With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and the advent of teleworking, video calls are the order of the day. These virtual meetings They are not always well receivedespecially when users are forced to run it every week or worse, every day.
These tricks can be used to simulate connection problems such as frozen screens or audio and video interference.
Fortunately, for those who are already tired of those virtual meetings over Zoom, Skype, or Slack, there are a few tricks they can use to simulate errors and problems in the video call in order to hang up and escape.
How to pretend you have a bad connection
Zoom was one of the most common uses for these types of meetings during the pandemic. The Chinese application has also developed a variety of features and plugins that allow users to change the background, filter, and even make phone calls to celebrities using deepfake techniques.
One of these plugins allowed simulate a bad connection Audio and video in the conversation itself. This program is called Bufferi.ng enables this interference to be generated Edit the signal in Zoom, Skype or Teams so that the user has problems with paused pictures and interrupted sound. An icon will also appear simulating that the computer is trying to reconnect.
How to simulate a slow connection
This is a trick that web application developers often use to simulate a slow connection and see how the app would work with a slow internet connection. To do this, you’ll need to use the Chrome developer tools, so this trick is useful for browser applications, but not desktop applications.
While the video call is in progress through the browser, you need to access the Chrome tools, press the three vertical dots and select the «optionMore Tools> Developer Tools«. The «Network» tab must be selected in the tool screen. Here is the online option which, when viewed, offers various connection options such as: B. 3G or slow 3G. All you have to do is select one of them and it will cut the connection, causing the usual problems of a video call.
How to fake attention during a video call
Some video calling applications, such as Zoom, have alerts that notify the meeting organizer if any of the participants minimized the window for more than 30 seconds. Fortunately, Zoom also has an option that went viral during the pandemic that allows you to create a loop video to customize the background of the video call. The “trick” is to record yourself in the background and create a loop that looks like you’re paying attention, as you can see in the video below:
Zoom Pro Tip 3: Make it a video background to have a compelling loop of yours that looks engaging pic.twitter.com/exNM1TXk8I
– David Zhou (@dz) March 18, 2020
Visuals effects for Google Meet
It is a browser extension for Chrome that allows you to apply various effects to your webcam images. With that in mind, it’s possible to handle Google Meet calls by inserting a background image as if it had a color intensity and freezing the image to simulate a bad connection.
