114 PCWorld MAY 2020HERE’S HOW MAKE A FUNNY ZOOM BACKGROUND
We’ll show you how to enable that
option and take advantage of Zoom’s built-in
backgrounds. But there’s more: Zoom offers
background video, too—a looping video
that can replace the Zoom’s static
background image. We’ll also show you
how to select your own background video
to replace Zoom’s basic options.HOW TO TURN ON
CUSTOM BACKGROUNDS
Historically, Zoom required a “green screen”
to enable custom backgrounds—yes, the
literal green backdrop traditionally used by
movies to enable a canvas for computer-
generated special effects. That changed last
year, when the Zoom desktop app became
smart enough to distinguish you from the
objects behind you. Custom backgroundsdon’t seem to work on the
Zoom web client, though.
Zoom has a rather
complex list of minimum
requirements that you’ll
need to enable custom
backgrounds, but here’s
what they boil down to:- An up-to-date Zoom
app running on Windows
7, 8, or 10. - A PC with a
supported
microprocessor: a quad-
core 6th-gen Core i5
(except a U-series chip); a quad-core 4th-gen
Core i7; or any 3GHz processor with 8 cores
or more.
If you don’t know what you have,
don’t worry. This is all simple enough that
it will either work, or it won’t. Virtual
backgrounds are also available for iOS (with
an iPhone 8, 8+, or X, or an iPad Pro and
the 5th- and 6th-gen iPads), but support for
Android isn’t listed.
When the Zoom main screen opens up,
you’ll see the Zoom main page. The first
thing to do is to click the Zoom Settings gear
in the upper right-hand corner. This opens
up a wealth of options, but the relevant one
for us is the Virtual Background option.
Zoom makes this step extremely easy. By
default, Zoom turns on your webcam, and
you should see what others in your chat will
Zoom’s AI-generated backgrounds are pretty seamless with a good PC.