Your Weekly Update
In standup, a colleague suggested a question for our community:
🤔 What share of the screen should a person’s head take up in a video call?
🙈 It was a funny question because I was definitely hitting a 9:10 face-to-background ratio as I squinted at a shared spreadsheet.
➡️ It’s also a question that hasn't been sufficiently explored.
💭 Let's discuss in the comments.
Here’s some other things to do on peerConnection this week:
- On Tuesday, find @jayne discussing the Future of WebRTC and Web3 with other panelists at the TADSummit. Here's how to watch online.
- Jump into this conversation about audio-only social media platforms.
- Catch up on @vr000m's responses in the W3C Q&A thread. Then, drop another query in there, he’s still happy to follow up.
✅ Speaking of following up, we are aiming to be the most responsive forum on the web for questions about WebRTC and video. So give it a try - ask a question or see if there’s someone else you can help out!
😎 I’ll see you in the forum!
Comments
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I don't really have much of a preference about head-to-screen-size. One of the great things about working remotely and doing some of the comms through video is that people can figure out what setup works best for them, whatever their situation or location.
Some factors make a big difference, like if you're speaking from the site of a space shuttle launch and have engine noise in the background (and if so: What are you doing?! Hang up and go watch the big rocket!!) But head size isn't really one of those experience-affecting factors for me. If someone's working from a jungle tree house somewhere and doesn't have much space to put their camera back, who am I to judge? You do you!
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I have two rules for myself:
- My eyes should be above the center, preferably at exactly a third of the screen.
- My face should never be wider than half the screen, not smaller than a third
There's an exception to these rules. And that is when I neglected to do my makeup. Then the smaller the face the better.
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A related, but equally important question: how much space should one's nostrils be allowed to take on screen?
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I think my head should be ~25% of the video height, ideally positioned high enough so that I don't look like I'm drowning off-screen, but low enough so my arms aren't distracting.
(And always activate nostril blur.)
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My face tends to take up ~1/3 of the vertical height of the video when I put my monitor a comfortable viewing distance away and sit my webcam atop the screen.
However, this is only true for my laptop's built in camera, and my C920. The cheaper C270 camera is more zoomed in, and the wider angle C930e is the opposite.
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For me, I wonder if it is sometimes about hiding larger part of my background? or how much I would like you to see my background? and sometimes it is about awkward angles of using/holding/listening on a mobile phone (although I end up not turning on my camera in such cases).
At my desk, I think I am coin size -- example... (quite often not looking into the camera, either)
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