A short, but, in-depth guide on how to greatly increase the quality of your video chat setup.

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Table of Contents

🗺️ Overview

In this document, I'll go over what are the elements required so that you can make it an experience to be on video chat with you. As some may have noticed - it can make you stand out (I've seen people get distracted by the video & stare way too long...), it can speak for you (by reflecting your personality & interests), and it can leave quite an impression. You may be surprised to know that with even a few minor changes, you can greatly enhance your own experience with some relatively inexpensive and non-technical tweaks. However, all of the top-of-the-line upgrades will, unfortunately, require 💸 money.

Now, there are three primary issues to contend with in order to create a high-quality video experience. I will go through each aspect in detail and how to address them all as well as potential upgrades for multiple budgets.

The 3 issues, sorted from the easiest (and cheapest) to fix to the hardest (and most expensive) to fix, are:

Then, at the end, I'll share lists of different configurations, again, at different budgets. And, we'll open up to Q&A and consultation. Feel free to interrupt at any time, all of this information will be available online after the session.

⏳Latency

⏲️ Baseline

Regardless of your internet connection bandwidth, Zoom adds a baseline latency of about 500ms. This means that after you talk, it takes 500ms PLUS travel time to the other attendees. For a call from San Francisco to NYC, this travel time is about 80ms.

This means... with no other latencies involved after you start talking, the other attendees won't hear you for another half second and change. Let's calculate what happens when you add more latency.

📡 Wifi