@woland

ah, ok. a cousin with the same name..:-)

thanks

@liminal_andy said:

will bump to Group HD 720p for the duration of the call, even if the device leaves the call! 

 😄 That's a fun hack, thank you for sharing your knowledge here again!

@liminal_andy Sweet! I think this actor may be the shortcut. thanks so much!

@paulpsound When you say you 'share' the mac do you mean that you're using the screen share function in Zoom or are you 'Spotlighting' the participant with the Virtual Webcam as their camera? If you're using the screen share function then I'm not sure what the virtual webcam is being used for. If you're spotlighting a virtual webcam then I'd suggest having a background permanently running on a lower layer that is always there and bring your slides in on top so there is always a something being sent to the virtual webcam, you could do this in QLab.

I had a quick go at trying to re-create the problem and I could regularly make it happen when switching between my real webcam and the virtual webcam in zoom using the 'select a camera' option. Is this what you're doing in the show?

Often I would get a flash of the OBS background before QLab's slide loaded, but there is other unwanted behaviour as well following this pattern:

> Select camera in zoom

> Play slide in QLab - displays correctly on the VWC monitor window

> Select VWC in zoom = flash of OBS background followed by the slide

> Select camera in zoom

> Wait a few seconds

> Select next slide in Qlab - displays correctly on the VWC monitor

> Select VWC in zoom = flash of previous slide followed by new slide (sometimes with a bonus OBS background flash as well)

Basically, I was often getting a 'flash' of the previous frame that zoom brought in, wether that was a slide or the OBS background.

I got exactly the same results using Isadora so I suspect that the problem is with Zoom as you suggest. The Syphon Virtual Webcam monitor shows the stage/surface correctly as does Syphon Simple Client app. I don't know if zoom somehow caches the previous frames and displays those while it's sorting itself out when you change inputs?

Wherever the problem the is, the obvious work-around seems to be - don't change between camera and VWC in Zoom. Why not set your camera up as 'Camera' cue in Qlab that is routed to the same surface as your slides, all you would then need to do is run through your Cue stack with slides and cameras popping up as needed, you wouldn't need to change anything in Zoom and the 'surface' being sent via syphon would be consistent. Or, even better, do the same thing in Isadora ;-)

(as a slight aside, I love QLab, it's a great tool for certain things, simple and effective. It's been the go-to thing for sound for years and I like how it's simple enough for a church hall, powerful enough for the west end. However, I also think that it is terrible at handling video and I avoid using it for video whenever possible. Even the most simple playback can be stuttery or with frames being dropped, and anything more complex is a real strain. QLab remains an important part of the workflow in the majority of shows I work on, but I run the video in Isadora and communicate via OSC as needed).

@woland @peuclid @liminal_andy @Kathmandale @Fred @Bodo 

Just want to thank you all again for all your help and insight. We're opening our show tonight, if anyone is interested in viewing the piece you can stream directly on our Twitch! We have two showings, tonight 20:00PST (Vancouver/LA time), and tomorrow (Sunday) same time. 

Fingers crossed that Skype continues to behave for us! All of your tips and suggestions have been immensely helpful. 

Grateful always for you all!

@Woland a great little resource, thanks so much for sharing.

Hi

I apologise for starting the fire and running away. Probably not good form! Just a couple of things on and the numerous plate spinnings of the day.

I will look to try Marks and others comments and go through the troubleshooting possibilities.

I am on a college network and have tried both a wired/wireless connection. These, apart from the obvious, have different connotations to the IT system here.

The content continues to reduce in quality over a mixture of set ups. It is  nowhere near as bad as the images from Sweden. I have tried this method from Macbook pro's, airs to imacs and the same quality reduction occurs.

I will trial the above methods and come back as soon as possible.

I must add that I think this is a brilliant tool and the possibilities are quite interesting. Please do not take the is as a criticism of people or Isadora. I have always found the advice, guidance and the program to be top notch. Felt I should sure clarify this as often shortened posts on forums can convey a different message.

Many thanks

eamon

@woland

thanx for the tip!

Dear All,

So I was invited to a little birthday party/dance jam that took place on Zoom. Wanting to impress the group, I whipped up a little reactive patch that does some trippy effects on the live image, modulates those effects with the using the computer's built-in microphone, and then sends the output into Zoom. It seemed to have the desired effect because people were writing in the chat, "Whoa! What Zoom effect is that???", and I was saying "Well, it's not done in Zoom at all; it's done with Isadora." ;-)

I thought I'd share the patch and some instructions so any of you could do the same and also learn this technique of sending Isadora's output to Zoom.

The Isadora Patch

To start, open the example patch attached to the bottom of this post.

To make sure the patch will work, choose Input > Live Capture Settings and make sure you have a web cam selected under Video Input, and that you have a microphone selected under Sound Input. Then click Start Live Capture and make sure you can see the video thumbnail, and that the VU meters underneath it are moving.

In terms of how the patch works, it's pretty simple.

Using the Video Delay actor, I combine the live feed and the delayed feed using a Effect Mixer set to 'addovr'. I then use a Video Fader actor to dim the image a bit, and send that to the Stage with a projector.Then there is a Stage Background actor to do the feedback. As you can see, the 'fb scale h', 'fb scale v', and 'fb rotation' being modulated by some Wave Generators so they are constantly changing.Finally, the Sound Level Watcher actor modulates the 'fb intensity' input of the Stage Background actor. (You may need to reduce the value of the 'limit max' input of the Limit Scale Value actor if your music is soft; I was playing the music pretty load for the party.)

So that's the patch. But the key thing here is that the "Syphon" output is checked for the Stage in the Stage Setup editor. With my example patch open, choose Output > Stage Setup to see this setting.

That's how we'll get our video output to Zoom.

Get the Video Ready for Zoom using Syphon Virtual Webcam

Now, to get the signal to Zoom, you need our free tool Syphon Virtual Webcam, which you can download from our plugins page. Follow the instructions there and within the program to install it on your computer. Once it's installed, start it up and you should automatically see the feed from Isadora in the Syphon Virtual Webcam window.

Bring the Image Into Zoom Using the Zoom Preferences

Finally, start up Zoom. Once it's open, go to the Zoom Preferences, click on the Video tab, and choose OBS Virtual Camera for the live input.

 

That's it! You now have Isadora's stage as a the "camera" in Zoom.

Hopefully that's a complete enough description for you all to follow. Let me know if anything here doesn't work out for you.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Example Patch: isadora-to-zoom-example.izz

@django Nice work! Thanks for sharing your process.

@mark Great. Yes update seems all good. Thanks

Dear All,

I just published Syphon Virtual Webcam v0.9.5. The following fixes have been implemented:

Ensured that the OBS Virtual Camera Is Inactive screen would not appear when the Syphon source had a very slow frame rate.Ensured that “App Nap” was disabled for Syphon Virtual Camera.Fixed a bug where a scrambled image would be shown if the Syphon source width was not divisible by 4.Fixed a few small memory leaksAdded "Download the Latest Version" to the Help Menu

To get the latest version, please jump to our plugins page.

Best Wishes,
Mark

@msanii @ianpep 

The Zoom version that reinstates NDI virtual input for Mac OSX is as follows:

May 24, 2020 version 5.0.4 (25694.0524) Download Type: Manual Download here: Download Center 

Re-enable virtual camera support Support for virtual cameras will be re-enabled for users on client version 5.0.4.  

I can also confirm that it is load hungry coming out of Isadora using what appears to be about 30% of load resources.

Best Wishes
Russell