Virtual Conference Presenter - A Zoom Guide
Zoom: Getting Started Guide for Presenters
Ray Uehara, SIL International, September 2021
This document will guide you through how to use a Zoom account for giving your presentation and how to self-record it so that you can send the video file to the conference organizers. To optimize the quality and control of your presentation, it is highly recommended to do this using a laptop or desktop computer, so the following instructions are for a computer, not a mobile device.
This document will go over:
Creating a Zoom Account
If you don’t already have a Zoom account, you can easily sign up for a free account.
Go to https://zoom.us/signup
Enter your birthdate (you don’t have to be exact; they’re basically checking that you are an adult and not underage.)
If you are not an SIL member, enter your email address and click Sign Up. An activation email will be sent to that address. In the email message, click on “Activate Account”. A Zoom webpage will launch, prompting you to enter your name and create a password for your account. Continue to answer the prompts to finish the process. You can then click on Go to My Account to see your Zoom account interface.
If you are an SIL member, click on SSO. For the “Company Domain” prompt, enter “sil” (no quotes) in the field, and click Continue
The standard SIL IDP prompt for credentials will appear. Enter your credentials to sign in. You will be brought back to the Zoom interface, signed in to your free Zoom account.
Downloading & Installing the Zoom Meetings Client Program
Go to https://zoom.us/download
You can click on the big blue Download button, or if you know your computer can run 64-bit programs, you can click on the Download 64-bit Client link below the button.
Continue with your standard way of installing a program on your computer (Windows or Mac).
Once the program is installed, launch it and sign into your Zoom account. Click on the white Sign In button. If you would like to stay signed in to your Zoom client, check the box in the middle to Keep me signed in (green arrow). If you are an SIL member, click on SSO (orange arrow) to sign in with your SIL credentials or if you’re not an SIL member, enter your email address and password and click Sign In (red arrow).
Verifying Audio & Video Settings
Once you are signed in to your Zoom Meetings client program, click on your profile icon in the upper right corner of the window. In the dropdown menu that appears, click on Settings. There are many configuration settings for you to customize as desired. But first, let’s test your audio and video settings to verify that Zoom will use your desired audio and video sources.
Click on Audio on the left side menu tabs.
Verify that Zoom is using your desired speaker and microphone. Click on the down arrows (in the red circles) to the right of the speaker and microphone selections to show your options if they need to be changed, for example if you want to use the microphone in your external webcam rather than the microphone array built into your laptop.
Click on the Test Speaker button (in the green oval) to test that the device you want works and is at a volume level (green arrow) that is comfortable.
Next, test your microphone by clicking on the Test Mic button (in the green oval) then talking at your regular speaking volume. Watch the Input Level (green arrow pointing to the blue bar), it should be moving left-to-right, going at least half-way. Zoom will play back what you said on your speaker. If it’s not loud enough, move the mic volume level to the right (orange arrow). You also may want to NOT check the Automatically adjust microphone volume box (in red circle) if your voice naturally varies a lot in volume or if you are soft spoken.
Click on Video on the left-side menu tabs.
If you have only one camera, it should already be selected.
If you have more than one camera connected to your computer, click on the down arrow on the right side of the camera field (in the red circle) to select a different camera. Look at the other check box options and select any desired setting.
Setting Up a Virtual Background
To present a consistent ‘look’ for all presenters in the conference, you could be given a virtual background image to install in your Zoom Meetings client program. If your computer does not have the minimum requirements to support virtual backgrounds, the Zoom program will display a notification when you try to use a virtual background. (If that is the case, see the next section to optimize your on-camera physical space.)
Signed in to your Zoom Meetings client program, click on your profile icon in the upper right corner of the window. In the dropdown menu that appears, click on Settings, then click Background & Filters in the left-side menu.
On the right side, click on the +, then click Add Image (both in the red circle). Your file manager window should open, go to the location of the virtual background image file, select it to upload it to the Zoom Meetings program. Click on the resulting thumbnail image of the background if it does not automatically become your background.
Presenting Yourself on Camera
Being the presenter, the on-screen environment you display is important. The conference organizers may be giving you a virtual background so that there is consistency for all the presenters. But if your computer is unable to support a virtual background, make sure that the background space behind you is better than just ‘okay’. You don’t want it to be too ‘busy’, messy, or have movement that will distract. You can even position yourself so that your back is close to a wall with some fabric or wall hanging to give a little color and texture.
Your computer/laptop screen should be placed so that you have an ergonomic work position, your head being naturally aligned. This is also important for video conferencing. The top of your screen should be at about the height of your eyes when looking straight ahead. Your line of sight will more closely match the laptop webcam so that it will look like you are looking at your audience and not up, down, or to the side. (Even better, if you can, look directly at the webcam when presenting so that it looks like you are talking directly to your audience.) This may mean using an external monitor or elevating your laptop to eye height and using an external keyboard and mouse. You don’t want to give a camera angle that appears to be looking up your nose with your ceiling fan as the background.
Make sure that there’s no light source in the background that would contribute to silhouetting, but not so dark a background that it looks like you are in a cave. Adequate, even lighting on your face is important; not too bright that it washes out facial features or off to the side so that it casts strong shadows on your face. Experiment with different lighting sources and positioning to find the optimal coverage.
Of course, the environment also needs to be adequately quiet from background noise distractions - traffic noise, dogs barking, active children, office chatter… even stray notification sounds from the computer and mobile devices (turn off notifications, mute the phone). Even if the location is quiet, a bare empty space will echo, making you sound hollow and difficult to understand. You may need to add objects into the room and various materials/objects on the walls to reduce the echo-chamber effect.
A good headset (even better if it has a noise cancelling microphone) may be needed to help minimize environmental and room-echo noises. Providing good, clear audio is more important than a good video image. People are there to hear and learn from your presentation, not just to look at you.
