Put Yourself in the Spotlight with Smart Focus
Not too long ago, I joined a webinar.
As a Product Manager, this is what I do a lot. Like yourself, I can imagine.
What stood out in this webinar - compared to other webinars, was the presenter! To be more precise: their video. They had a professional camera setup with Smart Focus.
What is Smart Focus?
Smart Focus makes your camera follow you when you move - even slightly. The camera's focus is smartly always on the presenter and with this - on what the presenter has to say.
The professionalism this feature gave to the overall webinar experience I had was astonishing.
No cluttering background - no badly generated blurring - no artificial backgrounds.
It is all the time just the presenter's head and shoulders. We have a full focus on them.
I think, as long as you´re not an anchorman and need to present the next story in your background, you do not need a background, right? And to be honest, a background can be pretty distracting to me.
Smart Focus out-of-the-box?
After the webinar, I had the chance to talk to the presenter asking about the camera and quickly learned that they spend quite some resources on it. It was not an out-of-the-box setup.
I started to think: Can´t we make this awesome experience an out-of-the-box solution for any webcam out there?
The thing is:
- Our users and customers are on the go and already set up.
- They already have their laptops and their MacBooks.
- The webcams they invested in are there - an upgrade is not realistic for most of our customers.
So - can we make Smart Focus a feature for everyone at once? The answer is YES - and we did.
The rise of online meetings...
... is kind of connected with remote working. No need to mention COVID here as you know the full story already
Another thing you already know is that remote working allows almost any location to become your office (I won´t tell your boss - promise 😉).
Because bosses tend to say that some locations are not well suited for working or online meetings.
In these situations, you might think it is better not to use your camera.
Fair point - but having a visual presence and seeing facial reactions are important aspects of communication and some companies do even have a webcam policy. Now what?
No worries - We got your back with Smart Focus!
What does Smart Focus offer you?
When enabled, Smart Focus removes more than 70% of the background to focus on what is important: you!
Other benefits I want to mention right now:
- The cropping of the video helps you to present yourself from the most professional angle. No need for others to see your kitchen, right? Nor the beach...
- Since the video frame is much smaller the camera frame maintains focus around your face even if you move around.
- If you need to shift your seating position or stand for a minute, as long as you are in the video frame, only your head and shoulders will be shown. Pretty neat!
- The feature works will all webcams that worked with TeamViewer Meeting before. No additional costs - no new hardware needed.
- All platforms are supported that use TeamViewer Meeting - on desktop and on mobile.
Your call
The Smart Focus is such an enormous enhancement that we decided to make it the default camera setting.
But maybe you do want to show your full background, maybe to show off your latest painting, reference a whiteboard, or are in a conference room, Smart Focus can easily be disabled from the arrow next to the video icon.
And if you are in doubt whether your participants can change your Smart Focus to sneak on your background, let me assure you: No way - you have full control. No other meeting participants nor the presenter or the organizer will be able to disable Smart Focus for you or any other participant.
Smart Focus has also been added to the pre-meeting setup screen so you can check what works better for you and play around with the look and feel you want to give to the participants.
