10/23/2021 0 Comments Video Switching Software For Mac
There are lots of interesting things you can do, but they don’t always all work together as you plan.IOGEAR Provides HDMI Switch, PC to TV, Wireless Audio Video, KVM Switch, KVM. It was interesting to see how the complexity can blow out pretty quickly. In this post I focus on some of the underlying technologies. In my last post I talked about some of the decision process I used when exploring which video platform to use a series of online office hours for ecommerce. Logbook Pro For Mac Eepdf Excel To Jpg Converter Neotion Media Share Download Pdf Basic Photoshop Practices Htmaut Export Outlook Contacts Folder Wall Dowload Visual Basic Client Server Net Shopping Cart Software Apture Video On My Screen Irda Communications Software Task List Software Percent Zip Code Open Source Geo Referenced.That is, on Mac and WIndows you cannot just hook the audio/video output of program 1 to the input of program 2.There are some 3rd party utilities around that make this possible, such as “Virtual Cable”. Access to a powerful window switcher, program switcher, and clipboard history.It may be obvious to most, but it took me a moment to realize that applications can read from the microphone or camera, and can send output to the speakers or screen, but that does not mean you can do a UNIX pipe command between them. A computer doesnt come off the assembly line as a non-linear video editor, a presentation machine, a sound mixing desk, a light board, or even as a word-processor, but software makes any and all of these things possible.This Mac application was originally produced by Stairways Software. The more you think about that description, it seems increasingly true.
To remove fan noise, or adjust bass and treble levels). This can improve the quality of the sound coming from your microphone (e.g. Using applications such as Audacity (free) or Adobe Audition (paid) you can apply various audio processing techniques like filtering and noise reduction. You then drag that point down so instead of amplifying it quietened that frequency. It showed by amplifying the notch first you could drag the frequency up and down the frequency range and it would amplify the hum when you found the frequency it was at. It used a notch filter where you could control the frequency of what to amplify or silence. For example I watched a really interesting one on removing hum. Character Animator on Windows has the ability to generate a live video stream in NDI format. But it also introduced me to NDI. There are lots of people out there sharing their knowledge like this if you look.As I hobby I play with Adobe Character Animator, animation software for simple cartoons. Skype on the Mac supports NDI streaming – you can turn a flag on and generate a good quality video stream for other programs to read from. For example, it allows me to feed the Character Animator video stream into a camera to use on a call (Character Animator -> NDI Syphon -> CamTwist -> Skype).NDI is also supported by Skype. The reason I explored Syphon was CamTwist can read a Syphon stream and turn it into a virtual camera, allowing most software using cameras read the stream as if it was a physical camera. If run on different machines, then NDI can be used to stream the video between the two machines.There is also a useful tool for Mac called “NDI Syphon” which can listen to a NDI stream and convert it to a Syphon stream. Character Animator 3.2 (at least) can output Syphon directly on Mac, so running Character Animator and the video conferencing software on the same machine does not require NDI. Using the NDI utility “Virtual Input” from NewTek).On the Mac, there is standard for video streaming called Syphon, but it is not cross machine. This name however did not exist in DNS servers or /etc/hosts. My work laptop was including a long domain name including names like “roam” in the domain name. (The application is available for Windows and iOS as well.) I discovered using this that the Mac programs where creating an entry in mDNS, but the entry seemed to be empty! The Windows entries included the host and post to read the NDI stream from.Why the strange “AJK=MAC” hostname? That was a typo by myself. However, when I created NDI streams on my Mac it seemed to work one day, then a day or two later it stopped working.One useful utility to debug the problem was “ Discovery” which displayed the contents of the local mDNS server. This can be useful for more serious video processing shops, like a TV station.And this is where I hit a blocker for longer than I care to remember in trying to make it work from my office hours.MacOS NDI Streams Not Discoverable !?#?#!My problem was I could start applications generating NDI streams on Windows and they would be visible on my Mac and Windows laptops. Just start a NDI Test Pattern application on your Windows laptop and other programs on your Mac (on the same subnet) can just see it appear (after a few seconds).If you need cross subnet support, you can still do it, but you start needing to manually register IP addresses of other hosts, or have a directory server permanently running. Video Switching Software Code Tried ToThis can be acceptable on a live stream where people are just watching you, but it is less acceptable on a video conference call where multiple people are talking and interacting. You can insert delays into the different streams to get them to line up again. This is where OBS Studio has extra power. As a result the mDNS entry was incomplete and sources on my Mac would not be discoverable.Of course using all these tools adds no CPU overhead or lag to your streams.Scratch that!!! It can actually be very painful using these programs as it almost seems to work, except now the audio and video do not quite line up any more. (There might be a better option, but this worked for me.)My theory is the code tried to resolve the host/domain name into an IP address but failed. (Hostname was set to a fully qualified domain name, which is generally not recommended, so I tried the above trick of shortening the domain name).My final solution that started working was to change the hostname to “ajk-mac.local” and then manually enter that with the IP address allocated by my wifi in my /etc/hosts file. That means I am looking for a microphone that does not pick up the fan noise in the first place – using a headset or similar where the mic is close to my mouth.My first setup then was to just use Google Meet to record the session. So keeping it simple is good.I am trying to avoid OBS Studio as some of the paid products are easier to use and I don’t want to be an expert to have to run a session. This is different if you are editing video where it is fine to post process the audio track to clean it up.The other problem with audio processing is utilities like Ecamm Live have only basic audio processing (volume), so you either have to insert a processing delay into the audio track (causing it to become out of sync with the video) or you need to use something like OBS Studio which is harder to use, but gives you the control to resync things.And then there is the good old problem of the more moving parts the more likely something will break. It is much better to avoid noise in the first place than try to remove it with audio processing software (if you are live). The time to fill the buffer creates latency.My personal experience so far is to stay away from audio processing. Other programs that content is streaming through read a buffer at a time, process it, then pass the buffer on. Docker for mac multi stage buildsThere would be lag, but that may be unavoidable simply because Character Animator.On Mac, I would do the same except NDI could probably be dropped by just using Syphon instead (no network connection required).My second setup that I am considering moving to is using Ecamm Live. Then take the output and feed it into a virtual camera (which OBS supports).
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