3. Improve your Studio

A necessary condition for being able to carry out a good video lecture is to feel comfortable with all circumstances in your video conferencing studio, i.e. with all equipments you are going to use, the furnishing, colours, sound and picture quality of both you and the far end part(ies).

Equipments

All equipments should be correctly connected to your video conferencing system and work properly. It is of fundamental importance that you have carried out systematic testing in advance to ensure that you know how to operate the gadgets you are planning to use, and that there are no known technical problems with them when the lecture begins. If you feel uncertain about some of the equipments, this can influence your performance substantially, as you often will become more defensive or passive. That is not a good starting point for a video lecture. One of the most important factors is that you are really pushing. 2 - 3 nice looking camera presets should be programmed on the remote control to cover your standing or seating other places. If you will be seated by the teacher's desk all the lecture, it could be smart to switch between some different camera presets, i.e. different zoom and different camera angles if you have got more than one camera. We see that the broadcasting companies use this trick in the news to achieve some variation during the session.

Furniture and placement of gadgets

The furnishing should be complete and comfortable with enough places on the desk for lecture notes, mouse and a PC keyboard. If the PC screen is placed on the desk, it shouldn't cover you or your face in the camera view. The document camera should not be placed in front of you, but reachable from where you sit or stand. When you are standing in front of the digital whiteboard, it is important that only a part of the bright board surface is within the camera view, otherwise both you and the surroundings will become too dark on the screen. It is important that your room looks tidy and that the curtains are stretched and look properly on the monitor.

In the first video clip we demonstrate the result when filming a person in front of a bright digital whiteboard. If the bright surface covers almost all the camera view, the person in front becomes too dark. The solution is to zoom out slightly, such that the bright surface only covers a portion of the camera view. In the second clip we suggest how the camera should be placed in order to achieve as good as possible eye-contact with the audience during the lesson.

Microphone solutions

If you wear a wireless microphone, you don ´t have to bother whether the sound is OK if you move to the digital whiteboard or other places in your room. But you should be careful to use good or fully charged batteries at the beginning of your lecture, and always have access to batteries for replacement.

Cheek microphones mounted on the neck give a relative constant input signal, while lavaliere microphones connected to the shirt get a low input signal when your head is turning away to one side. Besides, this latter type of microphone is sensitive to noise from the clothes.

If you are using table-top microphone(s) or another stationary solution, it is important that all your positions are covered by at least one microphone. Either you have to carry the microphone to the new position, or you have to place microphones in advance to all your planned positions.

Colours

The walls of your studio should be covered by thick curtains of a nice colour. Blue curtains are often used to give visually good pictures from you, and thick curtains and carpets improve the acoustic properties of your studio. When you speak or make sounds from some presentation, sound waves are reflected between the floor, ceiling and the walls, and thick curtains on the walls and carpets on the floor reduce these audio reflections.

You should wear one-coloured clothes that matches the background colours. Avoid white and black clothes, as this introduces problems with light adjustments. If you wear a white shirt, the automatic light adjustment of your video system and camera will reduce the total light level, implying that all other objects and your surroundings will become too dark on the screens. On the other hand, if you wear black clothes, the surroundings will become too bright on the screen. Light blue, light green and light brown are colours that are reasonable safe to use on your clothes.

This video clip is summarizes some unfortunate details of a video lecture. The clothes have an unfortunate colour, the camera view becomes poor, there are no camera presets, and tuning the camera "on the fly" is never a good thing to do.

Noise

Microphones are "stupid" objects, i.e. they do not separate useful sound from noise. All kinds of noise in your room are regarded as useful sounds, and will be input to the microphones and transmitted to the other parties. The most common noise sources are:

• Noise from you and other people present in your room. Even whispering and turnover of paper leaves may create irritating noise to the other parties, although you almost can´t hear it in the room yourself.
• Noise from fans and heating equipments.
• Noise from computers, servers and the video conferencing system itself.
• Noise from activities in nearby rooms, i.e. people walking, talking, laughing, pulling chairs etc.
• Traffic noise from the outside.

Ventilation fans and other noise sources from your room may have to be switched off during the video lecture. Computers and servers may be placed in special cupboards that reduce the noise substantially. If the noise from other rooms or outside the building is problematic, it could be necessary to find a more suitable room in calmer surroundings another place. However, your video conferencing room should regularly be examined carefully with respect to noise sources and reduction of noise.