Why is my Zoom video inverted and how to fix it?
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(Pocket-lint) – If you’ve come to this page you’re probably trying to figure out why, when you see yourself on a Zoom call, everything you see in your Zoom video is upside down, with things like text and clothing patterns appearing the wrong way round. The same will happen in Google Meets and Microsoft Teams.
So what is going on and how would you solve this problem? First, you need to understand what is going on.
It’s all about mirroring
There’s no need to panic, as your video isn’t actually upside down. When those people on the other end of the call see you, you look exactly the way you should. This means that all the text is the right way round.
Essentially, to fix this problem, you don’t have to do anything at all, because it’s just the preview of yourself in the video you see which is the wrong way.
This is because mirroring is enabled by default when using Zoom and other services. You can test this by shaking hands to shake hands – mirroring will see you and your video image reaching out with the same hand. That’s how you know mirroring is on. It is also reflected in Teams, Skype and Google Meets.
Why is mirroring used?
A mirror image presents the view of yourself that you are used to seeing. You see it every morning when you look in the mirror. When it comes to presenting, it’s much easier for you to understand what’s going on, giving much more natural results thanks to mirroring.
Without mirroring in your preview window, when you reach left you’ll see yourself reaching right and it’s confusing. You immediately think you’re doing it backwards because it’s not what you expect to see and you try to fix it. It’s a phenomenon that only really happens with video where you can see yourself, something we’ve only been dealing with for a few decades.
The important thing to understand is that the people on the other end of the line are not sitting in your place, they are actually sitting across from you. When you see their sight – the mirrorless sight – it’s like an out of body experience. It’s something you never see, which is why mirroring is used.
It’s not just limited to video conferencing, but it’s just that video conferencing shows you what you’re doing when other situations don’t. Think of a teacher standing in front of a class if they say “look left” all the students are looking left but it’s actually to the right of the teacher because they are standing opposite. You’ll probably have seen this in gym class, where the instructor says “move to your left” and then walk to their left, which is your right.
Don’t panic: all the text is the right way round
The good news is that if you’re viewing text through the camera – perhaps showing something you’ve written – mirroring means it’s looking back at you, while that seems normal to everyone else in the chat. video conference. Do not write anything upside down, because then it will be upside down.
Zoom, Skype, Teams, Google Meet all show you this mirrored view, but everything for viewers is exactly as it should be, so don’t change anything, don’t write things upside down, don’t print things upside down – instead , stop thinking about it, because you will get into knots.
How to Disable Mirroring on Zoom
Zoom is (currently) the only platform that will allow you to disable mirroring. If you find this too confusing – perhaps if you spend a lot of time presenting text like an online tutor – you can disable mirroring in the video settings.
Here’s how:
- From your conference window in Zoom, click the up arrow on the video button.
- Click on video settings – this will open the settings window.
- Click “Mirror my video” and see which view works best for you.
Where else does mirroring exist?
Mirroring is very common on selfie cameras. Again, they present a view you don’t usually see, i.e. someone looking at you, so the images you see on a selfie camera are reflected, instead of what the camera actually sees.
You can test this for yourself with the handshake test mentioned above. If you happen to shake hands with your image, a mirror image sees you both raising your hands to the same side, so you can’t shake hands, so to speak.
There’s usually an option in smartphones to save either the mirrored image you see in the preview, or an inverted version, which someone standing in front of you would have seen. Again, it plays havoc with writing on clothes, where the markings are upside down if you save the mirror image, which a lot of people do.
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This raises a much broader philosophical question of who the selfies are taken for: if you think the mirrored version is the right one, you’re taking them for yourself; if you think the reverse image is correct, you mistake it for someone else. Are you a narcissistic selfie taker?
Again, don’t overthink it, as it’ll make your head spin – but if you find your selfies are always “upside down”, check the camera settings on your phone and you can probably tweak it to get the result you want. want you.
Written by Chris Hall.