Video Calling - 9 Tips When Working From Home

Since the start of the Coronavirus global lockdown in early 2020, some aspects of technology advanced more in twelve weeks that they would have otherwise done in five years.

The most visible example of this was video calling. It quickly became an absolute necessity for both for business but also personally for wellbeing and socialising.

As a user of video calling for about fifteen years, I'd like to give you some tips and ideas on making your video calls the best they can be. A few of these tips will be common sense to you. Early 2020 saw a multitude of articles on this subject and, as a result, users are now much more equipped and savvy than ever before.

I must stress that most of these tips are for business users. They will work for everyone but may not be as practical or necessary when chatting to friends. I can't and wouldn't like to guess how much your friends can tolerate or would even notice when it comes to video calling. It's a bit different though when you need a message to come across clearly as you do in work.

CONNECTIVITY

Excellent connectivity to the internet is everything. Without a reliable connection, every other idea is useless. Not everyone has super-fast internet. That's fine because video calling software will adapt bitrate and resolution accordingly. It does, however, need to be consistent and reliable.

Here are the main ideas. I'm only summarising here and will assume some technical knowledge on your part.

1. Be clear on where your wifi points are and choose your location accordingly. Get as close as you can. That's fairly obvious.

2. If the location of your office cannot be changed and your signal is weak, consider carrying the internet through the mains and installing an additional wifi point in your office.

3. Avoid interference by using 5GHz wifi rather than 2.4GHz.

4. 5GHz will limit your range so check your laptop and make sure it's successfully connecting on a 5GHz channel. Your router may have it enabled, but your computer might choose the stronger 2.4GHz signal.

5. Check how many others are using the connection. If you have a good fibre connection, don't worry about anything other than downloading as a good connection can easily handle multiple activities. If you're on a slower ADSL connection, a few Netflix users could severely impact your ability to hold a good quality video chat.

6. If you want to get into your router settings, you can usually prioritise traffic (often called Quality of Service or QoS) either by type or to a particular destination. If you're working from home, try adding your device into a priority list so when bandwidth gets tight, you will always be top of the list.

7. Finally, I hate to say this, but a physical cable is still the best way to get a reliable connection. If you can, fit a LAN cable from your router. Yes, it's inconvenient and messy, but quality video calling is all about consistent round trip times and smooth streaming of data. A cable will always be much, much better at this.

LOOK AT THE CAMERA

Earlier today, I was on a global all-hands call presented by senior staff. Staff at this level have training on giving presentations. They do it all the time and need to be good at it. Not one of them looked at the camera once. There was not one moment of engagement with the audience. It's the classic case of always wanting to look at the screen because that's where the other person is. This behaviour makes sense, and it's human nature.

Try to get used to looking at the camera. Not all the time as that would be strange. It takes practice, and it feels odd but makes a huge difference and is something you rarely see.

LIGHTING

As a broad rule, make sure you have no primary light sources behind you. Most of the light needs to be falling on your face. However, it's not quite so straightforward because of the way most webcams make decisions on exposure. If the background is too dark, the camera will see a significant area of low light in the shot and increase exposure accordingly. This increase will cause your face to be overexposed. Therefore, it's fine to have a lamp behind you as this will balance things up a bit. Just make sure that the light falling on your face is brighter.

There's a bit of trial and error, but if you take anything away from this, it's firstly to light your face and secondly never put a bright window behind you. In most cases, the camera will sort out the rest.

If you want quality video, you need enough light. As soon as a webcam has enough light, it can increase the framerate and reduce noise reduction. The camera will produce a considerably better image with more accurate colour and far more detail. Not everyone has video lights to hand so use window light where you can or any good-sized and diffused light source.

AUDIO

I could go on forever about tweaking audio to sound great on video calls, but some simple guidelines will work for anyone.

1. If you have more than two participants on your call, use a headset. If you don't, use one you can guarantee that someone will be having a problem because of echo cancellation not doing its job quite right. Most headsets sound OK and are not expensive.

