⏰ TODAY: THE FIRST-EVER GREEN ROOM SETUP CLINIC
Perfect timing if you’re reading this the day it published: the very first live On-Camera Setup Clinic happens TODAY. Green Room members, come on camera, show me your setup, and I’ll tell you what I see, what I hear, and exactly what to change first, live. Every setting in this video is fair game, bring your questions.
Today! Friday, August 21, 1:00 to 2:30pm Eastern
Not in the Green Room yet? 🚪Here is the door. Come on in and grab your seat for the clinic. (I have a feeling It’s going to be quite a party! 🥳)
This whole video is free. Start to finish, everybody, no paywall on this one. And so is everything below: every setting, every click-path, written out. Because this lever is a pile of quick wins, and I want every single one of you to have them.
That’s also your free sample of what the Green Room feels like all the time. More on that at the bottom.
One honest note before the manual: most of these settings live in Zoom. I’ve gone looking, and the other platforms mostly don’t have them yet. Riverside does offer some appearance filters in its paid Pro version, credit where due. Google Meet and Microsoft Teams currently offer squat. And Substack live, our beloved, is missing the big one entirely (more on that below, and yes, I’m watching for it daily).
THE SETTINGS MANUAL
(Menus move. When Zoom renames or relocates something, I update this page. If something looks off, tell me in the comments.)
1. Background noise suppression → LOW (the one I owed you from the audio video)
Where: Click the little arrow next to your mute button in Zoom → scroll to the bottom → Audio Settings. Under the Microphone section, make sure Noise removal (default) is selected under microphone modes. Then just below it, find Background noise suppression and switch it from Auto to Low.
Why: On Auto, Zoom processes your voice aggressively and can’t always tell noise from you. It squashes, filters, and flattens. On Low, your full frequency comes through. This one click is the difference between your $100 mic sounding like what you paid for it, or sounding like a $30 one.
The caveat: This recommendation is for external microphones only. If you’re on your laptop or webcam’s built-in mic, the computer’s own fan noise is real, and Auto may be earning its keep. Same if you’ve got genuine chaos around you, construction, traffic, a dog convention in the next room.
Either way: test it. Record yourself, listen back, and confirm before your next masterclass or sales call. You can’t know until you’ve heard it. (Or come to a clinic and I’ll tell you in about ten seconds.)
2. HD → ON
Where: Arrow next to your video button → Video Effects and Settings → Video section, under your camera selector.
Why: Zoom ships with it off to save bandwidth, 2020 logic. Your internet can almost certainly handle it now. Check the box. Enjoy your pixels. You paid for them.
3. Original ratio → ON
Where: Same row as HD.
Why: This tells Zoom to use your camera’s full picture instead of cropping into it. If you’ve ever seen black bars on your sides, this was probably off. You built your rectangle on purpose in this series. Keep all of it.
4. Mirror my video → OFF (my strong recommendation)
The fact first: this setting only changes what YOU see. Your audience always sees you correctly, either way.
My recommendation: turn it off, and build a relationship with your face the way everybody else already has one with it. Fair warning: it’ll feel weird for a week or two. You might think your face looks lopsided. It’s not, that’s just the version of you that you’re less familiar with. Every recording and video of you that goes out into the world is unmirrored. A true on-camera professional is adjusted to seeing their face the way the world sees it, and your relationship with your own recordings gets dramatically better once you are.
Bonus reason: if you design your set while mirrored, the balance will be off in every recording. Let the mirrored version of you stay in the actual mirror.
5. Touch up my appearance → ON, and move the slider
Where: Video Effects and Settings → Appearance section, first switch.
Why: Authenticity does not mean under-polished. This filter, used gently, is the digital version of what every broadcast studio has done for a hundred years. Cameras exaggerate things your face doesn’t do in person. This evens the ledger.
The gotcha I see constantly: the switch is on, but the slider is sitting at 0%, doing nothing. Turn it on AND move the slider.
