 Ecam live version 3.10 beta 8 was released last week And it's got a couple of new features one of which is right up my street And that is built-in integration with Apple's own automation app the shortcuts app So let's have a look shall we first of all if you are not currently using the beta You may want to try it out if you're an existing Ecam user There's no application process as such you can just go and download it It runs in parallel to the regular version So it's definitely worth trying out if you want to try out some of these new features It's very stable as betas go as well So I generally use it at full-time as my main sort of production environment But just bearing well in mind it is beta software There is also a Facebook group dedicated just to the beta as well separate from the regular Ecam Facebook group So I'll leave a link to all of these things in the description But without further ado, let's get on to the new features shall we and first and foremost is the one right at the top there Which is it adds the ability to assign Mac OS shortcuts to various actions within the app So What is shortcuts? Well? We've had shortcuts on iOS. This is a Mac application We've had this on iOS for a number of years now and it basically allows you to create custom actions custom shortcuts Different automations that you can then trigger from either the shortcuts app or from different contextual menus within iOS as well Or from other applications as well As of Mac OS Monterey, this is now being bought over to the Mac as well So we have had obviously Apple's built-in automator for well years and years now. We're on Mac OS But this is to basically give parity to the two sort of Automation apps that you've got on the two platforms So shortcuts will allow you to access all of the shortcuts you've created on iOS Although some of them may not work depending on what apps they're triggering and things like that But you can also create Mac specific shortcuts in there as well So how have Ecam worked with this application? Well, let's have a little look shall we if I bring up the Preferences from Ecam live. So if you are a user and on the beta program I'm assuming you know how to get to this go to the Ecam live beta menu come down to the preferences And it'll open up this Ecam live preferences menu. Well in here, we've now got this extra one at the end here You can see which says shortcuts Now in here, we basically can assign for different shortcuts So the things we've got here are it says automatically trigger a Mac OS shortcut when one of the following So when Ecam live opens we can assign a shortcut when a broadcast starts when a broadcast finishes and Finally when Ecam live quits. So this is basically just a drop-down list. You can pick any of your Shortcuts I'm just noticing because I'm showing the window the little drop-down menu isn't showing but the rest of sure This is showing my list of all shortcuts We'll see this in a moment when I when I give you a little demo it will all make sense So what we want to think about is what might we want to have happen when these things are triggered? well Perhaps when Ecam live opens You're just about to record or you're just about to stream or something. Maybe you want to close down some other apps Maybe you want to close down things like Dropbox or something like that. There are other ways to do this I did make a video about trip mode, which I'll leave up in the that top corner Which is a great app for basically shutting off internet access to different things so they're not taking up your bandwidth But you may just want to if you're not using that app You may want to just close down things that would ordinarily be a data hog So I'm going to just do this as a little example We'll say when Ecam live opens we want to close Dropbox I mean you could also add things in there like Adobe creative cloud or anything like that as well Then when the broadcast starts well, let's say When the broadcast starts we want to switch on do not disturb so that we don't get any notifications coming through But then when the broadcast finishes we want to turn off do not disturb And then when Ecam live quits we want to reopen those applications that we've chosen So this is just a little example. I mean, I've got other ways of doing that as well So I tend to use keyboard maestro a lot, which is why I've been sleeping on Shortcuts for some time to be honest since I upgraded to Monterey because I do do a lot of stuff with keyboard maestro But over this next week I'll be making a lot more videos About shortcuts and really digging into more of the functionality there But this is just the example that I'm going to do today. So Let's see how we could actually set that up So I've come over to my shortcuts app. This is macOS shortcuts It's already transferred over or already just opened up with all of the shortcuts that I've been using up to now on iOS So they're generally omni focus related task management stuff like that But what we're going to do is we're just going to create four more new actions in here We're going to create these ones to turn off do not disturb And then also these ones to open and shut different apps as well So let's come to the little plus icon here This may be totally blank for you. I'm not sure it depends on how you've got your Shortcuts set up if you've been using it up until now So what I'm going to do is when I click on that it's opened up another window, which if I come over to here I just get it all nicely lined up for you. There we go This is where we're going to build out our actions and Or our shortcuts rather and we've got a list of actions over on this side And we can just sort of drag things in or we can click up here to search for a particular action That we want to trigger And then there's different ways to categorize this so there's things related to sharing things related to documents Things related to the web and so on as I say, I'm going to do a whole series on shortcuts and Some things that you could do to get some extra productivity out of your mac But what we're going to do for today is just keep it really simple What I want to do is I want to trigger do not disturb. So this is one that I'm going to have turning on and off So up here. I'm going to give this a name as do not disturb Let's just say on so this is where I'm going to switch it on. This is the shortcut name up here And what I'm going to do is come over to here and I'll need to look for do not disturb. Actually now it's called focus Because there can be different profiles for your different levels of focus And so if I come down here, we can see one here that says set focus So I'm going to just double click that one and it will come in. There we go. Or you can just drag them And so here it says to turn do not disturb And you can see how here it's got those different focus levels that we can set on our ios and on the mac I'm just going to leave that as do not disturb. And then here it's saying off or on So let me just say on until turned off So that was just clicking on that. Those are the two options. So I'm just going to click it on until turned off Um, you can also do a specific time and things like that But for the sake of this, all we want to do is have it turn on until it's turned off because we're going to turn it off Through ecamm live. So that is as simple as it gets. We've now created that action And if I come back down to my shortcuts view, you can see now there we've got do not disturb on and I'm just going to make this one A different color so you can come in here and change the color Or you can rename it things like that But I'm just going to change the color and I'm going to change this one to ecamm orange Or as close to