Microsoft keeps updating its Teams platform. Recently, the company released an updated version that is much faster, more flexible, and more intelligent than previous versions of Microsoft Teams. Avatars for Teams are also in public preview, allowing users to use avatars instead of a camera or webcam when joining a meeting. Now, the company has released another update to the public preview that allows users to use a green screen to make virtual backgrounds much better. This will improve the sharpness of the virtual background around the face, making it look more professional and polished during video meetings without being blurry. As this enhances the background and replaces it with the virtual background, there will be a clear definition around the face, ears, head, and hair.
You can use this feature to hide your background or replace it with a virtual background to create a more engaging and interactive experience for your viewers. Before proceeding, ensure that the green screen is evenly lit and there are no wrinkles or folds.
Note that you should not wear the same color as the background image, and the virtual background you choose to replace with the green screen should be of high quality and match the lighting in your room. After ensuring that there is a solid color screen or clean background in the background, it should also be plain and without any irregularities or strain.
How to set up a green screen in Microsoft Teams:
This feature is currently available in public preview, and it is not enabled by default. You manually need to set up the green screen in your meeting space. Here are the following instructions mentioned below:
- Open Microsoft Teams, and then head over to join the team.
- From there, click on the More icon on the Meeting toolbar and then choose Video Effects.
- Now, from the Video Effect page, select Green Screen Settings, which you can find under Background.
- After enabling the Green Screen toggle from the Camera section, you can now pick the background color that appears in the bottom-right corner of the Preview Window. Either you can choose from the pre-designed virtual background or use your background image. You can also adjust the lighting and the contrast of your virtual background to create a more realistic look.
- That’s it. Go back to your meetings.
After enabling the green screen feature, you can use any background image of your choice in your video meetings, as it allows you to use the green screen feature to create a virtual background. This feature is quite nifty and useful to hide your background or replace it with any virtual background of your choice.
However, as we have mentioned, this is currently in public preview, so some users might encounter some bugs or limitations. If you encounter any problems, submit feedback to Microsoft so they can start working on a patch update for Microsoft Teams ahead of the stable release. One of the known issues with this Microsoft Teams preview is that it is only supported on Windows and macOS devices with Intel Soc. While Mac M1/M2 doesn’t support it, they are working to add support for this in the future.
Microsoft Teams (free) has been updated with a new feature. Try it now to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Microsoft has recently made several changes to Microsoft Teams. The company has been putting a lot of effort into creating a good conversation app for both personal and business use. There are plenty of new things that have been rolled out lately for the free version of Microsoft Teams. The desktop app has also received a treatment; it is now more optimized and almost 70% faster than the previous version of Teams.
This includes the new app badges on the app, which make it easier to see which app has new updates or notifications appear next to the app’s icon. Additionally, there is the ability to share videos with the community. To do this, you need to click on the share button in the app, choose the community you want to share the video with and add a message to the video.
Last quarter, Microsoft Teams received a good list of features that you can try to make your experience better. The features include improved notifications, support for playing videos with the community, sharing content through the native sharing option, accepting invitations to communities within the app, and an improved experience for inviting people to meetings through SMS. Today, in this article, we will be sharing all the important features that you can use with the new Microsoft Teams.
App Badge
There is new content to show in Windows 11 Chat and Teams. A new red dot on the taskbar appears next to the Microsoft Teams app icon on the taskbar. This makes it easier for users to keep track of new notifications for unread messages or notifications from their contacts or channels. This content or feature comes within Microsoft Teams on Microsoft Windows 11. To tweak these settings, you can open Settings and click on Personalization. From there, check the Taskbar and then Taskbar behavior to check or uncheck the box for the Show badge (Unread Message Counter) on the Taskbar apps.
Video sharing in communities
You can share videos beautifully in line with the community in Microsoft Teams without having to leave the community. This is a great improvement, making it easier to watch videos. To watch the video, click on the video thumbnail to start playing the video online within the community. You can control the pause, play, rewind, fast forward, and volume controls to adjust the volume of the video. You can also view it in full-screen by clicking on the Full-screen button.
Inviting Users to Meetings via SMS
You can invite users via SMS, which you can set up while scheduling a new meeting in Microsoft Teams (free) on Windows 11 by entering your phone number as the recipient. When meeting time arrives, you will have to simply enter your phone number as the recipient so they can receive the meeting update via SMS, which also includes the meeting link to join meetings. To do this, open Teams on Windows and click on the New Meetings button. There, you need to enter the person’s mobile number that you want to invite to the meeting, and then click on the Send Invite button. That person can simply click on the link to open Teams and then join the meeting.
High-five Emoji
There is a new high-five emoji that you can use with your contacts when you want to have fun or share something cool in Teams. They will see a small animation of your character giving a high-five, which is a fun and interactive way to add personality to your conversation.
Easy Sharing
Sharing content is now easier with the native sharing option on your mobile device. Simply open the Teams app on your mobile device, head over to the content you want to share, tap on the share button, select Microsoft Teams from the list of sharing options, choose the community you want to share content with, and then tap on the share button.
Safeguarding Update
To protect its users from piracy or malicious content, the new automated mechanism will remove harmful content and notify users about content removal.
Invite for acceptance
If someone invites you, you will receive a notification in the Microsoft Teams app. Simply click on “accept” to join the community. When you launch the Teams app, click on “communities” under “recent” on the left navigation panel to see all your community invites.
This update is currently available in preview and will roll out in phases. If you don’t see these features, check again later or contact your Microsoft Teams administrator. Additionally, the app is now faster and more responsive, has improved performance for large meetings and calls, and supports multiple languages while maintaining memory usage.
The green screen feature will automatically disable the background in blue and together mode, as this feature uses different technologies to remove the background from your video. Microsoft Teams uses chroma keying, and it is designed to work with other presenter modes, including standout, side-by-side, reporter, PowerPoint Live standout, and background replacement (JPEG/PNG). However, these modes use different technologies. At this point, this doesn’t detect small objects precisely, as chroma keying works by identifying a specific color and then removing the color from the video. However, if the object has the same color as the background, then the green screen feature may not be able to detect it properly.
The green screen feature on Microsoft Teams also does not produce a good screen effect when using transparent or translucent objects because these make it difficult for the green screen feature to identify the background color. Therefore, it is recommended to adjust the settings of the green screen feature to get better results. It is currently rolling out to the Teams public preview for the Windows or macOS Team client. As users love to use virtual backgrounds, it is helpful for all those users who find themselves using Teams regularly.