Microsoft keeps updating its Teams platform. Recently, the company released an updated version that is much faster, more flexible, and more intelligent than previous versions of Microsoft Teams. Avatars for Teams are also in public preview, allowing users to use avatars instead of a camera or webcam when joining a meeting. Now, the company has released another update to the public preview that allows users to use a green screen to make virtual backgrounds much better. This will improve the sharpness of the virtual background around the face, making it look more professional and polished during video meetings, without being blurry. As this enhances the background and replaces it with the virtual background, there will be clear definition around the face, ears, head, and hair.
You can use this feature to hide your background or replace it with a virtual background in order to create a more engaging and interactive experience for your viewers. Before proceeding, ensure that the green screen is evenly lit and there are no wrinkles or folds.
Note that you should not wear the same color as the background image, and the virtual background you choose to replace with the green screen should be of high quality and match the lighting in your room. After ensuring that there is a solid color screen or clean background in the background, while also ensuring it should be plain and without having any irregularities or strain.
How to set up a green screen in Microsoft Teams:
This feature is currently available in public preview, and it is not enabled by default. You manually need to set up the green screen in your meeting space. Here are the following instructions mentioned below:
- Open Microsoft Teams and then head over to join the team.
- From there, click on the More icon from the Meeting toolbar and then choose Video Effects.
- Now from the Video Effect page, select the Green Screen Settings where you can find under Background.
- After enabling the Green Screen toggle from the Camera section, now you can pick the background color that appears on the bottom-right corner of the Preview Window. Either you can choose from the pre-designed virtual background or use your own background image. You can also adjust the lighting and the contrast of your virtual background to create a more realistic look.
- That’s it. Go back to your meetings.
After enabling the green screen feature, you can use any background image of your choice in your video meetings, as it allows you to use the green screen feature to create a virtual background. This feature is quite nifty and useful to hide your background or replace it with any virtual background of your choice.
However, as we have mentioned, this is currently in public preview, so some users might encounter some bugs or limitations. If you encounter any problems, submit feedback to Microsoft so they can start working on a patch update for Microsoft Teams ahead of the stable release. One of the known issues about this Microsoft Teams preview is that it is only supported on Windows and macOS devices with Intel Soc. Whereas, Mac M1/M2 doesn’t support it, but they are working to add support for this in the future.
The green screen feature will automatically disable the background blue and together mode, as this feature uses different technologies to remove the background from your video. Microsoft Teams uses chroma keying, and it is designed to work with other presenter modes, including Standout, Side-by-side, and Reporter, PowerPoint Live Standout, and the background replacement (JPEG/PNG). However, these modes use different technologies. At this point, this doesn’t detect small objects precisely, as chroma keying works by identifying a specific color and then removing the color from the video. However, if the object has the same color as the background, then the green screen feature may not be able to detect it properly.
The green screen feature on Microsoft Teams also does not produce a good screen effect while using transparent or translucent objects because these make it difficult for the green screen feature to identify the background color. Therefore, it is recommended to adjust the settings of the green screen feature to get better results. It is currently rolling out to the Teams public preview for Windows or macOS Team client. As users love to use virtual backgrounds, it is helpful for all those users who find using Teams regularly.
