Upgrade Your Video Call Experience and Avoid Burnout (Episode 130)

Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we refashion the perception of video by presenting tangible outcomes that will change the direction of your business. I'm your host, Chris Schwager, and if you want to stay engaged in a video call and reduce that fatigue, we all feel it during a video conference, be sure to use a camera that delivers clear and crisp video.

[00:00:24] Yes, I'm doing the camera thing because I think you definitely need to listen to this episode because if you invest in quality, you know, we all know working remotely is a lot easier these days when your tech works. So you've got investing camera quality so that camera's nice and clear.

[00:00:43] Common video problems during video calls are that video is just blurry. It's unfocused, it's low resolution, it's a low frame rate. These are things that aren't particularly attractive, particularly when you're conducting business via video, and it can also freeze or glitch, and that can also be a problem with the internet speed.

[00:01:06] What is video quality, right? Like, let's go back to basics. The visibility of facial expressions and body language are crucial to quality video conferencing. If details like these get lost, then meetings can lack that authenticity or real life face-to-face interactions.

[00:01:24] Zoom fatigue was the coined by the CEO of Zoom. Psychologists say several factors lead to it. One of which are the technical hiccups that happen frequently during meetings that disrupts our ability to interpret messages. On some occasions, it can build up to causing so much exhaustion, that people will just get burnt out with the meeting. You know, because you spent a lot of wasted time waiting for the tech to get better. Factors that can contribute to this, that fatigue and that burnout.

[00:01:59] One, internet connection I mentioned earlier. Video calls, conferences need to meet certain bandwidth requirements, and if you are glitching, chances are your internet or wifi is the issue. In that case, the best solution is just invest in some hardware, get closer to your router so that you don't have that issue, right? And you try and maximize your speed that way.

[00:02:22] Number two, webcam quality. If it doesn't look great, maybe think about your iPhone. It's funny, we do these professional recordings for our clients and we all know that the webcam quality typically from computer that's already got the camera inside, is pretty crap. Is really crap. And the iPhone is leaps about years, in front of the tech that's in laptops, and so we often get them to revert over to their iPhone and actually conduct their meeting that way.

[00:02:53] Here are the pros and cons of cameras available to everyone today. One, let's talk about webcams, right? Purpose-built webcam is less expensive. It's convenient, but it suffers the low quality that I talked about. It's continuously automatic. It's trying to perfect the exposure, but it looks shit. It looks shit. It's built in and the eye line and in some cases is never particularly good. Now, in the instance of a laptop, for instance, most people have their laptop, uh, or can have their laptop on the desk and therefore shooting up their nose and into the ceiling. That's not great. However, I will give a pro. Definitely to the fact that it is very close to the screen and therefore for a recipient Zoom calls, for instance, you can push that zoom meeting up towards the camera so that the distance between the way where you are looking at your recipient versus the camera and what the camera's seeing is relatively close together. So it does have its pro in that, but so does every other system , um, particularly with, uh, the iPhone, right? Same, same example.

[00:03:56] Now let's talk about the iPhone. 10 times better than built in webcams. Uh, it is because it's, I mean, it's HD. It's just the quality they've got is just good. I have no idea why this is a thing, but it's just so much better. Maybe because people are more, you know, these tech companies are more inclined to invest in the mobility and the tech hardware into phones because of that mobility and the fact that people are using it virtually every day.

[00:04:21] Now, let's talk about DSLR cameras. This is number three. The pros are, look, you're always gonna get better image quality. It's fantastic for low lighting. You get more control with manual settings of the image. It's got interchangeable zoom lenses that you can use, and there are available extra gear that you can plug in to make life a lot easier for yourself. Now the cons are though it can be more expensive, it can be definitely difficult to set up, and there's plenty of horror stories I hear of people going through, getting it all set up, and then one day it gets bumped or something happens and they've gotta go through the process again of understanding what their settings were and trying to balance all again. So those man, it's very manual and those manual settings, if you kind of upset them, kind of hard and if you're not a professional or you're not a videographer and you dunno what you're doing, it's not always compatible with your computer as well. So, for instance, um, some low end gear, for instance, won't do a live HDMI feed to your computer.

[00:05:24] You know, renders it pretty much useless. So you gotta do all the testing and I guess due diligence to make sure that what you're purchasing is actually gonna work to, uh, provide a livestream. And you might need extra gear. So you, what you might think you're investing in with regards to, Oh, okay, this is a pretty affordable camera. You've also gotta consider batteries, cables. Um, power, um, if you're gonna be using that as well.

[00:05:48] High quality video lets you experience photo realistic conversations that helps you communicate better as if you are in an in-person meeting. Now, if you can't bear any longer what you've got, and it's given you so much grief, you wanna upgrade your current system, then be sure to check out the DIY Video Program that comes with your own DIY Desktop Studio.

[00:06:11] You get training and support, professional cinematographer to assemble it and install it for you. So the next time you make a call, it's gonna be as simple as a flick of a switch. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel where you'll get weekly Video Made Simple ideas to present your videos like a pro.

[00:06:26] Check out the DIY Desktop Studio in the link of the show notes. That's ridgefilms.com.au/diy. That's all for this episode. Thanks for listening and see you next week.