Because then I'm going to know that these things are all related to ecamm So now I'm going to come and create another one. So that was do not disturb on I'm going to do exactly the same now Just come in here and search for focus again And You see we can just drag it over as well. And so this one we want to turn do not disturb off. It's as simple as that Do not disturb off So that is another one you can see that this is basically got a sort of tabbed view at the top here So all of these actions that I'm creating in here I'm just opening them up and keeping them all open so you can work on multiple actions at once if you want Or multiple shortcuts, I should say and here I'm going to just change the color To orange again. So I've got this little collection of them And now I'm just going to do the same for closing different apps So if I come back up to here And in this one what I want to do is Close I think that's what I type I'll quit of course So click on there and then here it's going to say here. I'm going to quit an app Or you can end a task or things like that But here I'm going to quit an app and I'm going to click on choose And I'm just going to use this as an example Let's say you just want to totally quit Dropbox so that it's not trying to churn away in the background and do anything And so here I'm just going to label this one as Quit apps I'm going to call it quit apps because you could obviously add in multiple different ones So if you wanted to add in adobe creative cloud and all those sorts of things in here as well Or any other apps that you have running in the background You could just add those in here as a big long string And so I could just add that in there click on here And then let's see if I can find it. There we go creative cloud So that would quit that one as well I'm just going to toggle that one off for that for now But you can see how you can basically just build up whole stacks of different actions within a given shortcut So now I'm going to come back down to this app here There we go with the click of a button And so there I've got my quit apps and I'm just going to change the color of that one so that it all looks nice and pretty And the same color coding as the rest and then one more is going to be I'm going to call this one open apps Help if I share the right screen with you. There you go open apps like that And so here what I want to do is I want to open An application so if I scroll down You can see it is giving me suggestions by the way of different things here that I might want to open But I'm going to come down here and click open app And then here I'm just going to do that exactly the same as we did before so dropbox So as simple as that so now basically here you can see along the top I've got my four actions. This one is do not disturb on so it's turning do not disturb on until it is turned off This one is just turning do not disturb off This one is quitting any apps and I've only just put one in there for now quitting dropbox And then this one is opening dropbox. So those are the four actions And if I come down to my shortcuts here, you can see these are the the four actions that I've got across the top So now if I come back over to ecamm live Here what we want to do is when ecamm live opens, let's say we want to Trigger that dropbox app. So we want to sorry to quit apps So I'm just going to come down to this drop down list It's not showing up on here, but it is just a little drop down So you can see that that adds in the quit apps shortcut Then here when the broadcast starts, I want to turn on do not disturb Then when the broadcast finishes, I want to turn off do not disturb and when ecamm live quits. I want to Open apps so that would open whatever I'd put in there and that is as simple as it gets So here you can see how this could be really useful for just Trigging any triggering any number of actions and in the coming videos I'll be doing stuff that is a little bit more complex than this Thing other things that you may want to do or work into this or just do with shortcuts in general But I'm really pleased to see that this feature has been added into ecamm It's the start of some level of automation built in which I'm always very excited about So what else was added in? Well, let's have a little look at the next key feature Which was overlays position behind locked overlays can now be manipulated. So This is something that Used to be a little bit frustrating in some some cases if you had got overlays that covered the whole screen Say for example, it might be a border overlay or something like that I mean, we don't tend to use those as much now since we've got all these pretty Rounded corners and borders and things like that on camera overlays But if you have got a particular overlay that's going over other things Then if it's there and it's locked and it's taking up a lot of space But you want to manipulate something behind it you would have to go and previously hide the overlay Move the one behind it unhide the overlay and so on. So What they've done now is basically just meant that the locked overlays Pretty much just get ignored by the anything that you're trying to do on the screen So let's have a little look at this in practice. Shall we so here? I've just basically got two overlays a red square and a blue square and I can move those round Now in the past If this red square was over here, let's say I mean, this could be just as easily a full screen with a cutout or something like that But if this was over here and I was to lock it So I'm going to come down here to my little overlays panel And I'm just going to click the little padlock to lock it. So now that one is locked. It won't move But now if I want to move the the blue square, obviously I'd have to just grab the edge of that now this is very easy to do here But when this was full screen before so let's say I'd got this as a graphical overlay around my camera, although it It's not in this particular version, but What they've done is basically just meant that now you can see if I hover over this red square It does highlight but as soon as I come over an overlay that is underneath it That now is the active overlay that I'm able to move So I am able to move stuff that is behind Another overlay by just grabbing on it In the usual way so even if the blue square square was completely hidden Then I can still move over here and just still grab it because it's basically just ignoring the red one from the point of view of Being able to grab and manipulate the overlay. So I hope that that is clear enough But that is basically the the second feature that was added into this beta And that was all of them really there were a couple of fixes that were added in as well Um, but generally that was the the two new features that were added And very pleased. I am about them too. So watch out for those new videos coming up. Of course if you have enjoyed this video As always don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe to the channel and why not share it with a friend And if you've really found it useful, then you can always head over to my buy me a coffee page At buy me a coffee dot com slash take one tech and there you can support the channel on a one-off or continuing basis And while I'm at it if you want any help with your tech life or with ecam live You can always go over and book a consultation at take one tech dot i o slash Consultation and there I'll help you with any tech issues you are having With the sort of stuff that I'm talking about on the channel But that's all for now. So I hope you've enjoyed that and I'll leave a link to some other great videos Over on the right hand side. So until the next video. Have a wonderful few minutes