If you have a MacOS then with v5.6.4 at least in June, they’ve added a bunch of really useful features. I don’t know whether this works on Windows or Chrome, but presume there are lots of differences between platforms. Also, this kind of stuff eats a lot of CPU. Right now I’m running using 65% of CPU just running all of these, but it makes for a nicer experience:
- Preferences/General/Use dual monitors. This feature is really misnamed, what it actually does is create two separate windows for you. This let’s you have in large screen the slides for instance and then you get a full window to look at participants.
- Preferences/General/Remind me in 5 minutes before my upcoming meeting. If you have tied your Zoom to your Google Calendar, it picks up meetings from there. This doesn’t work well with multiple calendars though, so you can’t get an integrated work vs. home calendars.
- Preferences/Camera/HD and Preferences/Mirror My Video. Normally you run mirrored but if you have a video background with a sign, you need to unblock it so it looks right.
- Preference/My Video/Touch up my appearance turns the skin smoothing filter which I have a little bit.
- Preference/Maximum participants displayed per screen in Gallery View. Set this to 49 and then with dual monitor mode, you set one in Gallery View.
- Preferences/Suppress background noise/High. This really works and gets rid of the typing noises.
- Preferences/Share Screen. You really don’t want full screen mode, use maintain current size since this let’s you resize on big or dual monitors and side-by-side mode works well.
- Preferences/Background & Filters/Virtual Backgrounds. There is a plus sign that let’s you add videos. This is also for fun, you can add video filters to add for emojis and at the bottom left, there is Studio effects to give yourself nicer eyebrows and lip color
- Finally, if you are wondering how things are going, go to Preferences/Statistics/Overall which will show you the Bandwidth being used, where you can see your send and receive resolution and frame rates. As an example, I’m sending right now at 320×180 13 fps and receiving at 640×360 at 26 fps. It is really nice to look at jitter for instance so you can spot the jerky stuff.
