Google Meet improves quality of background visual effects

When using Google Meet on the web, background effects will now look more accurate thanks to background and foreground separation improvements. This will affect effects such as background blur, background replacement, and the recently launched immersive backgrounds and styles.

However, as those video effects can be very resource-intensive, those with devices that have lower specs can run into issues. To help with that, Meet can automatically switch from processing these effects on the device to processing them on the cloud in order to optimize the effect’s quality. Google says switching from on-device to cloud-based processing can help save battery and up to 30% of CPU. However, the cloud processing capability is currently only available for the background blur and light adjustment features and only for those in eligible Google Workspace tiers, as detailed below:

Availability

Improved background and foreground separation

• Available to all users on eligible devices.

Cloud-based processing

• Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus customers, and Workspace Individual users on eligible devices in eligible countries (Northern America, Europe, Northern Africa, Central Asia, Southeastern Asia)

• Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers. 

• Not available to users with personal Google Accounts 

For those needing to rely on their hardware to render these effects, ensure you are on the latest version of Chrome or ChromeOS, have a 64-bit operating system, and have hardware acceleration turned on. These are available now for all users, so there’s no need to wait on an extended rollout.

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