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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

#91

Post by chedabob »

wdr1 wrote: post #78
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.

Cmd-D will mute/unmute. I find it much easier than using the mouse.

I find more often than not I end up bookmarking the page with that shortcut.

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

#92

Post by enriquto »

_pastel wrote: post #88
samtheprogram wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vouch for this. I haven’t really needed the background blur feature personally, but I’ve tried it and both myself, colleagues, and friends — pretty much everyone I’ve talked to that has used it — loathe Google Meet’s background blur, and prefer Zoom’s by far. In my experience, it doesn’t completely cover the background most of the time, and if you move at all, as you point out, it can’t keep up. Kind of funny t…

"Half baked" misrepresents the difficulty this task. Yes, Zoom does it better, but it's _still_ an excellent and interesting engineering accomplishment. I've always wondered what proportion of modern real-time video effects rely on ML vs. classical image processing; this not only answers that question, but provides details down to the level of model architecture and the final latency and IOU benchmarks. Of course I'd…

> I've always wondered what proportion of modern real-time video effects rely on ML vs. classical image processing;

ML is a classical tool for image processing, what do you mean here?

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

#93

Post by jcims »

It would be nice if there was a webcam on the market that took actual lenses so you could get free, legit depth of field. Paying $700 for a used DSLR that has a clean hdmi out is not appealing, especially when I have a mirrorless from the same company that could probably do the same with a firmware update (that will never come)

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

#94

Post by vosper »

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.

https://www.meetenhancementsuite.com/

Not that you should have to install an extension to get basic UX

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

#95

Post by TacoSteemers »

jcims wrote: post #81
TacoSteemers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have similar problems with Zoom. The mute/unmute changes position and can be hidden in a top bar that slides out. In some fullscreen situations there is no button to get out of fullscreen. Sometimes double-click works, sometimes it doesn't. Recently I could not even alt-tab away, basically my computer got 'locked' by zoom. https://tacosteemers.com/articles/2020-10-16-ux-anti-pattern...

I imagine most know this by now but the space bar works as a push to talk button in Zoom (as long as it has focus of course). I really think there is a market for a physical video conference controller. If I could get a hefty slab of something with quality buttons to enable/disable video, push to talk/mute/unmute, bring to foreground, ‘on air’ light and end call, I’d easily pay $100 for it.

> I imagine most know this by now but the space bar works as a push to talk button in Zoom (as long as it has focus of course).

I hadn't checked for shortcuts yet! On my install it turns out to be alt + a.

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

#96

Post by chedabob »

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 don't put that damn bar over the subtitles.

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

#97

Post by professor_v »

Jyaif wrote: post #83
mft_ wrote: post #77

As an aside, this example looks faked: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-viEA4OY0sxA/X5s7IBwoXOI/AAAAAAAAG... As in, the blurred background looks totally different (light:dark, shapes, etc.) to the unblurred background. (I get that they’d need to do something funky to show blurred and unblurred backgrounds with the same foreground video, and faking it is likely easier than doing it programmatically, but this is just odd/slo…

The fact that you think that the blurred background example is fake is a testament to how well background replacement work.

Have you actually used it? In practice I wouldn't say it works at all really. The artifacts are terrible.

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

#98

Post by mr_mitm »

izacus wrote: post #73
riffraff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think the main benefit is not having to install a desktop app of questionable quality just to make a call.

You can use Zoom in the browser. They "just" discourage it by using a dark pattern. The link for the web client is small and gray and the browser tries to open the desktop app automatically.

You can also join by phone, at least in some circumstances.

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

#99

Post by mike_kamau »

Why are people replacing their backgrounds?

I thought the whole point of having a video call is to see who you are talking to, and their environment to further enhance the effectiveness of the conversation.

If you are in your kitchen, or under a tree, I definitely would like to see that because that environment will have an effect on how we communicate.

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

#100

Post by notimetorelax »

piquadrat wrote: post #63
dharma1 wrote: post #15

Sony released some software a couple of months ago that lets you use most of their DSLRs as webcams with USB. My goodness, paired with a fast lens, what a difference to my MacBook webcam, even with these ml blurred backgrounds! It's only 720p and around 15fps but real shallow dof, very little sensor noise, autofocus works. Well worth trying if you have a Sony camera from the last few years. Sensor size and good optic…

I recently tried to get a setup similar to this with a Fujifilm X-T20 I had lying around, remembering that Fujifilm announced similar software. Alas, that software only works with their higher end models. I ended up getting a $10 HDMI USB capture stick from Aliexpress. I get a perfect 1080p/60fps signal, and at least on Linux it worked out of the box with Zoom. The only problem now is that most of my meetings start w…

This is interesting, could you link to the device you used? Do you know if it would work on Chrome OS?
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