Better webcam 🎥 quality without spending money 🤑 !

I’m working in a full remote position and I’m CTO of a Video / Screen recording tool (Weet). So I ‘m literally in front of the webcam every hour of my day! I read everywhere that the Mac’s webcam is really bad. So I bought a new one on amazon… (60$). Unfortunately my video quality doesn’t really change. This is a short story about how you can have a better video quality on your visio or video recording without spending money!

Tips 1: Adapt your seat for your luminosity

I live in San Francisco, the luminosity can really change during the day. It can be dark the morning (fog ☁️), and extremely sunny 🌤 the afternoon. Webcam doesn’t like high or low… See the difference between the morning and the afternoon below.

On the left: The morning ☕️ (See my eyes 😴). On right: the afternoon (High luminosity 😅 behind me)

Move to have a better luminosity (here only 30°)

Now, If I change my position to remove the window from the frame, the image starts to be better. Sorry but my home 🏡isn’t tidied… But we will talk about that on tips 2 ! Sometimes, you have just to turn your seat (like this example) or turn on/off the light 💡. It’s depends on your hardware. I don’t have the same render with the built-in webcam on my Mac 💻.(It’s pretty good the afternoon, but not the morning)

You can also use some filters to try to fix the luminosity. In Weet we developed filters to increase luminosity, have a better contrast, or better color saturation. It’s depend what you need, or how your hardware “supports” the light 🔆.

Tips 2 : Tune your Scene and your Ambiance

Working with the background and creating an ambiance , my favorite tip! Compare this 3 frames :

• The first is in my kitchen 👨‍🍳 (I used to work here)
• The second is in my living room 🛋 (when I work stand up)
• The third is when I work at WeWork 🧑‍💻

Which one do you prefer ?

3 captures with my built-in camera. (my kitchen, my living room, and my coworking space)

The coworking space has a lot of decoration, so your frame is always good. Unfortunately you cannot always choose your scene. Your house is not tidied (like section one) ? You are in your kitchen ? Or not alone?

→ Don’t worry, we are in 2021 !! and we have a lot of technologies to fix that!

Blur effect

On Tips 1 you saw my house is not really clean… but the scene is good because has a lot of colors and differents objects 🧸. So if I activate the blur filter (Available on Meet / Zoom / or Weet), the scene becomes great. I love this kind of scene, because it’s real life. Sometimes you can see my wife or my daughter behind me, my colleagues appreciate that. It’s just life and now it’s in a remote world.

Video Effects

With some video effects you can enhance your video frame to have more luminosity or contrast. You can also change the ambiance of your video. I love to add a pink filter on my frame 🌈.

Original frame on the left, “blue and pink” filter in the middle, and “vintage” filter on the right (available on Weet)

If you are not really awake, you can completely change your face with some fun filters too!

Some fun filters on Weet (sorry I forgot to smile 😅)

Virtual background effect

When I have to stay in a room without any decoration like my kitchen (just a white wall ), I used to add a virtual background. It allows you to change completely change your environment. You can use video background instead of image it will be more realistic 🎬!

“Palm video background” on Weet

Card Background (only for recording)

Sending a video message is not easy for everyone. Some people prefer to hide their webcam and communicate only with audio. It’s not a really good idea to communicate or send a message. Sometimes the message is more important than the person himself, like a “welcome” or a “thank you”. In these cases I used to screencast an image on my computer to keep my face in a small area of the video.

Differents backgrounds and effects on weet. Here it’is a template, but you can simply screencast a video or image🏞

Tips 3: Your eyes

In some tips articles, you’ll notice they tell you to “look at the webcam”. I think Not ❌ !! Of course you have to keep an eye on your camera if you talk to someone but, if you have to explain something on your screen, just “ look your screen”.🖥 This is the natural way. Let’s take an example with a streamer from twitch named Wizhum. When he plays a game, he has to look at screen. When he talks to his viewers he looks directly at the webcam. I think you have to do the same: Keep an eye on your webcam when you don’t have to show something. Like a natural conversation.

On the left : Wizhum playing to a game no need to watch the viewer, but on the right he talks to his communauty like a natural conversation

Conclusion

I wanted to write my personal tips to increase the quality of your video without spending money on High quality hardware. It can be applied on every recording tool or visio conference. Feel free to share this articlewith a colleague who always sends you bad quality videos :-)