Why the camera quality in MyOwnConference is limited to 360p or 480p?

Attendees sometimes ask why the platform does not offer Full HD or 4K camera quality. The answer lies in how the webinar screen is structured and how video streaming works. Here is a clear, jargon-free explanation.

How the webinar screen is laid out

The webinar screen is divided into two columns. The left column contains the speaker camera along with the speaker name and controls, and the chat panel fills the remaining height below it. The entire right portion of the browser window is dedicated to slides, presentations, images, and screen sharing.

The speaker camera occupies only one small zone within the left column. This is precisely why increasing the camera resolution beyond a certain point produces no visible improvement for attendees.

How many pixels does the camera panel actually need

Consider a standard laptop or desktop screen running at 1920 × 1080 pixels (Full HD). This is the most common resolution among webinar attendees.

The camera panel takes up roughly one third of the screen width. One third of 1920 pixels is exactly 640 pixels. At a 16:9 aspect ratio, the corresponding height is 360 pixels. That is the 360p format.

In other words, a 640 × 360 stream fills the camera panel pixel for pixel, with no scaling and no loss of quality.

Now imagine streaming the camera in Full HD (1920 × 1080). The browser would receive a 1920 × 1080 stream and immediately scale it down to 640 × 360 to fit the panel. The attendee would see exactly the same picture as with 360p. The visual difference is zero, while the bandwidth consumption grows by a factor of 8 to 12.

The core issue is straightforward: higher resolution means significantly more data for a picture that looks completely identical on screen.

Bandwidth requirements

Streaming video consumes internet bandwidth, and the higher the resolution, the more data must be transmitted every second.

An attendee with a 1 Mbit/s connection can watch a 360p webinar without any issues. Full HD would require at least 5 to 6 Mbit/s for the camera stream alone, not counting slides and chat. On an unstable connection, this translates directly into freezing, dropped streams, and audio delays.

It is also worth noting that the bandwidth savings work in both directions. The speaker is uploading a stream to the cloud as well, and the less data needs to be sent, the more stable the broadcast will be. This matters most when the presenter is streaming from home or from a meeting room on a standard Wi-Fi connection.

Mobile phones and tablets

A large share of webinar attendees watch on mobile devices. A smartphone screen typically has a CSS width of 360 to 414 pixels, regardless of the physical resolution of the display panel. A 640 × 360 video already exceeds the width of such a screen, so the browser scales it down anyway. Full HD on a phone adds nothing visually while consuming 12 to 15 times more mobile data and draining the battery faster.

Summary

The 360p and 480p formats in MyOwnConference are a deliberate design decision, not a technical limitation.

The speaker camera panel occupies roughly one third of the screen width. On a standard 1920 × 1080 monitor, that translates to exactly 640 pixels wide and 360 pixels tall, which is precisely 360p. A video stream at this resolution fills the camera zone perfectly with no quality loss whatsoever. If we were to stream in Full HD, the attendee's browser would scale the image down to the same 640 × 360 anyway, and no one would notice a difference.

The impact on bandwidth, however, would be enormous. The 360p format requires between 0.3 and 0.5 Mbit/s, whereas Full HD demands at least 5 Mbit/s. Keeping the resolution lean means that attendees on mobile data, unstable Wi-Fi, or slower connections can follow the webinar without interruptions.

If you want to impress your audience, invest in good lighting, clear audio, and well-designed slides. Those are the factors that shape how a webinar is perceived, not the resolution of a small camera panel in the corner of the screen.

Updated on: 24/03/2026