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Thanks for Downloading the Sample Chapters Thanks for Downloading the Sample Chapters Here are the chapters included. The Quick Start chapter, the first in the book, which identifies five quick ways to up the video and audio quality of your webinars and videoconferences. Chapter 5: Simple Lighting Techniques. The easiest way to significantly improve the quality of video produced by webcams and smartphones is to add lighting. You don’t have to spend a fortune; in fact, my go-to setup cost $30. You can read about this and more in this chapter. Chapter 9: Working With Audio on Android Devices. How to add and control a microphone on Android devices. Chapter 14: Working with Onstream Webinars. Audio and video adjustment controls available in Onstream Webinars. After the chapters, I’ve inserted the introduction to the book, and then the table of contents, so you can see what else is covered in the book. Thanks for having a look. Quick Start: Do This, Don’t Do That Figure a. Check your upload speed well in advance; don’t just pray for the best. This chapter contains highlights from various chapters in the book, both as a quick-start reference and as an introduction to the materials covered in the book. As you can see in Figure a, it’s better to check your outbound bandwidth with a tool called Speedtest than to simply pray that your bandwidth is sufficient. Chapter 1 has tables detailing the recommended bitrate for various conferencing and webinar applications, and other, related tips. Note that Speedtest is available as an app for both iOS and Android platforms, so you can check there as well. 16 How to Look and Sound Great in Webinars and Videoconferences Camera Positioning and Lighting Figure b. Position the webcam at eye level. If you’re conferencing from the webcam on your computer, chances are the lens is much lower than eye level. This looks bad (nose hairs are a definite turn-off) and causes a range of problems—including the backlighting and resulting dark video shown on the lower right of Figure b. While you can fix backlighting with your webcam software, the best option is to avoid the problem altogether and position the camera at eye level. Throw in the clamp light used on the upper left, and you get excellent exposure and quality, all for about $30. Chapter 2 discusses camera positioning and framing, while Chapter 5 details lighting options. You’ll learn how to fix backlighting (when you can’t avoid it) in Chapter 6. Quick Start: Do This, Don’t Do That 17 Choosing a Background Figure c. Don’t use a reflective gray background with wide open spaces. Your background can have a profound affect on video quality, as you can see in Figure c. The background on the right is a slightly reflective gray with too much open space, which enables the banding you can see in the image on the right. White, blue and black backgrounds seem to work well, but the best strategy is a studio like that on the left. Although there is little sharp detail, there’s also no open spaces for video artifacts to run wild. You’ll learn all the rules about choosing a background in Chapter 3. Dressing for Webcam Success Figure d. Excessive tiny detail in clothing or background can produce awful results. Solid is always safest. 18 How to Look and Sound Great in Webinars and Videoconferences On the left in Figure d, the subject wore a solid-colored shirt and a solid- colored sweater. If the background was reddish, he could have removed the sweater and the shirt would have worked just fine. The gentleman on the right wore a blue pinstriped shirt that reacted very poorly with the compression used in all Internet video. The result was mushy detail and obvious moiré patterns. You can get away with thick patterns, but solids are always best. You can read up on more rules of dressing for webcam success in Chapter 4. Lighting for the Webcam Figure e. Ceiling lights only on the right, ceiling plus supplemental lighting on the left. The video on the right in Figure e was shot solely using overhead fluorescent lights. As a result, the forehead (and wrinkles thereupon) are well lit, but the bottom of the face is too dark. On the left, I added lights in front and in back, producing better skin tones and more even lighting across the face. Adding even a couple of clamp lights to the mix can really improve webcam quality—for under $60. You’ll learn all about lighting in Chapter 5. Quick Start: Do This, Don't Do That 19 Fine-tuning Your Webcam Settings Figure f. On the left I’ve configured my webcam; on the right, I used the default settings. Sometimes, the default configuration used by webcams work beautifully, but sometimes they don’t. On the left in Figure f, I’ve customized my webcam configuration with a Mac program called Webcam Settings; on the right, I’m using the default settings. Most Windows-based webcams come with applications that let you configure brightness, color, and sharpness settings, although many Mac- based products do not. However, with Macs, you can use a third-party program like Webcam Settings to adjust your settings. In Chapter 6, you learn how to acquire Webcam Settings (or other programs), and more importantly, how to optimize your settings with a variety of programs. 20 How to Look and Sound Great in Webinars and Videoconferences Producing High-quality Audio Figure g. The audio represented by the waveform on the bottom would be pretty much inaudible. The most important information in virtually all videoconferences and webinars is carried by the audio, not the video. And the microphones on computers and webcams, in particular, are substandard. So you have to take great care to make sure your audio sounds like the waveform on top in Figure g, rather than on the bottom. In Chapter 7, you’ll learn which microphone to buy, and in Chapter 8, you’ll learn how to use it. Chapter 9 includes fundamentals that help you understand what your target volume should be (think top of Figure g), while Chapters 10 through 13 detail how to connect your mic and adjust volume in Windows and on the Mac, and on iOS and Android mobile devices. OK, that’s the Quick Start. I hope it whets your appetite for what awaits you inside. Quick Start: Do This, Don't Do That 21 Chapter 5: Simple Lighting Techniques Figure 5-1. My $30 solution for lighting webcam-based productions. The cheaper the camera, the more you need extra lights to optimize quality. Since webcams are as cheap as cameras get, you should never produce a webinar or videoconference without some extra lighting. You don’t need to spend a fortune; as Figure 5-1 shows, $30 will do. But you should consider adding some lights whenever possible. In this chapter, you’ll learn what to look for when buying extra lights, and how to use them once you’ve got them. 65 Overview Here’s what you’ll learn in this chapter: • Why lighting is so important to video quality • The philosophy of lighting for webcam productions • Lighting fundamentals like color temperature and hard versus soft lights • The various types of lights you can buy, including clamp lights, compact fluorescent soft boxes, and LED lights • How to avoid shadows in the background (assuming you feel as strongly about shadows as I do) and other lighting techniques. Let’s jump right in. Why Lighting is Key Many webcam-based videos are produced solely with ambient lighting, which typically means overhead fluorescent lights. This causes multiple issues that reduce the quality of your video, some of which are obvious in the frame on the left in Figure 5-2. To explain, the frame on the left is shot solely with overhead lights, while I added lights for the shot on the right. On the left, while the forehead is well lit, the bottom of the face is clearly too dark. Although it’s not obvious in the screen shot, the frame on the left is grainier, which is caused by the webcam boosting brightness to compensate for inadequate lighting. As I’ll discuss in the next section, a major goal when lighting your webcam production is to make the scene bright enough so that your webcam doesn’t have to boost it further. 66 How to Look and Sound Great in Webinars and Videoconferences Figure 5-2. On the left, shot solely with overhead lighting; on the right, webcam with supplemental lights. Yeah, I know, the sweater is too dark. Beyond the graininess, on the right, the facial colors look more natural, the face is shadow free, and the wrinkles on my forehead much less noticeable. All this from about $200 in lighting gear and 20 minutes of setup time, both clearly worth it if your webinar or videoconference is mission critical. Lighting for Webcam Goals Let’s discuss the goal of lighting for webcam productions and how this differs from lighting for traditional productions. When lighting for traditional video productions, more light is usually better. If the lights are too bright, you can clamp down the camcorder’s aperture and make it work. But it’s almost impossible for the lights to be too bright. Webcam lighting is different. If the lights are too bright, you can overwhelm the webcam, which usually don’t have the same mechanical aperture control as much larger camcorders.
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