[ANSWERED] Routing Zoom video

[dbini]

Hiya people,
I'm designing a presentation for an online conference that uses Zoom. I use the virtual webcam to syphon my stage out of Isadora and into Zoom. no problem. I will be using IzzyCast to connect with a performer elsewhere for a demo. also no problem. 
But, then I would like to offer other participants a chance to join in, so I would need to get a single Zoom participant's video feed into Izzy (I usually use a second monitor and the Screen Capture actor, which is fine when there's only 2 people in the call, but for this we're expecting over 30).
The problem I imagine is how do I get one particular Zoom participant's video, whilst everyone else in the call only sees my (virtual) camera? 
I've done this many times with VDO.ninja, but the organisers need to use Zoom. Any ideas?

[Juriaan]

@dbini

Ehh, interesting one. If you don't have control over the amount of people joining the call / you can't pin a particular person (I believe that setting is global and not local, Zoom users correct me if I'm am wrong here..)

Which means that your best bet at the moment is to utilize something like ZoomISO (which is part of the Zoom App marketplace) if you have the right subscription, you can also purchase a separate license here; https://www.liminalet.com/zoomiso

ZoomISO gives you clean video and audio tracks from Zoom per participant.

[Woland]

@juriaan said:

Ehh, interesting one. If you don't have control over the amount of people joining the call / you can't pin a particular person (I believe that setting is global and not local, Zoom users correct me if I'm am wrong here..)I believe you can manually pin a user on your second monitor in Zoom, but ZoomISO is really the way to go for this.

Zoom > Settings > General > Use Dual Monitors is the checkbox you need to hit to get a second monitor display that you can manipulate.

---

@dbini 

It's been a while since I've updated it, but my template file for ZoomOSC and ZoomISO has a Scene with my User Actors for ZoomISO: https://troikatronix.com/add-ons/zoomosc-user-actors-template-file/

If you need any help figuring it out let me know and I can hop on a Zoom call with you sometime and to walk you through it.

[Skulpture]

Would this help at all? https://vdo.ninja/ 

[dbini]

@skulpture I use VDO.ninja all the time, but for this conference, it's an annual event that's always on Zoom. 

[dbini]

@woland @Juriaan 
ZoomISO does indeed look like a perfect solution, but I'm on Mac Intel, so that's a non-starter.

[Juriaan]

@dbini

Well that option that Woland pointed out is maybe a solution then?

[dbini]

@juriaan
if it's possible to pin one participant's stream to a second monitor, then it looks like I will be fine using Screen Capture. Another option might involve 2 laptops and a capture card...

[Woland]

@dbini said:

if it's possible to pin one participant's stream to a second monitor, then it looks like I will be fine using Screen Capture. Another option might involve 2 laptops and a capture card...

Zoom > Settings > Video > Hide non-video participants is also a handy setting to make things like this easier. I believe there are also account-level settings in Zoom (log into your Zoom account via their website) that you can use to force new participants to join with their video (and/or audio) off and also to prevent people from turning their video/audio on without you clicking "OK" to approve the request.

[dbini]

UPDATE: today I tested the Zoom routing using a second monitor connected to my laptop via HDMI.

It sort-of worked. I was able to pin a chosen Zoom participant's video to the second monitor, but it was difficult to select that screen in the Screen Capture actor's window list. The Screen Capture didn't seem to respond to changing between display 1 and display 2 in the top input. 
most of the time I could not select anything on the second monitor, but after deleting the actor and replacing it with a fresh one, sometimes it would grab the window from the correct display.
Is there a way to ensure the Display select works properly?

[Woland]

@dbini said:

but it was difficult to select that screen in the Screen Capture actor's window list.

 Can you describe the problem with the window list in more detail? Because personally I'd enable CPU mode and use the window list instead of doing display capture.

[Woland]

@dbini

I just tried dual monitors with Zoom on Windows 10 with my desktop that has three displays hooked up and had no issues in Isadora 4  with the Screen Capture actor's the 'display input' (goes between my three displays no problem) nor its 'window list' input (the second monitor Zoom window is named "Zoom Workplace" for me).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you selecting "Zoom" in the 'window select' and expecting that changing the 'display' input will change to the Zoom window on the other display? If so, that's not how those inputs work. The 'display' input and the 'window select' input are independent.

[dbini]

@woland
Hi L - I think I've worked it out. I had made a wrong assumption about the Screen Capture actor. I thought that you could select a display, and then select from the window list on that display. Now I realise that the window list overrides the display selection. My problem is that the zoom window that is pinned to the second monitor doesn't have a name. So I solved this by doing the opposite of your advice and using the display select with the window list set to 'none'. : )

[Armando]

@woland said:

(I believe that setting is global and not local) Sorry To disagree. Pin is local (spotlight is global). So it is a good choice, but you have to be sure to be the administrator od the call otherwise eomcone coukd disrupe the pin with a spotlight. Best thing is Zoom Iso that also supports OSC so It can be configured in isadora

 

[dbini]

@armando
Thanks for the advice Armando, I've got a test call with the organisers in a couple of weeks, I will get them to experiment with Spotlighting my feed and see if it disrupts the feed that I have pinned to my second monitor. (I'd love to use ZoomOSC but I'm on Intel Mac and it only runs on ARM - I'm saving up to upgrade my machine, but that might take a year!)

[dbini]

UPDATE: I tested the system yesterday with the organisers of the conference. This time I had 2 external monitors (one to pin the zoom participant, one as a projector for my studio) and it didn't work. : (
Screen Capture was constantly getting confused about which screen to capture. Even when running in a background scene, sending video over a Broadcaster, when I changed the Listener scenes, the output from the Screen Capture would change to a different screen.
So now I am running Zoom on 2 machines. One has a HDMI output to a capture device on the other one. I pin the Zoom participant to the capture device and then the video shows up as a Video In source in Isadora. I then use Syphon Virtual Webcam to get the output from Isadora into Zoom.
It seems to work OK now I'm not using Screen Capture. Time for more remote testing.

EXTRA UPDATE: as long as the host doesn't Spotlight anyone, then the pinned video feed works fine!