Optimizing Your Output Quality for YouTube, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams with BZBGEAR Hardware

While on the surface steaming platforms can appear to work the same, they can often compress video and handle data differently, that means that sometimes you might need to change settings for your stream depending on which one you pick. So this guide will go over a bit of how to optimize your video quality utilizing our equipment with different platforms. 

Start with a Stable Video Source

The first step here is going to make sure that your initial source is dialed in as much as possible! It’s hard to have a beautiful stream if the native image is out of focus afterall! So make sure that the camera is in focus, the framerate is the one you want, the lighting is good and the white balance is set! Or in the case of an encoder that you’re actually streaming the application that you want to be streaming. 

Choosing the Right Resolution and Frame Rate

For pretty much everyone outside of very specific circumstances and special requirements, 1080p is going to be the highest you’re going to want to go. Very few platforms actually support streaming at 4k currently. For frame rate, 30fps is a nice middle ground, you could go up to 60 if that’s the look you want but keep in mind it will increase the amount of bandwidth usage. One small hack is that you could set the source resolution to be higher but have the actual stream resolution be lower, that should net you a higher quality image without much bandwidth cost. If you begin to experience dropped frames or unstable streams you might want to consider either lowering the frame rate or the resolution. These are often the easiest and fastest fixes for these problems. 

Optimizing for YouTube

YouTube generally prefers to be working with a higher bitrate due to the compression. It’s also one of the only platforms out there that has support for 4k streaming. So it’s best if your network will allow it to use a higher bitrate to improve the image clarity, this is even more important for anything where detail is important or there is a lot of movement. 

But with all of these, open your stream in another browser window and observe it for a bit to see if you need to make changes. 

Optimizing for Zoom

Zoom has a propensity for stability and low latency, which means they don’t really pursue having the best video quality, as this is the case it’s often best to keep your settings at a lower bitrate. That doesn’t mean that you can’t push it up higher, it just might not see the best returns as opposed to some of the other platforms. Just make sure that the computer is receiving the video signal and is being recognized and set it as your active camera inside of Zoom. 

Optimizing for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is fairly similar to Zoom in how it handles video. For both of these platforms ensuring that your source video is clean prior to being streamed and having good lighting will help make a huge difference. 

Bitrate and Bandwidth Considerations

Essentially you can view the bitrate as how much data is being sent to the platform, if you have a higher bitrate you’re sending a more complete video signal but it does require more from your internet bandwidth. Specifically your upload stability and speed. So if you’re experiencing frame drops and other internet related issues, you should try to lower the bitrate to prevent them. One way to get a feeling of where to start with bitrate would be doing an internet upload speed test. From there you can estimate how much bandwidth you have to play with.

Audio Quality Matters Too

Don’t skimp on audio! It matters just as much as having a clean video signal. In fact most people are willing to deal with a slightly lackluster video signal as long as the audio isn’t distorted or hard to listen to. If you can, use a dedicated microphone as opposed to a built in one. 

Final Tips for Best Results

It’s going to be best to close any unnecessary applications that are heavy on the CPU or internet bandwidth when preparing for a stream or a meeting. Another best practice is to be hard wired into the network using an ethernet cable instead of utilizing Wi-Fi.