 Profiles was one of the great features added in Ecam Live version 3.9, and in this video I'll be telling you a little bit more about it, but also how you can assign hotkeys to switch between your profiles. Hello, welcome to Take One Tech, my name's Alec, and Ecam Live version 3.9 was really, dare I say it again, a game changer. It had so many great features in it. And one of my favorites, and I know the favorites amongst a lot of other people, was the profiles feature, which basically allowed you to have, for different use cases of Ecam Live, a separate profile for each one. So each profile would contain all of your scenes, your overlays, any assets you'd got, so images, audio files, videos, or whatever it happened to be, and keep them all packaged up in their own profile, and then you could switch profiles to go to another sort of use case effectively. So what I thought I'd do is just run through a couple of the features of this, and actually just overview of how it all works. But then what we'll do is we'll look at how you can assign hotkeys to those profiles so that you can easily jump between them. And you can do this basically three different ways. So I'll be telling you all three, and then also how you can potentially integrate this with Stream Deck, if that is something that you're interested in as well. So first of all, let me just give you an overview of the sort of profiles feature itself. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just zoom in on my screen a little bit, and then I'm gonna come into my demo mode. There we go. So basically, yes, profiles was added up in the top as a completely new menu item with all these things down here, all these actions, or menu items. And so what I'll do is I'll just run through those quickly. So first of all, the profiles that you create are all stored down at the bottom part of the menu. So these are all ones that I've actually assigned, so all profiles that I've created. And then the active one has got a little tick next to it, which is the Take One Tech, T-O-T. Now I've got different profiles for different use cases. You can't actually switch between them whilst you are live or recording, hopefully for obvious reasons. So that's why they all look like they're grayed out at the moment, but if I wasn't recording, this would be all just white and you'd be able to just choose between any of these menu items. So let's have a look, shall we, at what they all are. First one is create a new blank profile. Hopefully that is self-explanatory. It creates a new profile, but actually it is a completely blank slate, if you like. It's almost like a fresh install of ECAM Live with an empty scenes window, an empty overlays window, and also if you had the sound effects panel open, you'd just have the stock base sound effects that come with ECAM Live. So it is like starting afresh, which is great sometimes, but sometimes you do actually want to start from a base. And so the next one down is quite useful in that case because this is duplicate current profile. So what you can do is you can create a template file because if you are doing all of your production from the same place, your office or wherever it happens to be, then you perhaps are gonna be using the same sorts of camera angles, maybe the same sort of overhead shot from behind or whatever, screen sharing on the same computer. And so the actual layouts and things like that, you might have them that are sort of common to each of your profiles, just with a different sort of branding or look or feel to them. So in that case, creating a template that has some sort of basic layouts is quite a good idea, and it certainly can save some time. So create that template, and then when you want to make a duplicate of it to then sort of build on it and create a whole new show or whatever, then you just come into this one, duplicate current profile, and it will create that copy, and then you can just go in and make all of the changes. Bearing in mind also in e-cam live version 3.9, one of the other features that we had in the camera effects panel was if you are changing things like your virtual backgrounds, if you're using green screen, like I am, then and you make different tweaks and changes to the picture quality or whatever, camera effects, then there is now a button to apply to all scenes. So if you do have a different background, for example, in one show compared to another, then you can still just duplicate the template, come and change the background in one of them and apply that sort of theme across to all of your different scenes. So that is basically the duplicate. That should be self-explanatory as well. The next one is export current profile, and that is really useful because it exports the entire profile in all of the settings, all of the overlays, all of the audio, all of the video and things like that that you've got in there. It exports it all to one single file, and this is good in my mind for three reasons. First of all, it's a great way to back up your profiles, your shows that you've got all set up once you've got them as you want them. Create a backup by just exporting the profile, keep it on your hard drive, better still offsite it to some other offsite storage or Dropbox or wherever you back up your stop files to, and then you've got a backup, and all it is is a single file that contains all of the assets and you can always import it back into e-cam live later. Another great use case for it is if you are collaborating with somebody, and so you are creating the show or the scenes or the layouts and things like that, and then you can just export it, send a file to your colleague, and then they can open it on their machine and they've got everything all set up. Another use case for it is if you are producing digital