28. December 2023
Matthias Wagener
Video – a success story! The idea of “video” began in the mid-70s of the last century with plastic cassettes and magnetic tapes – the content was played on a player that was often rented at the same time as the desired movie. (VHS won against Betamax, which was decided by the porn industry. Or is that a myth?)
Today, after more than 30 years of digitization of the various industries involved, the term “video” stands for moving images of all kinds: media consumption by on-demand streaming and a fixed factor of social interaction in private and professional life.
At Vast Forward, we can see this development well in retrospect in our own company, to coincide with our 15th anniversary. Around the time the company was founded in 2008, three communication tools and channels were important: Skype and telephone for synchronous communication, email for asynchronous occasions. It was only four years ago that we replaced Skype with Slack as the team and our customers evolved. And it’s almost a truism: since the coronavirus pandemic, video calls have prevailed over telephony, again due to the expansion of remote working for our customers.
So, video on! It’s great to be able to see our counterparts in so many different situations and not just hear or read them. With regard to our structure, we once called this “rich media remote work” in a workshop at Vast Forward. Whether it’s the form of the day, the environment, nuances in expression: a picture sometimes says more than many words, even among colleagues. And, of course, this “more” (in the literal sense of the word) is super helpful in many coordination processes and in many small moments when working remotely.
In our blog post “We love Streaming” we described that video can be a real helper, a tool that has of course long since proven itself in the world of communication and far beyond. The performance of today’s devices and connections makes an infinite number of useful applications possible: from reporting from crisis areas to telemedicine, and in our private lives as an increasingly better and more and more accepted way of creating our social ties with greater closeness, even across great distances.
Video helps us to reduce distances in a world that is growing together – Steve Jobs said this in an interview in 1990 “let’s do for human to human communication what the spreadsheet did for financial planning. Even if he was primarily referring to the beginnings of the Internet, the way we use video today is certainly a logical consequence of this idea.
However, video is also an energy-related eCO2 disaster.
So, video off! The little bit of “extra” information can hardly be worth the extra cost in resources and the consequences for our climate impact! Or is it?
A look at the media: The Handelsblatt writes in 2021 “For video conferences: Camera off for the climate!” and “Video conferences and streaming are CO2 guzzlers. The particularly streaming-happy “Fridays for Future” generation should also be aware of this risk.” (the article describes how emissions could be greatly reduced in the coronavirus year by using video instead of flying and commuting by car).
Also in 2021, “Forschung und Lehre” writes: “Video conferences generate high CO2 emissions” and quotes a study: “with 15 meetings of one hour per week, for example, you would have monthly CO2 emissions of 9.4 kilograms… With the video switched off, this value drops to 377 grams”.
Checking data:
Generally speaking, a video call consumes around four times as much data as an audio call and, of course, it takes more bandwidth and energy to hear and see each other during a video conference. The structure of the image transmission quintuples the amount of data per hour and thus of course also the amount of climate-damaging CO2.
The start-up Greenspector, which has compared different meeting tools, has come to similar conclusions (source: E-Mail CO2: Was Video-Streaming und Mails mit dem Klima zu tun haben | Bayern 1 | Radio | BR.de).
Even if video conferences, as an example of our overall video usage, are more climate-friendly than business trips: the difference in CO2 emissions between “video on” and “video off” remains immense – in favor of “video off”.
By switching off your camera, you not only save a lot of data transfer, but also electricity. This is because video calls generally drain the device batteries faster than audio calls. The computing power required to process video streams puts a greater strain on your device’s battery. You can therefore extend the battery life of your device and reduce the associated energy consumption while saving money – win win!
So is “video off” the only correct consequence?
Vision is of immense importance for our perception of our world. From “Visual Information Processing in the Brain”, Department of General Psychology, Justus Liebig University Giessen: “The particular importance of visual perception for humans… can be seen in the size and number of brain areas involved in image analysis. …In total, around 60% of the cerebral cortex is involved in the perception, interpretation and reaction to visual stimuli.”
We have set simple rules for ourselves as a team to always use our camera when it is possible and not impolite:
