Easy Conferencing through Innovation

“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have asked for faster horses.” -Henry Ford (possibly)

This quote may be controversial, but it does contain a grain of truth: people may know what challenges they’re facing, but they often don’t know how best to solve them. Sometimes they may not even recognize a problem because they’re so used to it.

When it comes to video collaboration, most of us know about common challenges such as miscommunication, difficult-to-follow meetings, and interruptions. We also know that better video and audio quality can help.

However, there’s more to video calls than just video and audio quality.

Below are a few examples of how we use new technologies to provide unexpected improvements to the video collaboration experience.

More interesting meetings

It isn’t surprising that video meetings are often tedious. After all, during most calls you simply stare at a bunch of talking heads. This might seem unavoidable but there is a way.

By using the PW513 or PW315’s digital Pan Tilt Zoom (or ePTZ), you can make meetings visually interesting and varied. ePTZ lets you shift the image to a close-up of a particular participant or object. Even better, you can program presets ahead of time, so different keys can shift the image to different positions. With the ability to easily direct participants’ focus, meetings on video can become even more engaging than in real life.

Meetings that are easier to follow

When there are several people at one site during a call it can be difficult to keep track of who’s speaking. Participants’ onscreen images are small so it’s hard to make out expressions, and when you’re not in person there’s no way to tell which direction a voice is coming from.

Speaker tracking eliminates this problem by using ePTZ to automatically frame anyone who speaks. Whether there are different speakers, or the same speaker walks around the room, there will be no problem following along. This also helps if someone is making a presentation, since viewers can see a close-up of the part of the presentation the speaker is in front of.

Both the PW513 and PW315 feature speaker tracking.

Easier meeting management

Nothing slows meetings down like having to stop and manually adjust settings. Speaker tracking and auto framing control ePTZ automatically- no need to fumble with the controls in the middle of a meeting.

Less miscommunication

We’ve already mentioned the importance of sharp, lifelike video. If there are multiple participants in a room or if someone is far from the camera then it’s also important to get a close view of their expressions. ePTZ makes this possible. Moreover, since the zoom on our cameras is high-definition, you can be sure that zoomed-in images will be sharp.

Fewer disruptions

One of the drawbacks of working from home is loud noises like traffic, kids, or pets, which can disrupt meetings and drown out your voice. Even at the office sounds from typing or people nearby can be distracting. To combat this we’ve equipped our webcams and speakerphone with Artificial Intelligence-powered noise reduction. This function accurately picks out loud noises and reduces them, so they won’t bother other meeting participants.

Both the AS311 USB speakerphone and the PW513 and PW315 webcams include this feature.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can improve your organization’s video collaboration experience please feel free to contact us!