Lesson 9: Polishing the picture with Output Effects
Raw Zoom video is rarely picture-perfect. Output Effects is the window where you tidy up each feed: fix the colour, crop in, and add name tags and logos. This step is optional, but it is what makes a feed look properly produced.
Opening Output Effects
You can open the Output Effects window in a few ways: click the three-slider icon on an output card, click it at the end of an output’s row, or simply double-click a video preview in Grid View. Inside, a selector at the top lets you move between your different outputs and open the controls for each one.
Along the bottom are buttons that control how the preview area looks, including whether to show frame guides, which help you line things up, and scopes, which are technical readouts of the picture.
The three sets of adjustments
The controls on the right are grouped into tabs.
Color
Here you adjust the look of the picture: exposure, contrast, colour, and more. This is where you make a dim guest brighter, or match one feed’s colour to another so they sit together comfortably.
Cropping
This tab lets you pan around the image and crop into it. You can preview either the cropped result, or the full image with a box showing the region you are keeping. If you push the crop or pan beyond the edge of the actual video, ZoomISO fills the empty space with black rather than stretching the picture.
Overlays
Overlays are layers placed on top of the feed. There are two main kinds:
- Name tags. Text labels with adjustable fonts, positions, sizes, and backgrounds. They can fill in automatically from a participant’s display name, or you can type a name and subtitle yourself.
- Images. Pictures loaded from your Mac, which you can move, layer, and scale. They support transparency, so a logo with a see-through background sits cleanly over the video.
Sending your changes live
Your adjustments are not live until you send them. When you are happy, click Apply at the bottom right, or switch on Auto-apply so changes go out as you make them. You can also reset your changes, or save a configuration to a file so you can reuse the same look another time. Those file controls are in the bottom right of the window.
Tip. On a live show, Auto-apply is convenient but unforgiving, because every tweak is seen instantly. When you want to set something up unseen and reveal it all at once, leave Auto-apply off and press Apply when ready.
In short
Output Effects cleans up each feed. Use Color for exposure and colour, Cropping to pan and crop with black padding beyond the edges, and Overlays for automatic name tags and transparent logos. Press Apply, or turn on Auto-apply, to send changes to the live feed, and save a look to a file to reuse it.