Healthdirect Australia Help Center

    Support Home Technical requirements for Video Call Change video quality settings in a call

    Change video quality settings in a call

    What Video Call platform role do I need: All participants in a call

    Why would you need to change your video quality settings?

    While in a call, Video Call will attempt to automatically adjust your video quality to meet your available network conditions so as to provide the best quality video and audio experience.

    However, one of the biggest impactors on the quality of a call are the network conditions of each of the participants in the call, where factors such as the amount of bandwidth, latency, packet loss, and jitter all contribute to the quality of the connection. 

    As video is the largest component of the network traffic that is sent during a call, you can manually adjust your video quality settings.

    How to change your video quality settings

    While in a video call click on Settings to open the Settings drawer and go to the Select video quality option. 


    Note: If you do not see the video quality options, you may be using a browser (such as Safari, or older versions of Chrome/Firefox) that does not support this feature.

    Under this option, it is possible to change the quality of the video you send to other participants in the call, which can provide for improvements to your overall call quality. For example, moving to a low quality video setting may result in improved audio in poor network conditions.

     

    The settings have the following behaviours:

     

    Adaptive
    This is the default setting and will result in Video Call automatically adjusting video quality settings depending on the available network conditions. This should work well under most conditions and you will only need to change to another setting if you experience video quality issues.

     

    HD video quality

    HD (High Definition) quality will set your video to the HD resolution 1080p if your network quality permits. This will increase the resolution of the image and is the highest setting available.

    Please note: You will only see the HD video Quality option if your camera is able to capture full HD resolution video.

     

    High quality
    In high quality mode, Video Call will attempt to send video at 30 frames per second (FPS) with a minimum resolution of 640x480, and an ideal target resolution of 960x720 (although higher is possible). This setting requires an estimated bandwidth capacity of 2Mbps per connection. Select this quality if you know you have plenty of bandwidth and your call screen does not look as good as it should.

    This is dependent on a couple of factors:

    1. Your camera being able to capture higher resolution video, 
    2. If you are using Safari, the video sent will be a maximum resolution of 640x480 due to browser constraints. 

    Standard quality
    In standard quality, Video Call will attempt to send video at 30 frames per second (FPS) with a minimum resolution of 480x360 and a target and maximum resolution of 640x480. This setting requires an estimated bandwidth capacity of 1Mbps per connection.

     

    Low quality
    Low quality starts to sacrifice video quality in an attempt to make video call possible where bandwidth is compromised. This preset attempts to send video at 30 frames per second (FPS) at a minimum resolution of 160x120, and with a target and maximum resolution of 320x240. This setting requires an estimated bandwidth capacity of 256 Kbps per connection. You can select this option if you are experiencing issues with video quality during your call.

     

    Bandwidth restricted
    In bandwidth restricted mode, chances are you are operating beneath the recommended minimum network requirements for a video call.

    In an attempt to establish and hold a successful call, this setting will further sacrifice video quality and smoothness in an attempt to prioritise audio.

    In this setting (for non Safari users), video will be attempted to be sent at 20 frames per second (FPS), with a target maximum resolution of 160x120, with no minimum resolution.

    If using Safari, due to an inability to support video resolutions below 320x240, video will be sent at 15 frames per second (FPS), with a target resolution of 320x240.


    Note: At the moment, only outgoing video (video you send to others) is affected by the video quality settings. Incoming video is unaffected, but is still subject to Video Call's inbuilt quality adjustment mechanics.

    Important note

    It should be noted that the video quality settings represent (in most cases) the upper bounds of the acceptable quality of the video to be sent. In the event that your network conditions are unable to meet the quality settings you specify, Video Call may attempt to adjust the video settings to meet the detected network conditions.

    If you move to a better quality network, you should reset your setting to the "Adaptive" setting to make sure you get the best video resolution.

    Related Questions

    Can’t find what you’re looking for?

    Email support

    or speak to the Video Call team on 1800 580 771

    Internal Content