Watching a film in a meeting

[Kate09]

I am hosting an event where all participants are going to watch a film together and then discuss in breakout rooms.

I know I can share my screen with the video and use the settings to "optimise for video clip" and "sound" but is that all I can do? 

I just want to make sure it is a really smooth viewing process for everybody. It's 1 hour long, so not exactly a video clip!

Thanks!

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @Kate09.

I helped a small group do exactly this for a 6-movie series in early 2023.

It’s definitely doable, but here’s my initial recommendation: don’t play full screen and share the screen. Instead, go to Share, click the Advanced menu, and select the Video option. Once you do that, you’ll be prompted to select a file from your computer, which Zoom will then “stream” to your audience through an internal player. Practice this several times until you can do it without thinking 🤔  and be sure to log in and watch from another device to quality-check the viewing experience. 

This Zoom Support article should be helpful:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064733

Depending on your overall objective and funding, there is another great option.  With Zoom Events (and the associated Webinars Plus product), you can use a feature called Production Studio, which will allow you to upload your video to the Zoom Cloud and create a Production Studio “scene” that will play out your video from the Zoom Cloud. This has the added advantages of super-good quality streaming to the audience (your own network or PC won’t affect the play-out quality) and reliability (if you crash or lose internet, the video keeps playing and you can rejoin the play-out seemlessly when you’re back online).  It’s not hugely expensive, but worth considering. Reach out if you’d like to know more.