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Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

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Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#31

Post by riffraff »

madars wrote: post #9
jtokoph wrote: post #3

The example video clips in the post look nothing like me and my team's view when using the new feature. Most of the time half of our hair gets blurred or replaced and hand gestures will cause either our hands or head to disappear.

At least for background blur the latency there is enough to make it almost unusable: easily over 100ms. This is with latest stable Chrome on a relatively recent Ryzen/Nvidia system. Maybe background replacement will do better once it rolls down to regular Google Meet (too lazy to log into my Google Apps Suite Workspace) :-) However, everything else about Google Meet is great and I wish I could make all my Zoom friend…

> However, everything else about Google Meet is great and I wish I could make all my Zoom friends switch.

is it _better_ than zoom tho? I my experience, I don't see much of an improvement worth switching.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#32

Post by neilpanchal »

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn.

Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#33

Post by deelowe »

riffraff wrote: post #31
madars wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for background blur the latency there is enough to make it almost unusable: easily over 100ms. This is with latest stable Chrome on a relatively recent Ryzen/Nvidia system. Maybe background replacement will do better once it rolls down to regular Google Meet (too lazy to log into my Google Apps Suite Workspace) :-) However, everything else about Google Meet is great and I wish I could make all my Zoom friend…

> However, everything else about Google Meet is great and I wish I could make all my Zoom friends switch. is it _better_ than zoom tho? I my experience, I don't see much of an improvement worth switching.

Try using meet, teams and zoom on high latency and/or low bandwidth connections.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#34

Post by andeee23 »

ilikeerp wrote: post #30
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

Happy to see ML become mainstream. In the future, I don't think ML will be a separate field of programming. It'll just be "programming," the same way webdev is. There's a tendency to think of ML as "not programming," or something other than just plain programming. But as the tooling matures, that'll go away. (Lisp used to be considered "AI programming," till it became useful in many other contexts.)

I don't count web dev as programming. HN is full of JS people that think a text editor and a browser with fuck all data, load, or volume issues is 'programming'. Fucking casuals.

Do you consider an app like Microsoft Teams not a "real" program then?

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#35

Post by probably_wrong »

vinhboy wrote: post #13

Blur is awesome. Way better, less distracting, than backgrounds. Everyone who try it uses it permanently because it works so well. I also think it makes the subject look better for some reason.

Here's a tip: take a picture of your real, actual background from the POV of your webcam, and set that as your meeting background.

Advantages: it looks natural, it covers whatever is going on behind you (in case you are not alone and people walks by, or if your living room is messy), and it blends better than fake backgrounds (because it's the same image behind it). I have a picture of my office that I use both at home and at my real office, and most people can't tell. And since I took the picture with my phone which has better resolution, my video feed looks better for cheap.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#36

Post by gexla »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #22
ibuildthings wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this particular case, why is testing/demonstrating on diverse set of individuals a bad thing ? A personal anecdote is that a few years back the automatic door sensors in my university did not work on my skin tone.

It's not a bad thing, I just dislike that I noticed it.

It's video conferencing software. Makes sense that they might put together imagery which might suggest people meeting from different corners of the planet. But sure, I get your point. I didn't notice this myself, but I have been living on side of the planet opposite from where I was born for the past decade.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#37

Post by riffraff »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #29
dharma1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry not everyone on the planet looks like you

They seem to be lamenting that they now notice skin color (due to all the racial essentialism of the last N years) where they used to not notice.

I understand the feeling somewhat: it is very noticeable how TV shows for example now have expanded the default cast from "all white people + token black, maybe a gay individual" to "all white people + token black woman + token asian + token non-binary, maybe a transgender individual".

It feels forced and ham-fisted, but I don't see how this could be made in a better way.

Possibly people growing up with this will not notice it at all, and it will be good for them, it's only us old farts that need to adapt.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#38

Post by askvictor »

neilpanchal wrote: post #32

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn. Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

More important than the button is the status indicator - I need to know if the call is muted or not. Even better, promote it to an OS-level icon/badge/overlay. If my mic is actively in use, please make it blindingly obvious.

Re: Background Features in Google Meet, Powered by Web ML

#40

Post by dawnerd »

neilpanchal wrote: post #32

Aside: Imagine you’re driving down the road and you need to make a right turn. Well, for some reason the steering wheel is stowed away and disappeared! You need to hover your hand around the center console in a specific area to be able to expose it. Out comes the steering wheel and now you can make a right turn. Google UX/UI team: Please fucking make the mute/unmute button visible at all times.

Also stop telling me my camera is disabled. Like, I know it is, I disabled it for a reason.
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