the call to test it out and everyone present was very kind to let me try this out and it did work at first we didn't really notice but then we actually decided to close the meeting and restart without the device and as soon as we all came back that's when we saw the degradation in the quality it was a lot harder to see now when you actually screen share that is still the highest quality in the highest resolution but it's actually not that different than when you can get this resolution that you just saw so there are there are pros and cons to this but one of the interesting things about this is even when you leave the meeting the resolution stays so let's take a look let's go to my second screen here so right now the portal has joined and we are going to now leave the meeting and watch what happens this is where it has been a little bit inconsistent so if i go to the portal and i leave this meeting you will now see that the portal is gone so this is now not part of the meeting anymore but if we take a look at the resolution here it has not changed or gone down it has actually remained the same and if we go to my laptop you'll still see the quality it is easier to read and if we take a look at the stats you will see that i'm still receiving this so the reason that i was drawn to this was the fact that i could use this as my little assistant in other words if i am hosting a meeting and i want higher quality image and i want to use the virtual camera and i want it to be crisper i can join my own meeting at the start boost the quality and then hop off the call with the portal and resume my call so i don't worry about the portal anymore it's sort of my i want to make a joke like portal to better quality but you just gotta open the door to better quality and then you can turn this off or leave the meeting and then that resumes and if we check back you can see it's still it has stayed at the 1280 by 720 so it's keeping that quality without having to be on the call the whole time so that's how it works so i want to just quickly check take a look at the chat to see the reaction to this so uh homesick mac i'm on a 34 inch curved monitor monitor so full screen on this is scary in zoom yeah i get that that that's totally fair and then seeing the white on red is very clear okay so that's that sidebar of seeing that yeah that was a lot i noticed that was that was nice and crisp and it wasn't bad before if you're using a virtual camera with the default resolution if you have large print people will be able to read it but it is there's something that's nice about having that crisper quality and let's see okay yeah also the wording is sharper than before so there is a difference and okay let's see good point try to go back to smaller so if i go out of full screen so let's try that let's go back to my laptop here and i'm going to exit full screen so it's still large oh it went back down now if i go back to full screen it comes back so that does make a difference so i think this is actually really helpful for you as a host to know that if you are going to use this trick and you are sending out and let's say you know you are sending out a higher quality signal you could tell your participants that for the best experience and for the best quality put this in full screen not everyone is going to have the luxury of doing that if someone's just watching on maybe a laptop and they want to be taking notes being in full screen might not be an ideal way if they're using another application so that's something to keep in mind but it's nice to know that you could say you know if you're having trouble reading this screen while i'm on this screen put it into full screen and you can always pop back out of that so that is that's a factor thank you so much homesick mac for that recommendation um i think that is okay so here's here's another question my team license gives us full hd so what would i be getting i don't know that i would do this and i'll kind of summarize my thoughts on this option if you have a business education or enterprise account that has the 1080 turned on now i have heard from some people that it doesn't always work so they have the 1080 turned on it's enabled zoom has allowed it because you have to request 1080 or even 720 if you just kind of enable that i would just test it run a meeting look at your stats what is it actually sending and then see if that is consistent it should be consistent i would also reach out to zoom if you're not getting that but you may have to toggle into full screen or into speaker view in order to get the full benefit of sending out that resolution so i would not necessarily this is the reason that i went with this hack for me personally is that i have i'm an individual so the licenses for zoom it makes the most sense for me to have the pro plan because if i wanted to go up to a business plan which is sort of the first threshold of being able to access the 1080 hd i would need to buy at least 10 licenses well that doesn't make any sense and someone actually mentioned last week after my call when i was talking about the resolution there are group buying plans so i could pay into a their you know their group buying plans for entrepreneurs so if you are like me and you're working for yourself you can actually be part of a group buying plan where you get access to i believe it's the enterprise or maybe the business plan so i would have access to the 1080 but there are restrictions on what you can do for example i can't run the zoom apps because it's like it's like i'm buying into a company plan where someone else is administering the plan so i don't have full control over that license and that to me there's there's always a trade-off so there's definitely i would have