Lesson Description
Camera Signal Path
13m 3s
Learn the right way to route your cameras through the Mediacast Router.
Transcript
Camera Signal Path
13m 3s
00:06
Okay, let's start building things in our design.
00:10
I talked about our design going to have two cameras in the first camera position,
00:16
two cameras in the second camera position,
00:18
then one camera in the front and one camera in the back.
00:20
So that's a total of six cameras.
00:22
I'm going to add those to my design now.
00:25
So, I've got two on one side, two on the other side, one in the front,
00:30
and I'm going to use that 110 for that wide shot.
00:33
We're going to drag each of these into our schematic.
00:38
Now, as I do so, they're just named with their default name right now.
00:43
We're going to want to be very intentional about naming these
00:47
and how we wire these to the media cast router.
00:50
So, bring in a media cast router.
00:52
You can always just type in a name in the filter to find whatever it is you're looking for.
00:57
I'm going to set this media cast router to have 16 inputs and one output.
01:03
Count that seems like a whole lot more than I need,
01:06
given that I've just said several times that I only have six cameras in the room,
01:10
but I'll talk about why in just a bit.
01:12
Now, I've already said this a few times:
01:15
know what your room is going to look like and how it's going to be laid out,
01:19
especially as you start naming these cameras.
01:22
This is the easiest way to get a system wrong
01:25
- is to not name them, identify them, and wire them properly.
01:30
It might be a good idea actually to give yourself a little design.
01:33
If you did that napkin sketch earlier, put that into the design somewhere.
01:37
I can make another schematic page.
01:38
I'm going to go and I got some assets I built in my user components.
01:42
We'll probably make these available on the website as well - just little graphic design.
01:47
So, I could say,
01:48
"Hey, here's a shape that represents the size of my room."
01:52
Let's see, I'm going to have one camera over here.
01:56
Actually, I have two cameras because that's my first camera position.
02:00
I'm going to copy and paste these for my second camera position.
02:03
Over here, I'm reminding myself I got a camera in the back.
02:06
I got an NC110 in the front of the room,
02:10
which in our case is going to be just beneath a display, and that's a microphone.
02:16
It's in the middle of the room.
02:17
Now, I got a visual example of what my room looks like here in the design.
02:21
I can always reference back to it.
02:23
Probably a good idea to label them.
02:26
So, let's go to my graphic tools. I can say,
02:29
"Okay, this is camera one."
02:31
Let me zoom in a little bit there for you.
02:34
So, camera one, this is going to be camera two, and we'll do that for each of our cameras.
02:43
Um, and in fact, if you've got names for those cameras,
02:46
it's probably a good idea to add those as well.
02:49
For instance, these match what they're already labeled as,
02:52
so I got one, two, three, four, five, six.
02:54
I'm just going to keep them as that, but you know,
02:56
if you really want to get good on this,
02:58
this is labeled NC-12 by 80-1, etc. You know,
03:04
be really specific so that you know what model type you're using,
03:07
what the name that you've configured it for is here on this page.
03:11
Do that for each of your cameras,
03:14
that way it's going to be really clear when you get confused which one is which.
03:20
So, this is camera three,
03:23
this one's going to be four.
03:28
Let's say, let's make the one in the back be five, why not?
03:34
And then I can remind myself that this one in the front is our 110.
03:40
So, here we go, that's our camera six.
03:43
Whoops, not 36, I said not 36, there you go, and that is our NC 110.
03:52
Okay, so we have a little bit of a little map so we know what's going on.
03:56
Now, here's the interesting thing about what I'm going
03:58
to do as I lay them out in my media cast router:
04:01
one and two, these are a primary and secondary pair, three and four,
04:05
those are a primary and secondary pair, and then I got five and I got six.
04:09
I'm going to do something here that may seem counterintuitive,
04:13
but this is the part that's really important.
04:15
I'm actually going to put all the primary cameras first and all the secondary cameras last.
04:23
Okay, let me group these together, smash them up,
04:26
pack them in like that so they're nice and tight.
04:28
Good, those are my primary cameras.
04:30
These here are my secondary cameras.
04:34
I'll wire the primary cameras to inputs 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the media cast router,
04:40
and the secondary cameras are actually going to be wired to inputs 9 and 10.
04:47
This is really important, so as you set up your ACPR system,
04:52
you can have between 8 and 16 cameras that are fed through that.
04:56
And when I say cameras here, I do mean camera positions.
04:59
A camera position might have a primary and a secondary camera.
05:02
We're setting ours up for an eight camera setup,
05:05
which means that the first eight input pins to the media cast router
05:09
represent the primary cameras for each of those positions.
05:13
After it gets to the eighth input pin,
05:16
it then takes the next bank of input pins as the secondary camera inputs.
05:21
So, nine is the secondary camera for position number one,
05:27
10 is a secondary camera for position two.
05:31
We've created these logical linkings:
05:34
one and nine are always linked, two and 10 are always linked.
05:38
If I had a secondary camera for position three, I would wire that to 11.
05:43
Same thing if I had a secondary camera for position four, I'd wire that to 12.
05:47
I don't. I'm going to leave it like this.
05:49
I mean, could I now take this mediacast router
05:51
and pair it down so that it only has 10 inputs since that's all I'm using?
05:56
Sure, I certainly could.
05:58
I don't need these extra input pins down here because in this instance,
06:01
we're not using them.
06:03
But for the sake of just a logical way I'm looking at this component,
06:07
I'm going to remember that 1 through 8 are primaries and that 9 through 16 are secondaries.
06:12
This is a way of me reminding myself that that's what they are designed for.
06:16
It's not wasting any resources to have some extra pins here that are inputs.
06:20
It's fine. It's okay to have extra inputs.
