Adding a Static-View Camera

Video Transcript

00:06

Next, we're going to talk about static view cameras.

00:09

And this is an additional camera which we can switch to

00:12

when the presenter approaches a certain zone.

00:15

Perfect for white board areas, particularly in higher education environments.

00:20

Let's give a quick demonstration.

00:22

So let's say I'm teaching in some kind of hybrid learning environment

00:26

and I've got students over here in the room with me

00:29

and I've also got people joining me from the far end.

00:32

Now I've got a whiteboard that I want to use as part of this teaching,

00:36

and I'm going to walk over to it and maybe I want to write something on it

00:38

or just draw attention to it.

00:40

But straight away, you can see there's two problems.

00:43

One of them is that the board is a digital whiteboard,

00:45

and the way the brightness is set up means it's quite

00:48

bright considering that the cameras expose for me.

00:51

But also, as I move out of the way to let everybody see what's on the board.

00:55

Of course, the camera is tracking me so people in the room can see it.

00:58

Fine, but not so much for people on the far end.

01:02

So now I've added our static view camera.

01:04

And let me show you the difference.

01:06

This time as I approach the whiteboard.

01:08

We're actually going to switch to a dedicated static view camera,

01:12

which is exposed perfectly for the whiteboard.

01:14

You can see that I'm now kind of dark,

01:16

but that's because the camera is exposed perfectly for the brightness of this interactive whiteboard.

01:21

It also means that I can move out of the way,

01:23

make sure everybody can see it.

01:25

And of course, this camera is not tracking me.

01:28

However, we are still being tracked by the tracking camera.

01:31

And you'll see as I leave this zone,

01:34

we switch back to our tracking camera,

01:37

which was tracking me the whole time.

01:40

Our first job in setting up a second camera is to add our camera to Q-SYS designer.

01:44

Here I'm using an NC 12x80,

01:47

so I'm going to add that into the schematic

01:49

and name it according to the name of the camera on the network.

01:54

Let's also make sure we've got enough inputs on our mediacast router

01:58

and connect the new camera to the router.

02:01

Next, let's return to the Seervision plugin properties.

02:04

Here we can see we've got a property for the number of static cameras.

02:07

Let's change this to one.

02:09

Open up the plugin and we can see that there's a new page for static cameras.

02:14

The plugin is going to control the Q-SYS camera directly

02:17

and from here we can save and recall position containers.

02:20

And later on,

02:21

we'll be linking those two trigger events on the tracking camera's page.

02:25

But if we try to link it to our new camera now,

02:28

we can see that it doesn't work.

02:30

We've also got these MCR input and output controls, which don't work either.

02:35

And if we go to the tracking camera's page,

02:37

we can see there's also an MCR input and output control there,

02:41

which again doesn't seem usable at the moment.

02:44

Well, that's because in this context MCR doesn't stand for your favorite nineties emo band.

02:49

It stands for media cast router because of course the plug in

02:52

needs to control the router

02:53

and control the new camera

02:55

and it's going to control these components via their code name.

02:59

Now just a quick refresher.

03:01

The code name is a property of every Q-SYS component,

03:04

which allows for scripts,

03:05

plug ins and third party control systems to change all of the components controls.

03:10

You can see it in grey text when you hover your mouse over any component,

03:13

but you can also find it in the properties for the component under script access

03:18

so that the plugin can access these components.

03:21

Let's give them a meaningful code name

03:23

and change the script access property from none to script or all.

03:30

Do the same for the newly added camera as well.

03:37

When you're ready,

03:37

emulate the design so we can change the controls in the plugin.

03:42

Now with our code names added,

03:43

the first thing we can do is choose our camera router

03:46

via its code name on the media cast Router Controls page.

03:50

We'll learn more about this page later on.

03:53

Next, come back to the static View cameras page and choose the correct camera.

03:57

We can also tell the plug in what media cast router input the camera is connected to

04:02

and what output we want to use for switching.

04:05

Let's do the same on the tracking camera's page as well.

04:10

And now the Seervision plug in is set up to control our static view camera

04:14

and to control the switching via the media cast router.

04:17

All right,

04:18

now we're done linking those components in Q-SYS

04:20

What's next is to create a trigger zone in Seervision to activate that white board shot.

04:26

Now we want to switch to the static view camera.

04:28

When someone approaches the whiteboard.

04:31

So let's set up a trigger zone in Seervision to detect that.

04:34

I'm just going to move the camera over here so we can see the whole of the whiteboard.

04:38

Add a trigger zone and adjust it accordingly.

04:48

Back in Q-SYS we need to point the camera where we want it

04:51

and save that as a position container in the Seervision plug in.

04:58

This looks good.

04:59

Now, one of the benefits of a dedicated whiteboard camera is

05:02

we can also adjust the exposure manually to give us the best image possible.

05:07

You can set the exposure and the white balance manually

05:10

and play around with the sharpness

05:12

and contrast to make sure that the image is perfect for your whiteboard.

05:18

Looks nice.

05:19

Now we set up that camera position.

05:21

We can save that on the static camera's page in the plug in.

05:24

Just hit save and change the container name to something meaningful like whiteboard.

05:30

Setting up the trigger zone to switch to that whiteboard

05:32

view is now going to be really straightforward.

05:35

Just choose the trigger zone as we did previously.

05:38

But instead of calling a