One Awesome Discovery Makes Video Creation Fun!

You probably won’t believe me, but it’s true. This discovery, brought to you through my curiosity to answer the question “I wonder if I can do x with this ….?”

And so my seeking began…

One day I was doing a Zoom call. They have a feature where you can upload any image and it will appear as a background on your Zoom call. I thought this was very cool.  So somehow they created a “green Screen” feature built in to Zoom.

FANTASTIC, I thought followed by a hmm …..

So I had some fun with this feature. I uploaded a few images and voila, there they were. Imagine using images that relate to your Zoom call as a background, right? Exciting! It adds a whole new level of interest to your calls.

Now I pay monthly for a webinar room but it does NOT have a Green Screen built in feature. I would need to have an actual physical green screen propped behind me in my office to change my webinar background.

So I stated to wonder if my Zoom account would allow me to record a call and would it be just audio or the call video. So I looked and found ….

The RECORD button! Notice the yellow square surrounding the “RECORD” button on Zoom!

Ah Ha! I can record! So I did a test. And YES, I was able to record my test. But could I download it, save and edit it with my built-in Zoom  background? Would it just be audio? NO! It recorded the test and the Zoom background. Awesome! The next question I pondered was which program would I used to edit the recording? I needed a video editing program. I have two – Camtasia, which is good and CreateStudio, which is very good and FUN to use – I’ll explain in a bit …

Once you click on the RECORD button, it changes to an “emoji” button. Click on the 3 dots “MORE” and you’ll see  where you can end/stop the recording.

Here is my saved, video Zoom test recording with my own artwork as the background …

Imagine how excited I got when I saw my artwork as the “Green Screen” background! And the options are endless with what images you choose as a background. I think you can upload videos too, I’ll have to test that …

So what are those pop up, animated images? Where did I get them?

I got them using CreateStudio as  the video editor.  You can add many kinds of visual effects to your video to make it more interesting and engaging. If you’re using Camtasia, it’s more of a video editing program with some engaging features, but not like CreateStudio.

What you need:

• A ZOOM webinar account

• A Video Editing program

So my friend, if you have a Zoom account explore the possibilities … Oh, and by the way – Canva now has Zoom templates for Zoom backgrounds – nice, right?