No Webcam. No Problem!
How to produce quality video for business or the classroom.
I remember reading with massive horror about a new virus sweeping through Hubei, China, and 60 million people had just gone into lockdown. A part of me was sad that this was happening but glad that such drastic action was being taken to stop the spread. As the virus spread — I was also surprised to see that the world had largely ignored the fact that a full third of the Chinese economy had been effectively “switched off”- stock markets ignored it, most people in the rest of the Western world did too, until March 2020.
Pretty soon you couldn’t buy toilet paper of all things, but weirder still, you couldn’t buy a good webcam! Most of the world’s teachers and information industry jobs were told to teach and work from home, but laptop and iPad cameras are not up to making most of us look our best. The lighting too was and remains an issue — in this article, I’d like to help you with both and cheaply too.
“Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because you get shadows and things” — Bill Gates
The quote from Bill Gates is not in any way related to the other opinions had about him during the pandemic! It merely showed that it is as important as the clothes you wear, and the way you groom yourself for the workplace — none of it matters if the camera makes you look bad.
Even at his age and aggressively plain dress sense — his teleconferencing look is good.
Being a software developer (I’m no Bill Gates), photographer and teacher used to making teaching videos, I already had a fairly good setup for making a good looking video. Meanwhile, in Zoom-land, the world quickly had a crash course in video production and lighting via 5-hour-long casting sessions with thousands of critical children as feedback.
Most zoomers and boomers alike found out that being visible via a camera streaming on the web is less than flattering from the typical angles these cameras are placed at. They made a grainy, greenish, and horrible video, and overnight every teacher on the planet had been turned into a troll/video director.
So, many rushed to Amazon, Best-Buy, Walmart, NewEgg, or some other electronic outlet to buy a good webcam, but found out quickly that anything good was $100 and up, and they're just weren’t any!
How to use your smartphone as a great webcam
There are several excellent ways to make your smartphone into a webcam but it’s important to realize two small concepts:
- Capturing the video (smartphones have way better cameras than WebCams in most cases)
- Putting the video in a digital format like a Web Camera (phone can’t do this without help).
USB Webcams usually do this and then plug directly into the USB port of your computer. Smartphones are not designed to send video out of their USB ports — so we will have to use a special app, and the WiFi networks at home and some PC software. Plan a spot for your smartphone slightly higher than your eye line and get the software!
Getting the Tools
- Download IP WebCam (Android) or IP4K (Apple) — it’s very solid and has more features than most professionals and teachers would ever need. It’s also fast. I will be describing the process for IP WebCam as I’m working on Android but instructions are very similar if you have an Apple device. These apps turn your phone into an Internet Protocol (IP) camera. The app will encode it to be available anywhere on the network — so set a password if you plan to use this at work or school.
- Start the stream inside the app (at the bottom) — it will tell you the IP address of the stream. You can test it in Google Chrome or Safari by typing it into the URL as “http://196.168.1.100/8080” (replace this with the IP address inside the app). In IP Cam, click the browser option to get a live view.
- Plug your phone into a good charger as these apps use a lot of the Phone’s battery power over time.
- If you can, connect your laptop or computer to the router directly with an Ethernet Cable or use the 5 GHz band on your router for best results — or just have the router very close to you for a good signal. Make sure the phone and computer are on the same network.
- Here’s the tricky part — getting the IP stream into Zoom, Skype, Hangouts or Teams. You will need an encoder — for this next part, you’ll have to bear with me for good reason. It might seem complex initially, but once it’s set up, you can mix up what you show on the screen, from slides to different camera views, to screen sharing all in one nice control panel!
There are slightly simpler ways, but this one is free and opens up HUGE opportunities for making some really great video content — both pre-recorded and live-streamed.
Download OBS
Once you have OBS Downloaded and opened — it can look very intimidating and new, but do not fear! We are starting very simply and slowly. I will guide you through all the setup and show you what an amazing tool this software really is.
Download the OBS Virtual-Cam plugin
This plugin installer will allow you to turn whatever you see in the OBS Viewer into a WebCam for any of the Software we are looking to use, like Zoom.
Putting it all together
Now that we have the Phone IP app, OBS and it’s plugin sorted, let’s glue all the pieces together.
In OBS Studio you’ll see a bland broadcasting setup that looks like this:
The first thing you will go is add video sources to your scene. Click the “+” symbol in the Sources Panel.
A window will pop up that asks what type of video source — we want a “Media Source”.
- Click on “Add New” and click “ok”.
- In the window that pops up Untick the box that says “Local File”.
- Now, type in the IP Address in the app of your choosing, making sure to add “/video” at the end, if nothing appears.
- Manually click and type in Network Buffering to 1MB — or 0 MB if you can convince OBS to do so — if you increase this, it will cause a lag.
- Your new Media source window should look something like this:
With any luck, you should have a video stream directly to OBS Studio.
Now, start Virtual Cam in the menu at the top, and this same view in OBS should be available as a WebCam in Zoom, Skype, Hangouts of wherever!
All you need to do is inside those programs, select the Audio and Video setting, and select “OBS-Camera” as the Video Source!
You may run into some common problems and I’ll hopefully address them below:
- The video lags behind the audio.
Solution: adjust the resolution down in the IP Camera software to use a lower resolution (I recommend 1280x720) at 50% quality. Make sure that you have excellent WiFi. I’ll discuss further problem shooting in the discussion below if you’re still struggling. - The video doesn’t look good.
Well, it could be the lighting, the camera, the network or the thing that the camera is pointing at — so let’s try get the lighting sorted out and that’s about all I can fix from my side.
The Lighting
Lighting for video is tricky but here are some pointers:
- Soft, diffuse lighting. Never full sun or a single small source of light like an exposed lightbulb. Try bounce light off large white walls or ceilings.
- Never have brighter light-sources behind your subject, unless we are going for the divine intervention look.
- Lighting from above and to the side is classic Rembrandt lighting and tends to bring out the 3D features in a face that makes them look good.
- Please clean up the background — I had a skype interview recently with a company rep. Half her sock drawer was trying to escape and I couldn’t focus!
So — cheap ways of getting this done? If it’s bright outside, sit facing a window. If it is not, some freestanding lamps positioned to light up a wall or roof will give better lighting than the glowing chandelier or desk lamp usually used to light up conference call videos.
If you REALLY want to step up your game and have a mirrorless camera I’ll be writing another article on that soon to tie in with that!
Please reach out via comment if you benefitted or run into issues carrying out the steps. I’d like to keep making Teaching, Software, and Tech content, so feedback helps me know what you value most.
Follow me on Twitter @maketeach.