access to a larger number of participants in my rooms the slightly higher quality but i would not be the administrator so you want to trade off those things so for me i would rather pay for a one-time purchase of the portal which for me in canada it was 149. in the u.s right now this version the 10-inch portal is on sale for 99 and if you think about that one time purchase then to me that offset the idea of just being able to boost the quality on my calls that i'm running and just enter the other reason i was intrigued by it is for talking with family and friends because i can just put this in my living room or my kitchen and i can have a video call with people and not have to and i can just kind of walk around the room and talk to them instead of before we kind of sit with my ipad and kind of squeeze in on the couch and try and have a conversation this one has some benefits on the video conversation side as well i'm going to take a look quickly at see if there's anything else can't you do the same thing by requesting the hd feature from zoom so the h it limits so i have group hd turned on on my pro account that's the max i can get i reached out to zoom i asked for 1080 they said you can upgrade to a business account and i said no thank you so there are limitations but i find that group hd does not i have it toggled on and this meeting theoretically should have been in that 720 and it wasn't so i i it's not they say it's a thing but when you actually look at your stats it's not actually always a thing and okay which portal device you have yes definitely so let's go back to this overhead view so this is the 10 inch i knocked over my tracker so this is the 10 inch portal i actually have some of my own photos it's because it also acts as a picture like a what's the word a digital frame although right now it's not because now it's on the apps so this is the the 10-inch there's also a i think it's an eight or seven the mini and that one was actually more it was either more expensive it was just barely so there was a bigger sale going on on the the main one the 10 inch one so that is what i have and if we take a look at if we go to my computer let's take a look here now i mentioned uh let's yeah macbook so you can see here and it seems to have kept most of its quality so of the four different types there is the tv which i believe that would also work but it would have to be hooked up to a tv there's the portal mini the portal and then the portal plus which is actually on its own stand these are canadian prices because i'm in canada so my website was set to this but i did peak at the other site and on the u.s price because i wanted to check what it was in another country and it was 99 for this version that i have here and the sale is limited i don't i it ends in september i'm not sure exactly when okay so yeah i'm still getting used to learning e cam for zoom and now this this is a nice boost i know a lot of both ecam and obs users who want to add the visuals to their meetings whether you have an agenda or you've got you know you got your lower thirds or if you have a picture in picture or having a side by side which i use all the time i love using those and the screen share option does work it's nice for a presentation because you go into full screen and you know you'll have that high resolution but this is a nice way if you are interacting and you don't want to be in screen share mode you'd like to be in a different mode then this is a nice option for people to be able to actually see your your virtual camera and you can spotlight yourself so that the focus does stay on you because if you are hosting if you are not hosting the meeting maybe you could join yourself and maybe you could join with the portal into another person's meeting and it actually boosts the quality of the other person's meeting as well but again as we saw the full screen versus not full screen does make a difference so will this have the same effect if you are not using a virtual camera so it will actually still boost the quality so when i first saw this it was a friend of mine we were on a call together and he had one of the facebook he had the one that was on a stand and he joined the call it was the two of us he joined with the third and we actually it bumped up to the high quality and we could just see each other's faces on a better quality so it just made the image crisper so it was nice and so i think if you have a really nice setup and you want it to be seen and to be clear then that would also just make it a a more crisp and clear zoom call and it does it for everyone so i joined a meeting yesterday with another colleague and it definitely all of a sudden her image was really i could see the plants in the background it was really beautiful so i mean there are some benefits but is that worth the time that it takes to join the meeting which is one of the one of the cons which i will summarize the pros and the cons okay can you keep the portal logged in oops so that the quality stays up so the quality still stays up even when the portal's gone so if we go back to my second monitor it's still i'm still sending out a 1280x720 also i'll i'll just emphasize this is not in full screen right now so i if i was in full screen let's try so if i go view full screen it's the same so it made a difference for the laptop it does not seem to make a difference let's go exit full screen it seems to be staying at that higher resolution so i don't think that you would need to stay on the meeting the other thing you have to watch for is echo so if you join there's no headphone jack for the portal there is bluetooth but honestly i tried to set up my bluetooth headphones this morning and it was a little bit it was it would connect and