2. If you can't use a headset, use headphones and choose a room that is acoustically pretty well dampened. As soon as you are more than 15cm from a mic, the sound of the room will start to become very apparent. If your room has serious reverb (a kitchen being a classic example), and a syllable hasn't decayed fully before the next one kicks in, your speech starts to become mumbled and unintelligible. You'd be surprised how annoying this is for others, if only subconsciously.

3. If possible, manually set your audio levels. Figure out where they work best either through test calls or speaking to others. Unfortunately, software such as Microsoft Teams doesn't let you do this, but you'd better believe that it will try to do it for you and will mess it up. When you don't speak, many video conference programs will ramp up the level which leaves a mass of clatters and hiss from microphone self-noise and washing machines running in the background. In Windows 10, you can force all software to have no control of the audio device. It works some of the time, but I've still seen it change, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.

ALWAYS USE MUTE

This topic is directly related to audio, but I feel it's worth mentioning separately. If you're not speaking, go on mute. If everyone on the call is using headsets, this isn't necessary, but it's certainly good practice.

Try to make it automatic behaviour whenever you're on a call. Not only will it make the experience better for others, but it could also save you some embarrassment.

HEAVY BREATHING

Experiment with your headset or mic position so you're confident that others on the call cannot hear air from your nose and mouth when you're breathing. It's a rookie mistake and is one that will be jumped on by people on the call because it's so irritating.

If you stick to the rule around muting, it's less of a problem but better to be sure.

COMPOSITION

Laptops have their cameras at the top of the screen but are still not well positioned. It doesn't matter on regular calls, but when you present to a bigger audience, consider raising the camera. Use a few books or boxes and place the camera just above your eye line. Then angle the screen downwards. Not only will this be more flattering for you, but it will also look more natural to others.

Try to place your head in the upper third of the frame. If the top of your hair is just in shot, that's usually perfect. It's common to see someone's head positioned centre frame or just below. I always find this looks very odd and almost like someone peering into the window from below.

All this is much easier with a separate webcam. However, you don't see these much nowadays due to the quality of onboard cameras.

TIDY UP

Consider what's behind you in your shot and move around to make the most of your surroundings. There are so many times when I've recorded a piece to camera and wished I'd moved something out of shot. Tiny objects that live in your room and seem insignificant can be distracting. Depending on where you work, it may not be practical to have a spotless background. You can, however, think about it and adjust the position of the camera to minimise the visible mess and tidy up a bit.

No-one wants to see your prize collection of miniature cars or check out your gym equipment. Keep the background clean, minimal and straightforward.

Again, this is most important when presenting to a group rather than on a call with friends.

DITCH THE BACKGROUNDS

During the explosion of video calling during the Covid-19 lockdown, most users have discovered backgrounds, whether it be a simple blurring or instantly placing you in a different environment altogether.

What the software does is pretty smart. Picking out everything that it believes to be a person and keying out the rest of the image on the fly is a neat trick.

The problem is the technology is not good enough yet. Backgrounds are a bit of fun and might even be essential occasionally for privacy reasons. Still, my tip would be to choose your location more wisely and avoid them altogether or use them sparingly.

Referring back to my call from earlier today, two participants chose to use backgrounds. One guy opted for the blur option and repeatedly had half his face chopped off as he moved around the frame. It was quite amusing as no-one chose to mention it to him. The second lady dropped herself in a neat minimal office only to have a terrible key of herself on the image with a halo around the edge of her hair.

CONCLUSION

So these are my suggestions for getting the most out of your video calls. Admittedly, most of these are improving how well you present yourself to others so you won't reap the benefits. However, if you consider the bigger picture, as it were, you're the winner if you get that job you're going for because you came across clearly and professionally in the interview.

People don't tend to complain about the things I've discussed today when you're on a call. I guess everyone is too polite or just aren't too bothered. You can bet that they do notice when someone looks and sounds excellent. It makes quite an impression.

I hope this helps and if you have any other good recommendations, please leave them in the comments. Thanks for watching.