Webcams can be a convenient way to record videos or place video calls. However, people are often disappointed with the quality of the video that webcams record – and tend to blame the camera itself.
It may surprise you, but more often than not the webcam camera isn’t to blame poor quality videos. Instead, there are lots of other factors at play that affect its quality – which is good news because you can do something about them.
Increase the Resolution and Frame Rate of the Camera
The only webcam settings that you should be concerned with are the resolution and frame rate. Increasing the resolution will help make your video look clearer, and increasing the frame rate will make it look smoother.
Of the two the frame rate is often the more important, as a fluid video will generally look better overall. That being said you should try to increase both, up to 1080p in resolution and 60 frames per second for the frame rate if your webcam allows it.
Make Sure The Lighting is Good
One of the main problems with webcam video recordings is the lighting is often poor. If you’re sitting in a dark room with the only light coming from your computer screen your video will probably look grainy and it will have a strange hue due to the reflection of your screen.
To avoid that you need to make sure the scene your webcam is recording is properly lit. Try to use soft light, and in a pinch, you could wrap a tissue around a lamp to diffuse the light and make it softer. It would be better to use a 3-point lighting solution, however, if you have the time to rig one.
Add Something White in the Frame
Always make sure that there is something around you that is white so that your webcam can use it to get the right white balance. If you want you could wear a white shirt, or if not you should try to position yourself against a white background.
Without anything white in the frame, your webcam will probably focus on the brightest color it can find and assume that it’s white. That will cause the entire white balance to go haywire, and your video may look greenish, bluish, reddish, or some other strange tinge.
Final Words
While these tips will help you to improve the quality of your webcam video recordings, some additional tweaks and editing may be required if you want it to look perfect. Nowadays some editors will let you record webcam videos as well, and for example, you could use Movavi Video Editor.
Make no mistake while your webcam may not be a professional video camera, it can probably record fairly good videos. In fact, if it is a HD camera you may be surprised by just how good your videos turn out once you apply the tips listed above.
