Technology for operating a video conferencing application at a local user equipment (UE) that supports an interactive zooming feature is disclosed. A local UE can define a region of interest (ROI) within a field of view at a remote UE. The local UE can communicate the ROI to the remote UE via a real-time transport control protocol (RTCP) feedback message, wherein the RTCP feedback message directs the remote UE to capture video within the ROI and encode the video within the ROI. The local UE can receive the encoded video within the ROI from the remote UE, the encoded video including regions within the ROI and excluding regions outside the ROI. The local UE can receive actual transmitted ROI corresponding to the encoded video from the remote UE via an RTP header extension. The encoded video within the ROI can be rendered for display at the local UE.