What actually makes video calls work properly?
Good video calls come down to five things in order of impact: clear audio, front lighting, a camera at eye level, one platform used consistently, and enough upload bandwidth. We've all been there: asking "Can you hear me?" for the third time, or staring at a silhouette because someone is sitting in front of a window. In 2026, video meetings are the default, yet most meeting rooms are still stuck in 2015. The pandemic forced everyone to figure out video calls, yet six years on, most boardrooms still feel like an afterthought.
Building a great video conferencing experience isn't just about buying a big TV. It's about the ecosystem of audio, video, and environment working together seamlessly. Get one wrong, and the whole experience falls apart.
Why does audio matter more than video quality?
Audio matters more than video because a frozen picture still leaves a usable meeting, while broken audio ends it. This might sound counterintuitive for "video" conferencing, but here's the truth: if your video freezes, people can still talk and the meeting continues. If your audio cuts out, the meeting is over. Period. Audio quality is the single most important factor in remote meeting success.
Yet most businesses cheap out on microphones while splurging on massive displays. It's backwards.
- The Mic Drop: Laptop microphones are engineered for one person sitting 50cm away. They are absolutely NOT designed for a boardroom table with six people spread across three metres. You need beamforming table mics or ceiling tile mics that can intelligently "find" the active speaker and suppress ambient noise like the air conditioner, the kettle boiling in the kitchen, or the construction outside.
- The Echo Chamber: Glass walls look modern and sleek, but sound terrible. They bounce audio around the room, creating reverb that makes remote participants feel like they're listening from inside a bathroom or a public toilet. Acoustic treatment (panels, carpets, even heavy curtains) is often cheaper and far more effective than upgrading your speakers. A R5,000 acoustic panel can do more for call quality than a R50,000 soundbar.
- Speaker Placement: Don't rely on TV speakers. They're designed to point at someone sitting on a couch, not distributed around a conference table. A dedicated speakerbar mounted below the display ensures everyone hears remote participants clearly, regardless of where they sit.
How should you light yourself for a video call?
Light your face from the front, never from behind. A window or lamp in front of you produces a clear image on a cheap camera, while a window behind you turns an expensive one into a silhouette. You can have a 4K camera with studio-quality specs, but if your room is dark, the image will look grainy and washed out. Cameras need light to work properly, it's basic physics. Conversely, if you have a bright window behind you, you turn into a witness protection silhouette. Neither is professional.
The solution isn't complicated, but it requires thinking about room layout:
- Position the display correctly: Place your TV (and camera) on the wall opposite the windows. This uses natural light to illuminate faces rather than obscure them. People will look great without any additional lighting.
- Add fill lighting: For rooms without windows or for after-hours meetings, install soft diffused lighting that illuminates faces evenly. Harsh overhead fluorescent lights create unflattering shadows. A pair of LED panels angled at 45 degrees can transform video quality.
- Control the variables: Install blinds or curtains. The sun moves throughout the day, so what works at 9am might be a disaster by 3pm. Give your team the ability to adjust.
Pro Tip: Ask a remote participant for feedback on how the room looks on their end. You might be surprised how different reality is from what you see in the room.
Where should the camera be positioned?
Put the camera at eye level, roughly an arm's length away, by raising the laptop on a stand or a stack of books. Nobody wants to look up your nose. Yet that's exactly what happens when a laptop sits on a table and its built-in webcam points upward at meeting participants. It's unflattering and psychologically off-putting.
Keep cameras at eye level. For wall-mounted displays, this usually means mounting the camera directly above or below the screen centre. For larger rooms, consider PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) cameras that can auto-frame the active speaker. This makes remote participants feel like they're actually in the room, not watching a CCTV surveillance feed of a crime in progress.
Modern intelligent cameras from vendors like Poly, Jabra, and Logitech can automatically track speakers and switch between wide room views and close-ups of whoever is talking. This technology has become remarkably affordable and dramatically improves the remote experience.
Should you standardise on one video conferencing platform?
Yes, standardise on one platform as the default for internal meetings. Keep the others only for joining external calls, because most meeting friction comes from people hunting for the right app rather than from the technology failing. The biggest friction point in meetings isn't technology failure, it's technology confusion. "How do I join?" is the question that derails more meetings than any hardware issue.
If your sales director walks into a boardroom with a client dialling in, and spends five minutes figuring out which HDMI cable to use, where to find the Teams link, and why the audio isn't working, you've already lost the room. The client thinks: "If they can't run a video call, can they handle our contract?"
Dedicated Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) or Zoom Rooms systems replace the "bring your own laptop and find the dongle" dance with a single touch-screen console. Walk in, press "Join," and you're live. One button. No faffing.
These systems cost more upfront than a basic webcam setup, but they pay for themselves in saved executive time and reduced frustration. They also ensure consistency: every meeting works the same way, every time, regardless of who's hosting.
| Priority | What to fix | Typical spend |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Audio | A wired or Bluetooth headset with a boom microphone, instead of the laptop microphone | R400 to R1,500 per person |
| 2. Lighting | Face a window, or add a small LED panel in front of you | R0 to R800 |
| 3. Camera height | Raise the laptop to eye level on a stand | R150 to R600 |
| 4. Bandwidth | 2 to 4 Mbps up and down per HD call; check the upload figure, not just download | Usually already available on fibre |
| 5. Meeting room | An all-in-one bar with speakerphone and wide camera for rooms of four or more | R12,000 to R45,000 per room |
How much bandwidth does video conferencing need?
A single HD video call needs roughly 2 to 4 Mbps up and down, and upload is the half that usually fails on South African connections because most packages advertise the download speed. None of this matters if your internet connection can't handle video traffic. Before investing in equipment, verify your network can support simultaneous high-quality video calls. A good rule of thumb: each video call needs about 4 Mbps for HD quality. If you have three meeting rooms running simultaneously, that's 12 Mbps just for video, not counting regular business traffic.
Consider implementing Quality of Service (QoS) rules on your network to prioritise video traffic, and always have a backup plan (like mobile hotspots) for critical client calls. If you would rather have the whole thing designed, supplied and installed as one project, that is exactly what our video conferencing and AV service does.