06:22
Same thing with these ones here.
06:24
Oh, I have nothing tied to these.
06:25
Why don't I bring them up?
06:26
It doesn't work like that on the inside.
06:28
So just be okay with unused input pins.
06:33
That's what we want.
06:34
And don't try to get fancy here.
06:35
We've seen some people try to wire a camera to the media cast router twice,
06:40
like you want to use it as the primary in one position and the secondary in another position,
06:45
or you're hoping that one camera will work as a secondary for two different positions.
06:50
Just don't do that.
06:52
All right, keep your cameras dedicated with one role each.
06:57
That's going to be what works properly.
06:59
Okay, so the other part of what we're doing right now is we want to label these
07:04
appropriately.
07:05
1, three, five, 2, 4, 1.
07:08
These are terrible names.
07:10
We want to give them some better names,
07:12
especially when we start configuring them inside the plugin.
07:15
We need to be able to identify them very quickly.
07:17
For that, we are going to use code names.
07:20
If you click on any of these components and look at its properties,
07:24
you can see that we have an area called code name under script access.
07:29
By default, its code name is kind of based off of its model number and what it's named as.
07:33
We want something that's more descriptive,
07:35
a friendly name that we'll be able to recognize really quickly.
07:38
So, for my instance, I might do something like "left primary."
07:43
That's a pretty good code name for that first camera.
07:47
You'll notice that once you change the code name for any components,
07:51
when you hover over that component, you see the code name floating up to its left.
07:56
You'll also notice that it changes its script access to "all."
08:00
It's very important.
08:02
The script access property of any component basically opens up the controls
08:07
within that component to be controlled by something external to that component,
08:12
usually a scripting component,
08:15
like a Lua block or a plug-in.
08:18
If you don't enable access control to the components,
08:21
then you're not going to be able to find it when you're looking for it
08:23
somewhere else that's trying to reach out and find those scriptable objects.
08:27
So, that's a reason why when you assign a code name to it,
08:31
it automatically swaps the script access to "all."
08:34
By default, it comes in as "none" because anytime you bring an object into the software,
08:38
we're going to assume you want it to be in the safest state possible,
08:41
which is to not allow it to be controlled.
08:44
But if you're providing a code name for it,
08:46
we can kind of assume that you're doing so because you want to control it.
08:50
So, we're helping you out.
08:51
We're automatically swapping over to "all" so that you have access to everything.
08:55
In this case, that's perfect. External would allow it to be controlled by an outside script.
09:00
You could pair it down to a script if you wanted to, but all is fine.
09:03
In this instance, we're going to do that for all six of our cameras.
09:08
Give them a good code name.
09:11
Now, while you're doing this,
09:12
think about good names that will help pair these in a logical way.
09:19
Think about what if you are using this core for more than one ACPR instance.
09:24
What if this core is managing ACPR for Conference Room One and Conference Room Two?
09:30
If both of those conference rooms are set up in a similar way,
09:33
then "Left Primary" is actually not a great name
09:36
because you've probably got a "Left Primary" in both of those rooms.
09:40
So maybe provide a prefix on these names that helps define where it is you're working.
09:46
In a conference room, and that conference room is called "Tranquility,"
09:49
probably because that's what every corporation names their boardrooms.
09:53
So maybe give a little bit of like, "OK, TRQ Das Left Primary."
09:58
Now, if you give a prefix on all of your cameras that have the short version of
10:06
what room they actually are, and then you define its position,
10:10
and then you define its job in that position, again,
10:14
you're just creating a little hierarchy that's going to make it easier to find these,
10:19
keep them organized so that you're not stuck wondering,
10:22
"What camera is this?"
10:23
Now, for mine, we're only doing one room,
10:26
so "Left Primary" is going to be fine for me.
10:30
The next one is going to be the "Right Primary."
10:36
Then I've got the "Rear."
10:41
We'll call the next one the "Wide Shots" or the "Front."
10:46
And then down here at the bottom,
10:48
we've got our "Left Secondary" and our "Right Secondary."
10:56
Now, if you wanted to, you could also go ahead and change the labels of these components to,
11:03
if you didn't want it to still say "NC1 1280,"
11:06
I could grab this and also call it, you know,
11:09
"Left Primary" or something different,
11:11
something even more friendly.
11:13
But whatever you label the component here that's showing up here as the label in the property,
11:18
that does not have anything to do with the script or anything that you're going to find later on.
11:23
That is just a friendly nomenclature you've got there.
11:26
The code name is really what we're going to pull in for later.
11:32
Next, let's make sure we complete the pathway of our video and deliver it to a video bridge.
11:39
In this case, I'll just make sure that my core has a USB video bridge enabled.
11:44
Whatever device you're using to deliver all of this to the conferencing application PC,
11:52
that's the device you'll use.
11:54
You'll notice that the wiring here is complete.
11:58
The wiring of these cameras does not go through ACPR.
12:02
ACPR is not doing any actual rerouting of video.
12:09
ACPR is controlling the media cast router that
12:13
is inherently doing all of the routing back and forth.
12:17
So make sure the wiring is done.
12:19
We're not wiring this up to the plugin at all,
12:22
but we've got to make sure that all those cameras are labeled properly.
12:26
And we also need a code name for the media router itself that
12:30
also needs to be accessible by the plugin because,
12:34
like I just said, that's what the plugin does.
12:36
It controls the router.
12:38
So let's give a code name for our router.
12:41
Once again, maybe name it after the conference room that it is in.
12:46
Give it a proper name.
12:47
For me, I'm just going to call it our ACPR router because I'm doing a very simple version here.
12:55
But make sure that you are labeling these properly.
12:58
Now, this will be accessible to the plugin.