Intro to Auto-Framing

We have lots of tools in the toolkit to deliver intelligent Q-SYS video solutions.

Today, we're looking at a feature called  

auto-framing to see how it works in tandem with our

existing automatic camera preset recall plugin to better keep the action of your subjects in frame.

Auto-framing takes advantage of the 4K sensor in your Q-SYS camera to digitally identify

your subject in the front frame and then automatically zoom or pan the frame to reduce

a fair amount of unused padding around your subject.

Let's take a look.

We start off with a fairly wide shot of our meeting goer.

When I enable auto-framing,

the camera is going to identify that person and then automatically digitally zoom in on them.

First of all, I wish I had written about this when I was first hired.

If this person shifts around a bit,

auto-framing pans from one side to another to keep them comfortably centered in the frame.

Similarly, if the camera detects a second person,  

it adjusts to keep both of those subjects in frame.

Auto-framing works very well on its own,

but it really hits its stride when paired with the automatic camera preset recall plugin or ACPR.

ACPR uses the microphones in the room to determine where a person is speaking

and can manage multiple cameras and multiple presets to aim the  

best camera at the appropriate place.

But using auto-framing and ACPR together means you can set far fewer,

more general presets in ACPR, then allow auto-framing to handle the rest.

In this scenario,

we have people sitting on opposite sides of the table and multiple Q-SYS cameras at play.

Let's only use ACPR for right now, and we'll toggle auto-framing on in just a minute.

"I agree, pencils are not permanent enough for me.

I don't know how you feel on the topic, but I 100%--"

As expected, when someone speaks,

the ACPR plugin uses the proximity data from the microphone to recall a camera preset

in the general vicinity of the speaker and then switch to that camera angle.

The same happens when someone on the other side of the table begins to speak too.

But those two presets have been programmed relatively wide.

Why did we do that?

Well, we want to account for basic human  

stuff like if someone shifts from one side of their chair

to another or maybe they happen to be sitting a little bit further back than we had anticipated.

So, we can let auto-framing take us that final mile.

We'll turn on auto-framing and see how this same scenario plays out on chairs

and then people going to sit down on those chairs.

It's a danger.

We can see that even though our original preset was quite wide,

auto-framing is giving us a tighter shot of each participant regardless of where they've moved to.

And just a quick side note when auto-framing is enabled on the NC PTZ cameras,

the HDMI and SDI outputs will be disabled.

Auto-framing is a software feature that works with your existing NC series cameras.

Just make sure you're using Q-SYS Designer version 9.9 or higher,

configure it through your preferences, and you're done.

Thanks for watching.