Technical tips to improve the quality of video calls

Do you sometimes struggle with video calls freezing, people interrupting each other because there's a delay between when one speaks and the other hears, someone hearing themselves after half a second, or weird noises coming out of nowhere?

These are technical tips I have written for my students to improve the quality of our online lessons, but they will be useful for anyone who has to participate in a video call. Not everything must be followed, but the more tips you can follow, the better the results will be. Some advice may be followed at a later date, when you have to buy new equipment for other reasons.

If a reasonable amount of the advice is followed by all parts in a video call, the quality will be comparable to face-to-face meetings, and when it comes to lessons or brainstorming, it may even be more productive than some face-to-face meetings because interactive productivity tools can be seamlessly integrated with the medium (for instance, I can make annotations in a text in a shared document while I explain what I am doing and why). 

And of course, you save the commuting time.

The physical environment

One of the most important factors for a good-quality video is finding a quiet room, where there are no noises that can disturb you or the person you talk to, and you don't have to be worrying about disturbing anyone either.

Your audio equipment

• The best option is that you use a headset with two headphones and a microphone. If it has noise cancelling, it's better. There's different types of noise cancelling: some of them remove some of the environment noise for you (so you don't hear it), others for me (so I don't hear it), but the marketing terms are used inconsistently. Noise cancelling is just good in general. However, nothing beats having a silent room.

• Cable headsets are slightly better than Bluetooth ones. If you already have a Bluetooth pair, you can use it, but if you're considering buying a set and you're planning to do a lot of video calls, cable ones are cheaper and actually offer better quality because:

  • • They are immune to interferences.

    • There's a much smaller delay (latency) for the audio.

I personally have a Bluetooth pair for music, but for videocalls I use a cable one.

• Loudspeakers and standalone mics can sometimes work, but it can sometimes create a feedback loop: the sound of the speakers is caught by the mic, so the other person hears what they said half a second later. When this happens, the conversation becomes very difficult. It happens much less often with good headsets.

Your WiFi

• Bad Wifi is a frequent cause for difficult video calls. Sometimes it's difficult to solve, but the most basic recommendation is to stay as close as possible to the WiFi hotspot (a box that sometimes, but not always, has antennas). Some walls have metal inside, which creates a barrier. There may also be interference from other devices outside the network, or too many devices connected to the same hotspot. If you have issues, the best advice that's not technically very complex is trying to move to the same room where the hotspot is. Sometimes, installing a repeater can help.

Your Internet connection

Your Internet connection isn't the same as your WiFi connection. It's the connection between your WiFi hotspot and the server of your ISP (the company you normally pay for the Internet). These are different types of Internet connection, from best to worst:

• Optical fibre: in most situations, this is the very best. It's what I use.

• Coaxial cable / "Cable Internet" (a thick cable with a rigid copper wire in the middle). Generally good, but depends on how it's installed.

• 4G/5G. It can vary a lot depending on many circumstances, it could be in second or third place. Most often, when using 4G/5G, you skip the WiFi step, since it's already wireless (unless you use your phone as a WiFi hostspot, which is convenient in some cases but I don't recommend for video calls. In these cases, you can make a better hotspot connecting the computer and phone with a USB cable, so you avoid a doubly wireless connection) 

• ADSL/DSL and other things that go over old twisted-pair telephone systems. Also, Starlink. These are bad for video calls.

You can use a service such as this one to test your Internet connection. For a video call, what matters the most is not the download or upload in Mbps, but the smaller and more inconspicuous numbers with "ms" (milliseconds) behind. The lower, the better, since it's the time data takes to arrive from/to your computer to/from a computer somewhere on the Internet. That particular test gives you three numbers, but a simple rule is:

• All less than 100 ms: Very good

• 100-200ms: Okay

• More than 200ms: Here problems start to be noticeable, because people will start to talk over each other.

You can use the website to test different places within a building, and different workplaces. Results for a given place may vary depending on circumstances.

The result the test gives you us the latency of the internet connection + the latency of the WiFi, since one is behind the other. There are ways to measure them independently in order to pinpoint where a problem is, but they are more complicated. You can ask me if you're interested.

Useful interactive productivity tools

• For many kinds of lessons or meetings, a collaborative document system is best. Microsoft Office and Google Docs offer this. I personally use Google Docs, especially for language teaching. One can for instance make comments about certain parts of a text, make suggestions that are highlighted in a different colour, seamlessly connect with other materials in other documents, etc. To make full use of these features, you must have a Gmail address.

• For other subjects, such as mathematics, an interactive whiteboard can be very useful. I use tldraw.com. I have an electronic pen, but I know most students don't. However, if you have a laptop with a pen, or a drawing tablet, it's a good opportunity to use it.