Zoom Virtual Background Without Green Screen

Zoom attracted more new users in the first 3 months of this year than all of last year. More and more people are using Zoom video conferencing both personally and professionally. And today I'm going to show you an amazing tool and feature called virtual backgrounds. Be sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, new videos every Thursday. Right now, let's head over to the computer and I'll show you how it's done. So what you'll do is you will just follow the normal course of action to start a meeting. I'm going to start a personal meeting here in my personal meeting room for an example. So you start your meeting and it opens up the Zoom client application, and I'm going to open that up just as per normal. Say join with my computer audio, start my video, and then you'll see me on the screen. And what you'll do is look down at the bottom for the video section here at the bottom. On the little arrow next to it, click on that and you'll see a pop-up box with a variety of different options. This is where you select your camera. And if you see here, you see choose virtual background. The reason that that's showing up in that pop-up box is because I set it in my settings prior to opening up this meeting. So you will go into your settings and look for that option and make sure that it's toggled on. If it's not toggled on, you won't see this option when you click this box. So I'm going to choose virtual background. Notice that I'm wearing a green top today. There's a reason. So if you want to use virtual backgrounds on Zoom, there are some computer requirements. So how you do that without a green screen is that your computer has to meet certain requirements. I'm going to show you that my computer does not meet those requirements and you'll see why. So if I say, look at the box where it says I have a green screen. Now I don't have one behind me, so I'm using this without a green screen. If I say no, I unclick it because I don't have a green screen. This is the requirement that comes up. This pop-up box says to use this without a green screen, your, in my case, Mac computer does need to be 10.13 or higher, and the processor must be an Intel Core i5 with quad-core or better. I'm not a computer person. I don't know what that really means, but clearly my computer does not meet those requirements. If your computer does meet those requirements, then what's going to happen is you will be able to simply click on any of these images. Some of them are default images that Zoom gives you. But see what happens? Because I'm wearing green, I look like I am a bridge right now. It's the beauty of green screen, of which I spent 17 years in front of at The Weather Network. But you can use any of the virtual backgrounds that they provide. And then I have also uploaded some of my own virtual backdrops that I found from royalty-free services and websites such as unsplash.com or pixabay.com or pexels.com. These are places where you can find background images that you can then just import. And how you do that is you click here on the little plus sign and it will ask you to add a virtual backdrop. You would just find it on your computer and add it in. And that's what I did with some of these, these backdrops here. If I click on this one, for example, you'll see because I'm wearing a green top, it just doesn't work. So you cannot be wearing green when you are attempting to use green screen technology. So don't be wearing any green, green accessories. It doesn't matter what it is, it will look like it's see-through. So you definitely don't want to be doing that. So in this case, I cannot use these because I don't have a green screen behind me. If your computer meets the requirements, then you're good to go. And it's really that simple. You'd click on this backdrop, backdrop, and it's going to show up behind you. In order for me to demonstrate how it looks, I am going to use my own green screen. I'm going to head up to another room in my house, show you what the green screen looks like and the effect that it gives you. And then you'll have the option to decide whether you're going to use a green screen or not based on the requirements of your computer. So now we've moved upstairs. As you'll notice, I have changed my shirt from green to blue because you can't wear the same color as what you have in the backdrop. This is a green screen. This is my— one of my favorite tools. This is the Elgato portable green screen. I'll link to it in the description below. And what it does is it pulls up and it stays in place. The beautiful thing about this green screen is that it's nice and flat There are no wrinkles. It's portable and it's amazing. So I have the green screen set up, but what you'll notice is look how close I am to the backdrop. There's not a lot of space between me and this green screen right now. You'll also notice that we have— we pulled together any and all lights we possibly could at this stage. I have, you know, a small ring light. I've got just a lamp. I've got a little LED over here. So I'm trying to put as much light toward my face as possible. I also have my computer MacGyvered up using a shoebox on the bottom and a puzzle, and it doesn't matter what order you put them in. Hahaha. So you want to raise your computer up so that your camera lens in this case is as straight on with you as possible because of the green screen behind you. If this was too high or too low, it will make the backdrop off-kilter and you'll start to see lines on the side. So This is the setup that we're going to use on Zoom. And like I described, if your computer doesn't meet the minimum requirements, you won't be able to use a green— you won't be able to do the virtual backdrop without a green screen. And that is the case for me. Maybe it's time for me to upgrade my computer. In any case, let me show you how this works. So I'm going to open the virtual background function. And as I said, you know, there are some default images that are in Zoom. I've uploaded a few images as well. Like I said, you can find them from, you know, Pexels, Pixabay. You could find them, you could buy them on Shutterstock. There are a variety of places you can find them. The important thing is to find images that you are not infringing on any copyright, you know. So let's say I choose this image right here. When I look at this, you can see it's all pixelized. It doesn't look right against my hair. This white backdrop is probably too harsh in this case. And so it's really a case of experimentation where you need to find images that really are going to work with your hair color and with your skin tone. And sometimes it takes a little bit of effort to figure that out. Let me show you a different virtual backdrop just to give you a sense. This one here is more of a, who knows, maybe like a New York City apartment or something. And better, better, but we can still see that it's not quite the right, um, the right keying in this case with, with this particular image. So I'm going to go over to backdrop again. And then what about this one? This one's better. This is actually probably my favorite of the 3 that I'm showing you right now. And you can see that, that it looks like I'm standing in front of whatever this boardroom is. Is it perfect? Not necessarily, but you can do some things in Zoom that are going to help with this. So if I look back on my pop-up box, you'll see here it says just toggle over this little green button. Zoom automatically detects the color of your video background and replaces it with the virtual image. You can manually pick the background color if the detected color is not accurate. So if I click on this little green button, now move the, the little plus sign over to a green spot behind me, I can click on that And it should help to, I guess, calibrate that green backdrop behind you. So that's one thing that you could do to try to help yourself. You'll notice down here again, we have those buttons. The I have a green screen, I don't have a green screen. And so you'll choose based on whatever the situation is for you. So the wonderful thing about green screen and Zoom in particular is that it makes the functionality of a video virtual background very easy to use. And that can be a great thing for those of you who want to really have more variety and open up your repertoire, so to speak, of backdrops that you could be, you know, using. And with as many people who are working from home and likely will continue working from home, this is a great feature that you should take advantage of. Zoom virtual backgrounds are an amazing feature. Experiment with it for yourself and find those backdrops that really work for you. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to watch these videos here in the collection and subscribe to the channel. Hit the notification bell. New videos come out every Thursday. Can't wait to see you in the next one.