Hi guys, today I wanted to help you step up your live video teleconferencing game. If you are using programs like Zoom or Skype, it's actually really easy to drastically improve the video and audio quality. I noticed because of the pandemic that a lot of people's work has changed to remote from home setups, often using programs like Zoom or Skype. It seems that even now as life is starting to slowly go back to normal, many companies see the benefit of using remote video conferencing applications to do a lot of what they were before used to doing in person. My wife, for example, is part of an exercise club with members in different cities and actually countries and they all connect using Zoom. Her teacher connects online and can show everyone the exercises but can also interact with them all using just her laptop. And it's all great except one thing that is really annoying me and that is the quality that you get with these applications like Zoom. Especially in this case where the teacher needs to be able to be heard by the students but she also has music that she wants the students to hear since they're all exercising to the beat. Since applications like Skype or Zoom just use your laptops, built-in mic and camera by default, I will show you how you can do a simple and free upgrade to improve the overall quality. First thing I'll show you is how you can make the video better using OBS Studio. It's a free open source program for live streaming that I and many other people online used for live streaming to places like YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. Just go to OBSproject.com and download the program for your operating system. Install it and once you start it up, you can create a scene. I'll do a simple one here. Click on the plus button in the scene selection, give it a name, then in sources click the plus button again and select video capture device. Name that something like a webcam or whatever it is that you're using so it makes sense. Then in the settings under the device select your webcam. Now to improve this video you can add graphics or information that is relevant to your presentation. Maybe you want to promote your website or you've got a product you're selling. You know what I mean. It's real simple to do. Just click on the plus button again in the sources window then select image or a slideshow actually or even video and then give it a name and then browse for the file source you want to include in your presentation. This can be a simple image file like what I have here. Then you can adjust the size and position of this graphic. You can adjust the position of the video as well. Maybe you can place the video in a small window on top of the graphic. You get the idea. You can do a lot more in OBS than you can do in a program like Zoom for example. Pretty much anything you want to do to customize your video you can do in OBS. There are so many possibilities that I would recommend that you simply look up some of the many many online tutorials that OBS has. Another thing you can do right away to improve your video quality is using something better than just your built-in webcam. I get a video camera and also an HDMI video capture device like this one that allows you to connect that camera to your computer. Then in OBS you add that as a source but instead of selecting your webcam you can now select your video capture device. Add a nice large light like the one that I have here and you got yourself a video that looks a lot more professional than your standard webcam. Now of course video is only as good as the audio. To improve your audio you want to use a microphone that is closer to the presenter's mouth. When you use the built-in webcam microphone on your laptop and let's see you step away from your laptop like when you're doing an exercise then the quality of the audio will right away suffer. Also you usually don't want to listen to the incoming audio on your laptop speakers since that may create feedback echo and just background noise especially if you're also playing background music for your presentation. So the first way to fix this is to first just use Bluetooth earbuds that you may already own. Just make sure that they have a microphone. I use these earbuds from a tribit which have a long lasting battery. They're actually very comfy, have no audio delays and they're pretty cheap. I connect them to my laptop using Bluetooth and then in OBS and the audio mixer section next to the mic levels I click on the little gear icon to open up the settings. Under device settings I select my tribit headphones. If you want to further improve your audio quality you can also buy a wireless clip on microphone like the road wireless go that I use. It improves the audio quality even more and you can plug in the receiver of the mic directly to your laptop's microphone jack. If you have a laptop that has only one mic slash headphone jack then you can get this audio splitter cable that will let you plug the mic separately. Then again in OBS microphone settings you select this microphone instead of the webcam or your headphones. If you want to add background music in OBS you can just play some music on your laptop. Maybe you have a website where you like to stream music from. In that case you will hear the music in your headphones so if you're doing an exercise class for example it will be really helpful but you can also actually adjust the volume for your audience separately from what you hear in your headphones by adjusting the levels in the audio mixer section. You will see the audio mixer is moving in the desktop audio levels once you start playing the music. So adjust the volume for your audience by moving the slider there. Alright so once you've got everything looking and sounding great in OBS studio the final thing you need to do is to transfer your whole presentation to a program like zoom. For that you will first need to download a virtual camera plugin and a virtual audio cable so you can virtually connect the two programs. Just follow the links in the description of my video for the download links. For the virtual camera just download the installation file to your computer then install it and restart OBS. For the virtual audio cable just download the free VB cable driver for either Windows or Mac. You don't need to get paid A, B or CD versions. Install the program and then you should probably restart your computer so the drivers load into your system. Then once you have everything installed and your startup OBS just click tools and select virtual cam. You can adjust your settings if you want. I just usually leave it in default and then for target camera just pick the first one and click start then you can close that window. Now under the settings go to audio and then advanced section for monitoring device select cable input VB audio virtual cable. Then in the audio mixer click on one of the gear icons and select advanced audio properties. Then under the mic channel make sure you have monitor and output selected. If you're also playing for example background music on your laptop then make sure you enable monitor and output in the desktop audio channel as well. Now start up zoom and then next to microphone click on that little button there to show the settings then under select a microphone pick cable output VB audio virtual cable. This will take whatever sound is coming out of OBS and plug that into your zoom presentation. Then click next to the camera icon also to show the settings and then for the camera pick OBS camera. Now whatever video presentation you have in OBS it will show up in zoom as your webcam. Now if you're using another program let's see Skype you can again do the same thing to pick your microphone and webcam just as we did right now in zoom. That's it you're ready to do your pro looking and sounding video conference. Of course because your video and audio is coming from OBS it means that each time you do a presentation now you can customize how it sounds and looks by using the powerful tools built into OBS studio. You can also create multiple scenes that you can switch between just using shortcuts on your keyboard. Maybe you have one that has graphics and one without graphics while you have another scene that has a let's say a video clip playing or like a short demo. Again you can make it as elaborate or as simple as you want it to be. Just look up one of the many free OBS studio tutorials online. Anyways best of luck guys I hope you make me and your audience happy by improving those really cheap looking and sounding video conferences and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!