Do you suffer from staticy shots? Does your audience constantly ask for you to repeat yourself? Do you find your Q&A session is just a stampede of people asking you to repeat yourself? I have news for you my friend: you’re suffering from poor video conferencing quality.

Not a big deal you say?

Think again. If the quality of the video is interfering with your conference participants’ ability to understand you, a valuable fact, insight, or knowledge may not be heard. That can lead to disastrous things happening in your organization. Obviously, you don’t want that. In addition, a poor quality video lends an unprofessional appearance. Do you want people to respect you or laugh at you?

5 Ways to Improve

Here are 5 key ways you can improve the quality of your video conferencing sessions:

1. Location
2. Lighting
3. Camera
4. Sound equipment
5. Bandwidth

Let’s work through each one

Location – Ensure you are holding your conference in a neat, clean, and distraction free environment. People don’t like hearing the sounds of jackhammers in the background or watching a chaotic flurry of activity constantly interrupting your conference. Also pay attention to the acoustics of the room. Will there be too much echo? Will your voice be too soft? Is there all the necessary connections or is there enough signal strength if using Wi-Fi?

Lighting – The difference between a great picture and a mediocre one is lighting. Lighting is an incredibly important factor for your video quality. If it’s too dark, your other web conference participants won’t be able to see anything. It will be difficult for them to see what you are talking about. Similarly, if it’s too bright then you might end up as just a large white blur, washed out in an overexposure of light. Ensure you have a well lit (but not overexposed) area that is optimal.

Camera – There’s no getting around the fact that a better camera will lead to better results. Your camera represents the absolute limit for video quality. Before upgrading a camera, you should first attempt to fix the location and lighting for an optimal environment. With that said, an HD video conferencing camera will ensure your audience members have a crisp, clear, and vibrant picture.

Sound Equipment – Can your participants understand you? If after checking the acoustics of the room and ensuring you are an optimal distance from the microphone you still suffer from low audio quality, you should probably invest in a dedicated audio device. A headset or a good quality tabletop microphone can drastically improve the clarity of your conversation. As long as you pay attention to proper speaking stance, volume, and distance, a relatively inexpensive microphone should suffice.

Bandwidth – A low bandwidth connection can drop the framerate and quality of your video conference regardless of what upgrades you do to your conferencing equipment. Ensure that your Internet connection isn’t limiting the data sent by your video conference. Know that video conferencing is data intensive. If your connection isn’t fast enough you can suffer from choppy playback and poor audio. The fix is simple. Make sure your bandwidth is sufficient to carry out a video conference.

What other tips do you have that can improve a video conferencing session? How do you ensure a successful web conferencing session? Share your thoughts in the comments below.