downloads where you're creating these things to sell as sort of template packs if you like, or if you're actually doing client work where somebody is paying you to create overlays and things like that, and you can just basically send them a single file, they can upload it and load it into their e-cam live with very little effort whatsoever. Don't have to go through all of the sort of set up process involved with getting things up and running with e-cam live. Although with 3.9, that's become even easier than it used to be. So, but so that is exporting the current profile and three great use cases for that. Next, we've got another obvious one, delete the current profile, if you really need to delete it or rename the current profile. Now, what I'm really talking about in this video though, is that's a little introduction to profiles. What I'm really talking about in this video is how to set up the keyboard shortcuts to allow you to do profile switching basically, so you can easily switch from one profile to another. Now, if you look at any Mac menu, then what you'll see is where you've got the different menu items, so I'm here in the scenes menu, you can see that where there has been keyboard shortcuts assigned to them, you've got the keyboard shortcut grayed out next to it just like that. Now, in some packages, well, in most applications rather, most applications have at least some keyboard shortcuts assigned to them, but then sometimes there's things that just don't have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. Now, this is the case in profiles. There are, as a default, no keyboard shortcuts assigned to your profiles because how would they know what you were gonna call them for a start? So there is no keyboard shortcuts assigned to profiles, but with any Mac app, you can always assign keyboard shortcuts yourself. There's a way to do it built into the Mac itself, and then there's also another great free program that I can recommend that I use personally to add keyboard shortcuts to my menus because I just find it's a little bit more intuitive. There's also, if you want to get really geeky, there is keyboard maestro, which I also use a lot as well. Now, what you can see here is in my profiles menu, here you can see that I do, in fact, have some keyboard shortcuts, and these are ones that I have assigned myself to these profiles, so if I just press this keyboard shortcut, then it's just gonna flick to that profile. In fact, all of these have got shortcuts assigned to them. It's just that the ones that you can't see are, in fact, keyboard maestro shortcuts because in that case, you can just activate any menu item from any application, even in the background, actually, without necessarily having a specific keyboard shortcut assigned. It's all done with a macro in keyboard maestro. So I'm gonna show you now all three of those ways, and then in all three cases, you can also assign that to your stream deck, to have your stream deck basically activate the change for you, or you could have it, obviously, as part of a larger chain. So let's start, shall we, with the one that's built in on the Mac that everyone has, and so let's have a look at that, first of all, and that is basically in the system preferences, and you go to the keyboard item here, and then from the keyboard, you'll see that you've got a tab along the top or tabs along the top. We're gonna click on shortcuts, so I click on shortcuts. This, by the way, is a great way to discover what keyboard shortcuts there are on your Mac. If you are unfamiliar with them, you can look at standard shortcuts that have been assigned to the display, mission control, and various other different things as well. But right down at the bottom, you've got app shortcuts, and if I click on app shortcuts, then here you can see I've got some shortcuts assigned to Ecamm Live, but you can add in, you won't have that necessarily to begin with. So if I want to assign a shortcut, I can just click on the little plus icon. There we go, too quick there, talking over it. Click on the little plus icon, click the little arrow here, then you select the application that you want, so Ecamm Live, and then you enter the menu title. Now, this is where this one gets a little bit tricky, or at least there is room for error, should I say. Say, because what you've got to do is enter the menu title, and it says enter the exact name of the menu command you want to add, and you do have to be exact about this. You can't have any misspellings or things like that, but it also doesn't necessarily tell you if you have misspelled it. So if I just type in here hello, and then type command shift option H, like that, and click add, it's just added in. There is no menu item called hello. So I mean, if I just mistyped the menu item, I wouldn't necessarily know until I checked it that it was wrong. So I'm just gonna delete that. There is a menu item, let me just come and grab one from here, for example. So I'm just gonna pick one. So, well, let's pick one on my profile, shall I? I've got a profile that is called Ecamm Scenes Template, which is a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? So if I click on the plus, and I'll go to Ecamm Live, and it is called Ecamm Live Scenes Template. Now, even now I'm just typing that. I'm still not sure I've typed that right. In fact, I definitely spelled that wrong. But was it Ecamm Live or one word, or was it Ecamm Live, two words? Let me go and have a look. It was Ecamm Live, oh, it was just Ecamm Scenes Template. So there we go. I'm already wrong. That wasn't intentional either, by the way. I wasn't trying to make a point, but it does actually make a point that it is tricky sometimes. If you've got to constantly be going back and forth, and obviously every time you activate