Where to set it: pull yourself up full screen and play. For most people, somewhere between 5 and 30% is great. With strong lighting, you can go higher, mine sits at 60. Past 60 or 70 you’re entering airbrushed territory, unless your lighting is genuinely terrible, in which case maxing it can help. You’re aiming for you on your best skin day, polished, not fake.
And the Substack live situation: this filter is the single biggest thing missing from Substack live and the recording studio, and it’s why everyone looks a little rougher there than on Zoom. It’s not you. It’s the missing filter. There IS a way to go live to Substack through Zoom with this filter layered in, video on that coming soon, and I’m watching daily for Substack to add it natively. The moment they do, you’ll hear it here first.
6. Adjust for low light → for webcams and phone-cameras
Where: Appearance section, second switch. Leave it on Auto if you use it.
Why: It digitally brightens a dim picture and adds a little contrast pop. On a webcam or on the phone-as-webcam setup from the camera video, this is usually a good move, even with decent lighting, I found it better on than off on my iPhone. If you’ve got a real video light dialed in on a real camera, you likely don’t need it.
7. Portrait lighting → webcam only
Where: Appearance section, third switch.
Why: It highlights you while dimming your background, and adds a little digital separation, a taste of what a real camera does optically. If you’re staying on a webcam for now, this can genuinely help, especially with a busy background.
Watch your edges: the line between you and the background is the computer guessing. If it wobbles or gets weird around your hair, it’s become the distraction, turn it off.
Do NOT stack it on the phone-as-webcam setup. Your phone’s back cameras are already doing real separation with real glass. Don’t stack fake on top of real.
8. Auto-framing → OFF. Everybody. No exceptions.
Where: Appearance section, fourth switch.
Why: You spent this series building your frame: height, eye line, headroom, background composition. Auto-framing hands every one of those decisions to an algorithm that zooms and drifts every time you move. It can flat-out ruin a recording or a live, and if your frame is constantly moving, you never even know how much background you’re designing for.
If your webcam is too wide: instead of auto-framing, check whether your camera manufacturer has its own app, most mainstream brands do. Those let you crop in and LOCK a tighter frame that stays put. Still cropping into a struggling camera, but a locked-off mediocre frame beats a wandering one every day of the week.
A note for my GlamCam Studio™ clients
Your system is dialed by me, for your face and your room. Touch up my appearance is yours to enjoy. Leave adjust for low light, portrait lighting, and auto-framing OFF. Your setup does all of that for real. Don’t let the software repaint the painting.
And the backgrounds tab: a stance, not a setting
Virtual backgrounds and the full-on blur send a quiet, subconscious message: I have something to hide. Every single time I’ve had someone turn theirs off, I liked what was actually behind them better, and my trust went up on the spot, even when it was a plain wall. In a pinch, traveling, a hotel, a space that isn’t yours, fine, use the blur, life happens. As your everyday choice? Your real room, even half-finished, beats a fake anything. The screen should tell the truth, and that includes the background. And if your real room is the problem, that’s Part 5 (Lever #4). Go watch it, then come let me help you with it.
That’s all five levers, complete
Your light. Your sound. Your camera. Your set. And this polish layer that lets it all through. Everything standing between how good you actually are and how good you look on camera, and every lever is now yours.
And notice what just happened. You watched this entire video and got the complete instructions, free. That’s what the inside of the Green Room feels like, all the time. On Parts 2 through 5, if you’re not in the room, you saw the what and the why, and below those videos isn’t the full instructions, it’s the door. Inside: the full videos, the live demos, my actual gear recommendations with current links, the product vault, the monthly favorite finds, the live monthly setup clinic, and access to book a private On-Camera Presence Audit with me, one on one.
Today was the free sample. The whole room is one click away. Come join me in the Green Room, I’d love to have you in there.
How’d you go? Let me know!
Tell me in the comments: which setting surprised you the most? And if you make one change today, which one was it? I read every comment.
Coming Up Next, Part 7: The Identity Shift –Next time is different. We’re done with gear, done with settings, done with tech. Part 7 is about what happens in YOU when the screen finally starts telling the truth. It’s the video this whole series has been building toward, and there’s a piece of it I’ve been saving since Part 1.
