5 things you can do to make yourself look great on
CUworld and to see others in their best light
Recommendation 1: Have a good Camera and
Lighting.
Good
Input leads to Good Output (GIGO):
The quality of what you see on screen and how others see you
will be dramatically affected by the quality of what you feed into your
computer. If you are
using an old slow camera, your video will be slower and blockier.
Try to use a modern camera to feed into a
modern interface like USB2.0 or Firewire for best results.
These new interfaces have more power and allow you to get video
images into your computer much faster and at higher quality than the
cheap USB 1.0 video cams. Ideally you want to be able to see that you are getting 30
frames per second (fps) in your self view window.
Lighting also affects your look and performance.
Make sure you have good lighting that comes from either behind
the camera towards the subject (you) or at least from off camera
towards your face. Putting
light behind you will hide your face and make you hard to see.
Recommendation
2: Have good bandwidth.
Video goes in TWO directions on CUworld; (1) from you to the CUworld
servers and (2) from the CUworld servers to you.
You are sending one stream and the servers send you one stream
per person you are looking at.
For best results you will want to ensure that you
have as much bandwidth as possible available for you.
One important note is that the best video quality takes approx.
384Kbps, per direction, per stream.
A good intermediate level is between 128Kbps and 256Kbps.
Your video will look much much better if you send the best you
can. The CUworld servers will automatically adjust other people
that have less bandwidth.
On receiving you should try to keep in mind that
you will receive between 40Kbps and 384kbps per stream depending on
your membership level and the particular skin layout you have
selected.
Recommendation 3: Make sure you have CPU and
Memory to burn.
Video compression is one of the things that can really crunch your
CPU. So for the best
performance make sure you have plenty of memory available and the
fastest CPU you can reasonably afford.
It REALLY makes a difference.
Keep in mind also that lower bandwidth connections will require
more CPU processing time in order to compress the images further.
This means that you get much better performance by combining
good bandwidth with a fast PC.
Memory is also really important, Windows will often use something called Virtual memory, which
is basically using your hard disk as RAM.
This means that when you have too many applications open or
don’t have enough memory for the operating system to operate at top
speed it will take sections of memory and write it to and from the
disk. This REALLY REALLY slows you down. We urge at least 256MB of RAM if you can when using the
latest Windows operating systems.
Slightly lower is OK if you are using the older operating
systems.
Recommendation
4: Have good audio input and output.
CUworld has real time mixed audio as a standard part of its service.
This means of course that you can talk directly to everyone
else in the room at the same time with full two way sound.
If you have an old or half-duplex sound card then your audio
experience will be much poorer and your sound to others will be
much more likely to break up or to sound “scratchy”.
So simple improvements in your audio of making sure your sound
card is full duplex and also using a headset will make a big
difference.
Recommendation
5: Improvements multiply.
If you follow the above recommendations you will find that the
improvements multiply each other.
In other words if you have high bandwidth AND a good camera you
will have much better image for others to see but you may still be a
little “jerky” in motion..
If you have high bandwidth AND high CPU speed and memory you
will see much smoother video motion but the clarity or crispness of
the image may not be the best. Combine
all three and you should have a really great experience.
Remember though, when you make improvements on
your end the results are MOST visible in what OTHER people see. You are making yourself look good to them.
Of course, high CPU and downstream bandwidth at your end gives
others the chance to look their best as well.
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