OK, I think I’ve finally figured out a bunch of things about making Zoom Backgrounds. The first is that it will only accept 1080p SDR videos, so here’s the easiest way to make them for yourself:
Taking the Photos, prop it, shoot in Action Mode or 4K and HDR
The first thing is that you don’t want your Zoom background to wobble. So the easiest thing I found to do is to either have a tripod (lots of metal) or figure out a way to prop it up. Because of automatic stabilization it can actually wiggle a bit, but to really make this work, you should have it firmly on a handrail or on a rock. If you are really nerdy, get a tripod and use your Apple Watch’s camera app to activate the shutter
Curate in Apple Photos
Now that this is done, see if you are bobbing a weaving alot, I just check the edges and see if things are moving in and out. Cull the ones that don’t work.
Crank up Final Cut Pro and set Rec.2020 PQ and 4K
Now you can edit these by starting Final Cut Pro and going to the third explorer tab, thesis really inconvenient because the search won’t just look through all videos which is what you want. So I normally just use Apple Photos and go to the Videos folder and then look for them and do the curation there.
I then export them for simplicity and then import them with Final Cut Pro. One pro tip is that you can create an Event with just one Project and copy all the candidates into the system because Final Cut Pro let’s you export a single clip just by clicking on it and choosing File > Send to Compressor. So here is what you do:
Create a new Event and make sure it is an Rec.2020 PQ and 4K event list. Import all the photos.
Drag all the videos into it and this will leave all the clips selected. Now go to the right pane and choose Stabilization and it will analyze it. Then click on Tripod Mode which makes sure the videos are rock solid. If you are lucky, the Stabilization will show an X, but if it shows a dash, “-” then some of the videos are not rock solid.
Go to each video click on them and see if Tripod is off. If it just deleted that video, it is useless.
Now you can choose Save Project As and this will duplicate the master project and delete all but the first video. Then for this single video just choose File > Send to Compressor. I like to name the videos by date it was taken and the location by the way so I can remember where they were shot.
Here is the neat trick, drag the Apple Devices 4K (HEVC, HLG, Dolby Vision and put it on top of the video, this creates a high resolution 4K for archival purposes. Then drag Social Platforms > HD 1080p which is the format that Zoom likes
Put your Zoom Background into iCloud Documents
When you are done, just drag all that stuff into a replicated folder like iCloud Documents or Google Drive and then all your machines can have the same Zoom Backgrounds
Add to Zoom in Settings > Backgrounds and Special Effects
Where you add this is pretty hidden, it only works on the desktop applications, but choose Settings > Background and effects and there is a small plus icon at the upper right of this section, then you just import each background video one at time as .mov` files.
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