Screen Sharing Your Slide Deck or Media
You want your slide deck (PowerPoint, Google Slides, or other media) to be running prior to the start of your presentation. When you are ready to share your screen, click the green Share Screen icon.
Choose whether you will share your entire desktop, a specific application, or whiteboard.
If you are sharing a video clip or any audio in what you are sharing, ensure that you also select the Share Sound (red oval) and, if necessary, Optimize for video clip (green oval), check-boxes at the bottom-left of the share screen selection window.
Once you have selected what you wish to share, click the Share button.
Advanced options allow you to share music or computer sound only, a second camera, or even place your PowerPoint as your Virtual Background. If you are sharing a video file (.mp4 or .mov), click on Video, then click Share. Your file manager window will open for you to select the video file you want to share. Zoom optimizes this method by using its embedded video player.
Zoom’s help page for this feature: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360051673592
To stop screen-sharing, click Stop Share on the attendee controls, which will now be at the top of your screen.
It is a good idea to practice launching screen share, moving through your presentation, and exiting screen share so that it is a quick and smooth process in the actual presentation. A few extra seconds of fumbling will feel like a really long time for both the presenter and audience. Also, especially if your screen share portion has audio and/or video clips, you’ll want to record your practice session so that you can review the results. (see section below for recording) You could find that the shared audio might be too quiet or too loud, especially if you are talking while the audio is playing. Your voice could be drowning out the audio, or the audio may be overpowering your voice. You’ll need to adjust the volume level of the shared audio as necessary.
See this help file for more details: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362153-Sharing-your-screen
Live Transcription (Closed Captioning)
Zoom has the ability to create an AI generated live transcription of English if you have purchased a license for your Zoom account. A free Zoom account only has the ability to allow a person to type in closed captioning. Although this automated live transcription function is not perfect, occasionally hilariously so, having this feature turned on allows people to ‘read along’ with you - which can be especially helpful for the hearing-impaired and non-native English speakers.
To verify that this feature is turned on, sign in to the Zoom web portal, on the left, click Settings, then click the Meeting tab, then click on In Meeting (Advanced), in the Closed captioning section, on the right side verify that it is turned on. Then, check the box to Allow live transcription service to transcribe meeting automatically.
After you start your Zoom meeting, click on Live Transcript to start the function, then click Enable Auto-Transcription.
Here is Zoom’s support webpage for Closed Captioning and Live Transcription:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207279736-Enabling-and-managing-closed-captioning-and-live-transcription
How to Record Yourself Doing Your Presentation
When you are not doing a live presentation but self-recording your presentation for later playback, it can be more difficult since there won’t be instant feedback/reactions from a live audience. You’ll either have to pretend that there’s an audience, or, perhaps you can get a family member or friend to be in the same room as you (on the opposite side of your webcam) to be your audience.
When you are ready to start your presentation, if you have a Zoom license, first click on Live Transcription, then Enable Auto-Transcription.
To start recording, click on Record. If you have a Zoom license you have a choice to click on Record on this Computer (red arrow), or click on Record to the Cloud (green arrow) so that the live transcription will be saved with your video.
Next, take a breath, look directly at the webcam, then start your presentation. (This gives Zoom a couple of seconds to stabilize the start of the recording, and both you and the audience those several seconds to get adjusted and comfortable.)
When your presentation is done, mute your microphone. If you are using auto-transcription, let the recording continue for another 15 seconds before clicking on the ‘Stop’ icon in Pause/Stop Recording to stop the recording. This will give the auto-transcription time to finish its processing. (If you are not using auto-transcription, you can immediately stop recording.) You can now end the meeting. If you immediately stop the recording when you are done, you could lose the last 10+ seconds of the transcription.
Editing Transcription or Closed Caption
Please review your transcription by playing the MP4 file created by Zoom. If you see any issues with it, please edit the 
Sending the Video File to the Conference Organizers
After you stop recording and end the Zoom meeting, if you were saving to your Computer, Zoom will then show a message that it is processing your recording. This can take a good number of minutes depending on how long your recording is. When it is done saving the files, recording Zoom will open a file window displaying the recorded files. The video file you want is zoom_0.mp4. If you had started and stopped recording more than once, there would be more files, e.g. zoom_1.mp4, zoom_2.mp4. You will need to play the files to determine which one is your presentation. Rename your presentation video file with your name and title of your presentation so that the conference organizers can easily identify it.
If you record to the Cloud, you will receive an email informing you when Zoom has finished processing the recording. Clicking on the first link for the meeting host opens the web interface to the cloud recording (you might need to sign in). If you desire, you can click on the Download button (green arrow) to download all files related to the meeting recording (prompting you one file at a time), or click the small download icon (red arrow) to just download the video file. (The example image below is for a recording under 2 minutes long - your files will be much larger!)
If you record it to your computer, the video file will be so large that it can’t be attached to an email. The conference organizers will need to tell you how they want the video file sent to them - whether uploaded to their shared cloud drive or for you to provide them a link to your cloud drive shared file (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.).
If you record to Zoom’s Cloud, you can provide the viewer link and password from the email notification to the conference organizers. Alternatively, you can click on a shareable link (orange arrows, above) to copy the link to your clipboard for you to send to the conference organizers via the method they request (email, online form, etc.). If the conference provides a link to their shared cloud drive, you will need to first download your video file, then upload it to their cloud drive.
It’s best not to delete the video files until some time after the conference is over, to make sure that the conference has their copy of the file, and in case conference attendees request a copy of your presentation.
Happy Presenting!
If you want to explore more of all the functions and features of Zoom, here is Zoom’s FAQ support web page with links to many topics:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206175806