disconnect connect and disconnect and i just thought i don't have time i don't have time to troubleshoot this so there's an option apparently to join with bluetooth but so far i'm going to give that a failing grade on my experience connecting the bluetooth headphones to the portal also as a little side note you can also connect things like spotify and like music stuff so you can listen to music from this device as well okay a couple more questions before i go through the pro and con and okay you can get hd on the pro plane you have to request it so i i tried i got declined i do know someone else who did successfully get it they might have talked to someone who was in a good mood that day but i got the big old no you can pay us more money if you want 1080 so um okay stefan that's very exciting that you got the stream deck all right let's go over quickly and i'll come back to the chat the pros and cons so in my opinion the pro is that this is a one-time purchase so i spent 149 or 100 yeah 149 canadian to have a device that i can use at any time to boost the quality which for me on the grand scheme of things when i look at the fact that my business relies on me having a high quality presentation that to me is a worthwhile investment and i can use this for other video calls i can easily port this into other rooms set it up in my living room my kitchen etc and be able to use it for the other purposes i also not gonna lie don't mind that when it's sort of in rest mode it can show my pictures like a digital picture frame so it's just an added bonus the other thing that i'm going to say about this is i like that you don't have to stay in the meeting you can just boost it and then go that i find helpful so those are sort of my personal pros to it the cons so one is that it does require a facebook or whatsapp account and i am always cautious about the usage so you know what it does say when you read the fine print that just like using their other services they may you know customize ads targeted towards you etc now they claim that when you turn off the mic and camera that those are actually off and you're not using those so i mean we it's always a trade-off so anytime i personally don't have a alexa or any of those things in my home because i don't love that concept i'm a little bit that's that's an area that i haven't ventured into so having this kind that is one of those areas so there's the data also the inconsistency so that's another thing that i have found so yesterday it definitely boosted the quality even though it wasn't in full screen yesterday whereas when i did this demo today i needed to change to full screen and actually when i tested this this morning before going live it just increased the quality without me going into full screen so that's inconsistent and that to me not great not great and the other thing is time so because it's a tablet type device you have to tap in the code to join now because i had joined already so i had already entered in the meeting id and the password i was able to find the meeting id again in the list when i click join there's a little little chevron so i could just drop down and pick the meeting and just enter the password but doing that on a tablet that's just a little clunky i don't know i haven't had it long enough i would like to test if i can set up a bluetooth keyboard so that i could just type in the code and i happen to have a spare bluetooth keyboard so that's something that i might consider trying with this but i do find like if you're trying to get everything together having to take a couple of minutes to go open the app join the meeting get everything set up make sure there's no echo turning down the volume that's another thing that you have to consider and if you're just jumping on to get that quality and then going back off you always you'd have to account for that time so this is not going to be the right thing for everyone for sure but i wanted to kind of say that those are the things that i personally have found in my experience so far however i think for me i like this option for boosting i like this hack and i think i just want to reiterate the fact that it is a hack meaning we're kind of working around existing software and hardware that it wasn't designed to do that and so it could change at a moment's notice and that's okay because well it's a bummer but that's just the reality and it's the same thing with people having frustrations of oh i set up this virtual camera but it looks bad in zoom and they get really angry well zoom wasn't designed to always have high quality video we're sort of hacking it by bringing in a virtual camera and so i think you just have to be aware of the limitations and the fact that this is a work around it's not going to be perfect it's not how it was designed it just happens to be a quirk that when someone joins from one of these devices it boosts the quality and so you don't and also the facebook portal is not the only one so there are other options the alexa so amazon and google both have their own versions of zoom rooms which would probably do the same thing but i haven't tested it so don't don't take my word for it because it's untested so this is the type of thing that you could consider if you are looking for an alternative to get that higher quality video so that you can add your visuals up level your presentations and really have one that is more professional and engaging

Channel: Cat Mulvihill

Views: 3,097

Keywords: zoom resolution, zoom resolution quality, zoom resolution issues, facebook portal 10 inch, facebook portal zoom, zoom meeting, how to improve zoom video quality, facebook portal

Id: BDqLb2Wis1s

Length: 31min 37sec (1897 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021