5 Things to Consider Before Buying a Video Conference Camera

2019-08-29|News

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Modern business is digital. Employees are no longer bound by their physical location when it comes to collaboration. The remote team can stay in touch via messages or emails, but none of these can be as productive as online meeting call.

That’s why video conference is the most popular way to conduct meeting with remote colleagues. With web conferencing, you can see people’s physical gestures and facial expressions, to have a better understanding of their thoughts.

With a rapid increase of remote work and global collaboration, the need of an effective video conference camera also grows. Recent research shows that more than 75% of employers want conferencing service as a way to support meetings, with another 3/4 saying they need this type of service because they have multiple offices. 

Fortunately, today’s video conference equipment becomes simpler to install and intelligent, which opened up its use to businesses of all sizes. If you’re looking for the video conferencing solution that suit your business, here is a guide of what key features of the best video conferencing camera.

1. HD Video Quality

If you do a lot of conference calls, consider investing in a video conferencing equipment with high definition capabilities. Resolution of 720p is basic for enterprise level, while HD 1080p video or higher will be better as they can deliver a sharper image.

Rather than looking at a grainy video, it’s essential to show the best to the clients or partners, especially when presenting your latest release. High resolution also enables the camera to zoom in and focus on the speaker, without worrying too much about the loss of quality.

For some 360°conference cameras, it will crop a certain angle from the panoramic view and re-organize them into a flat video. So the original 360-degree camera resolution would be the higher, the better. Like Kandao Meeting, it captures the entire conference room in 8K resolution. When it focuses on a single speaker, you can still see his facial expression clearly in video calls.

2. Wide Angle Lens

For small or large conference call, it’s always important to make sure everyone in the meeting room can be seen and heard. The narrow angle camera only allows 2 or 3 team members to comfortably fit in the view. No one want to squeeze next to each other during the whole team meeting.

Therefore, a conference cam needs to capture wide field of view and allow more members to fit in. But if the camera is put on the table, it’s very likely that you’ll get distort images of the person who sits closely the cameras. He/she might also block the view of the people who sit far away.

A solution is to mount the camera on TV or on wall. If you don’t want to spear extra energy to install, try 360 conference camera instead. Thanks to its ultra-wide angle, you can move it to anywhere and put it in the center of a conference table to capture everyone.

3. Automatic Focus

Some video meetings require a greater level of detail, to show a specific product or highlight the speaker’s expression. With 10 people in a still shot, remote participants will find it difficult to identify who is speaking and who you should reply to.

With conference cams that can automatically focus on the active speaker, the problem solved. You can not only easily figure out who is the speaker, but also see his/her body language. This creates a closer and intuitive group conferencing experience, to make the conversation more face to face.

However, the focus and highlight can be done in different ways. Some conferencing devices require manually pan tilt, and optical zoom to focus by remote controller. While, some can identify the speaker by locating his/her sound. Besides, some latest tech utilize AI recognition to highlight not only the speaker, but white board or screen in the meeting room to do content sharing.

4. Ease Of Use

Most meeting organizers are expecting the simplest way to operate video calls. They don’t want to spend too much time on testing, as they’ve got more important jobs to do.

A universal conferencing room system that combines audio and video, as well as speakers can be a lifesaver. Just install one equipment, the video and audio conferencing system will work together. Rather than being entwined by the confusing cables, trying to figure out how to dial in numbers to activate the conference phone, it saves lots of time for you to focus on preparing the presentation.

The video conferencing solution should also be plug and play. It will work within seconds when plugging in the USB port and work compatible with most video conferencing software, such as Cisco WebEx, Skype for business, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, etc. This flexibility offers a great advantage for small business or group to find any huddle rooms to set up a video meeting.

5. Conference Security

As digital technologies take a more central position in the corporate communication, we should take the privacy into consideration. The conference room should be a venue where thoughts are expressed safely in the knowledge. We don’t want hackers to secretly access the web conferencing camera without permission, especially for the high-level discussion.

In order to make sure the camera won’t see anything when it turns off, some conference room systems apply the privacy mode, with the camera lens pointing straight down. For Kandao Meeting, the lens only appears when you start the video conferencing system, otherwise it will be hidden inside its body.  

In conclusion, there are a lot of products to choose from, though, so it pays to be picky and demand a system that combines an excellent set of features with ease of use. Luckily, the price point of a video conference camera equipped with all the 5 essential feature does not need to go more than $700.

For more information, check Kandao Meeting all-in-one 360 conference camera.

 

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Kandao Introduces AI-based 360° Conference Camera with Auto Focus on Speaker