the system preferences, then you've no longer got Ecamm Active, so the menus don't stay open. So you need to flick back and forth. If you're going to do this extensively, it just becomes a little bit finicky. But sure enough, if I do add in a keyboard shortcut there and add it, then now we do have that menu item has now got a keyboard shortcut. And then if I were to go back into Ecamm Live, you would see, in fact, let me just show you that we've actually got it. In fact, well, that was a bit of a bad example. I've just realized I'd already assigned a shortcut to that. But you get the impression, you get the idea. It will actually just assign that shortcut. And there you go, that shows how my mind works, is because I've actually assigned the exact same keyboard shortcut, Control, Command, Option, E. So at least my mind is working the same way every time I do it and it's consistent. But I'll delete that one there from now. So that is basically how you can add a keyboard shortcut to any application for any menu item in Mac OS. But I hope you can see, or I think you can see that it is a little bit finicky. So there is another way, though, that we can do this. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you about that, which is an application called Keyboard Shortcuts. Now that is a free application that you can get from, I'll leave a link, it's hooda.com, so they make lots of great apps, but H-O-U-D-A-H dot com, and then hooda.com slash custom shortcuts. And this is a free app, which is great. It's a really nicely, nice designed app. And then obviously you can go and make a donation once you've realized how useful it is. But it is free to download and free to use as well with no limitations on it. So that is the app. So let's go and have a look at how this works, shall we? So this is the app. It's a pretty simple interface. You've just got down one side, you've got your applications, and then down the other side, you've got your list of all the shortcuts that you want to assign. So all you do is you go into the application that you want. Now I believe that the applications will, the applications you've got open will just be there, but then you can also just go and add in any application as well. So I've got Ecamm Live open. So let me pick another menu item that I might want to add, something that I've not already assigned a shortcut to. So, well, I've got one that's actually called demo scene. So that's a little demonstration scene that happens to be in the scene tab. So in the scenes menu, so it goes for scenes as it does for profiles. You could assign keyboard shortcuts for each of your scenes as well. But I just want to show you the functionality here. So if I click on the plus, I know that this is called demo scene. So if I just click into the little area here, and then I start typing D, it's going to start bringing up all the different options of menu items that it could be, D-E-M-O. And then you can see that I've just typed D-E-M and it's already brought up and it's also showing you the kind of root that it is in the root folder that it's in. So demo scene is also in the scenes menu. So that's what that means. So if I just click on that then, and then I can come over here and assign a shortcut to it. Then in fact, that's just showing me that that one's already taken. Let me try that one. So option command, option control D. So now if I was to press option control D, it would take me to that demo scene. And so that is how easy it is to assign keyboard shortcuts within the custom menu shortcuts, custom shortcuts app rather. And I think you can see that it's a lot easier and more intuitive. The other thing is they are sorted by application, whereas in the other system preferences one, they are sorted by application to a point, but you end up with a big scrolling list if you're doing it in lots of different applications. So I just find that custom shortcuts is a really great way to do it. But as I mentioned, there is another way to do it and that is with keyboard maestro. So let's just have a little look about how you do it with that because I have actually assigned keyboard shortcuts to most of the menu items. Sorry, I have actually assigned keyboard maestro macros to most of the menu items. And what that allows me to do is I can press one button and it will basically switch to the correct profile. It will open all the windows that I want to have open, arrange all the windows, do everything. So everything can be set up literally for me to just be ready to press record with the touch of a single button. Now that is a whole video in itself that I'll be making in the next few days. So when I do make that video, I'll leave a link to it up in the top corner and also in the description. For now, let's just stick to the basics of how in keyboard maestro, you can basically activate menu commands. So over in keyboard maestro, whoops, it's just out of the window a little bit there, isn't it? So this is a keyboard maestro. I've done other videos about keyboard maestro. I've done an introduction to it. So I'll leave an introduction video up in the top as well for those who aren't familiar with it. But this is a sort of, it's the core of my automation on the Mac really, I suppose it's a really powerful application. But it's also can be used for very basic stuff as well. So people sometimes get overwhelmed with it because all sort of over faced with all of the functionality and think it's too complex, but actually you can just start with some very basic things. In fact, let's just start with a very basic thing here. So we've got a group of macros. So let's just create a new group. I'm just gonna leave it as untitled. There we go. And in that little folder, we can just add in as many different macros that we want. And so this one, in fact, let's call this one, we'll call it Ecamm Shortcuts like that. So we've got a folder now called Ecamm Shortcuts. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add in a macro, which is basically just gonna trigger the menu item that we want. So I'm gonna click on the plus icon and we're gonna trigger a menu item. Now what menu item should we trigger? Let's just come to one of these profiles. I'm just gonna say I've got a profile that's simply called VMP. So I'm gonna trigger that one. So I'm gonna put this, call this VMP profile. I've got a caps lock on there. I'm shouting, nevermind. So that's called VMP profile. Now to trigger macros in keyboard maestro, you can assign all sorts of different triggers. But actually what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna leave this one blank because I'm gonna trigger this using the stream deck rather than by any actual keystrokes at all. So this is the way to go if you don't wanna sort of use up any keyboard shortcuts for assigning them manually, but you just still want to trigger stuff by keyboard maestro and the stream deck. So now that we've got our little macro created, what we need to do is we need to add an action. And all we want to do is we're going to basically have it trigger the menu item. Now you can add a whole multitude of actions down here and have a whole chain of them if you really want. But all we're gonna do is just add one. So I'm gonna click on this little new action button. And this brings up a list of all the different actions that we've got. This is why it can seem a little bit complex to some people, because there are so many different actions that you can perform potentially and so many ways that you could string these all together that there is almost infinite possibilities of what you can do with it. But we want to do something very simple and we just want to trigger a menu item. So let's just type menu and see what comes up. Well, look at that, we've just got two. And one of them is select or show a menu item. So that's what we want to do. We want to select a menu item. So I'm just gonna drag that over to the bottom. And here we've got select a menu in and then we can choose either the front application or we can pick a specific application. So I'm gonna come down and select the Ecom Live Beta. So I'm gonna click on that one. And then what it does is over this side, so now we can see selecting a menu in and we've got the application name. And over on this side, we can then basically just pick the menu. So we want to pick from the Ecom Live Beta and then we want to go to, I've said it was in the profiles menu and then just down actually off the edge of the page, but never mind. It could be any one of those. In fact, let's pick this one, TOT vertical. So that's where I used to make my vertical videos for my YouTube shorts or TikTok or whatever. So if I click on that one now, now that's basically just assigned it to that profile. And then I suppose I'd change this one to like that, TOT vertical profile. And that's it. We've now assigned that macro. So once we trigger that macro and if I could run it from here, but obviously we want to assign that to a stream deck key. So what I'll do now is I'll come over to my stream deck and show you how easy that is. So I'll click on my stream deck. This is my current profile that I'm in for Ecom Live. So I'll find a little blank space. I can show you this. In the plugins in the side of stream deck, oops, Daisy, just cutting this one off a bit. In the profiles in the plugins rather for stream deck, there is one called KM link. You can find this in the stream deck store and it appears in the custom folder. And all it is is it's just a single button that you drag on and it allows you to choose from any of your keyboard maestro macros. And all you can see there, it's a selector macro and cunningly, if I click on that little button, it will bring up the last modified macro right at the top there. And otherwise you can scroll through and pick between any of the macros that you've created. But if I just click that one, TOT vertical profile, now basically that's it, I'm done. Anytime that I press this particular button, if I'm not recording, it will switch to that profile. So you can also see how if you had a multi-action for example, in a stream deck, what you could do is you could have it switched to a particular profile. Well, first of all, you could have it open ECAM, let's say. Then you could have it switched to a profile. Then you could have it open any other windows that you need open. And then if you use something like Moom for arranging your desktop, you could have it trigger that as well to actually put everything in the right place. So imagine that one button and everything is ready to go. I actually don't do it with multi-actions in stream deck. I do it with macros entirely in keyboard maestro and then my one button on the stream deck just activates my keyboard maestro series of macros to do all of those sorts of things. But like I say, I'll be making a whole other video specifically about that. And this was more just for the three different ways that you can use to switch profiles in ECAM Live and the sort of the built-in functionality that we have on the Mac as well. So I hope that that was useful. If it was useful, as always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel. And if it was extra useful, you can always visit my Buy Me A Coffee page at buymeacoffee.com slash take one tech. It's the best way to support the channel. So that's all for this video, but I'll leave a link to some other great ECAM Live videos over on the right-hand side and check out those. And I'll be covering all of the other great new features of 3.9 in those as well. So have a great day and I'll see you soon.