 If you use the e-cam live virtual camera feature with zoom then this video is for you Hello, and welcome to take one tech. My name is Alec and in this video We're talking about the virtual camera feature of zoom of e-cam live rather to use specifically with zoom And I want to just highlight some potential issue that you may have run into with zoom Where you might not feel like you're getting quite the picture quality you deserve out of it Well, there is a reason for that and I'm going to explain that in this video But I need to just back up for one moment in case there is anybody who has stumbled across this video who? Wasn't even aware of what e-cam live was, you know, maybe you've been searching for something related to zoom virtual cameras And so on and I've just found this video Well e-cam live is a live production environment for the Mac that allows you to produce videos like this on the fly Adding in overlays sound effects things like that All as I say in a sort of live production environment you can also use it for streaming for live streaming But it also does have a built-in Virtual camera so that you can use this as the feed that's going into your zoom meetings And what that means is you can add all of the sort of production values that you can do with e-cam live I'm putting in overlays like this for example This is a good time to tell you if you want to try e-cam live go to take one tech.io Slash e-cam and get your free trial and in fact for the month of July of 2021 There is 30% off so it's no better time to actually try it out and sign up than than this month But yes, it does allow you to do all of this sort of stuff that I'm doing here in these videos Live with no editing and you can bring all of these production values into your zoom meetings and presentations or webinars or whatever it is There's also interview mode where you can actually bring guests on into your production And then feed that into your webinar or whatever sort of separate from zoom So that's another feature that you can do with with e-cam live and it's it's what I use for making these videos It's what I use for my zoom calls teams meetings things like that and it is a bit of a game-changer really you can also Really level up your presentations as well by combining this with something like keynote or PowerPoint and actually Bringing in those presentations into your productions and feeding that into zoom as well But I did a video all about how to do that. So I'll leave a link to That's up in the top corner. But anyway, that is a brief introduction to e-cam live But for those of you who are already aware of it then let me now talk about How to actually start using it with zoom and let's get on to the main main issue that I want to discuss Not discuss solve because it is a solvable problem that has been solved So don't worry about it. So first of all when you install E-cam live and when you are signed up to the pro account the virtual camera feature is something that you will need to install But don't worry. It's not tricky and I'll show you how to do that If I just share my screen come into a demo mode for one second and then here in the menu at the top You'll see this little output menu And if I click on to that then down here We've got virtual cam and it will just say install virtual cam when you first start out So just make sure you click that to install it But then you can simply toggle it off at will and when you are in the sort of preview window here You'll see that the cam is basically just I use my pro mouse. It disappears off the screen. That's no good Is it it's just here? Anyway, you can see this little cam icon that means that you've got your virtual camera active so then it will show up in your system as just another camera and Perhaps this is a good time to actually come out demo mode and show you how to actually get this then into zoom Or in fact any other application There's a bit of a workaround that you need to do if you want to bring it into Microsoft Teams So I'll have to make a separate video about that because Teams is a little bit more finicky about exactly what virtual cameras they allow or don't allow So I'll make a video about that one separately But if I do my screen sharing again So now I'm in my zoom and if I come into my zoom preferences Just clicking the little cog wheel and bringing up this this is where you would select your video and audio So come down to video and I've already got it selected there But if you come to this drop down where you could select your camera It simply appears in here as e-cam live virtual camera. So just like my FaceTime camera for my Mac or my webcam my Logitech webcam or these other these are all actually other virtual webcams that I've tried out in the past But I'm always just defaulting to e-cam live now and as you can see The little preview that zoom gives you is a preview of what you're seeing and that's because it's actually working isn't it it's taking my e-cam live camera and Putting whatever is in e-cam live that would then be feeding into zoom now incidentally there is audio as well and If you are going to be using Two-way audio where you need to have maybe you're doing a production where you're bringing guests in or things like that And need to feed the audio into zoom and maybe you need the output from zoom coming back into e-cam live to feed back out To your interviewees on e-cam live something like that Then you may need another bit of software which I've discussed in a another video Which I'll leave a link to it in the top corner Which is called loopback But a lot of people think that you absolutely need loopback in order to use zoom or use the virtual camera feature with zoom But that's not actually the case So do check out that other video to see if loopback is something that you actually need or not But in any case let's come back to this section because we've now selected our virtual camera So everything seems to be working doesn't it? So what exactly is the issue? What's the point of this video? Why isn't it ending now? Well the reason is zoom is treating this as a camera and Some people don't realize but when you've got two people in a zoom meeting It will be broadcasting the images from the cameras at high definition to the two Attendees so you'll see each other in high definition But as soon as you add a third person into that call three or more people It will actually drop the resolution down to 720 from 1080 So that means that you're then getting lower resolution from the camera But because we're using e-cam live we might be sharing our desktop for example You might be doing a screen demo or something like that You wouldn't necessarily want your high definition desktop being reduced down and low into a lower resolution Now if you are doing screen sharing natively in zoom the way that obviously intended things to be done Then what they do is they actually when you go into your screen sharing in zoom and share your screen Then they actually bump the resolution back up so that if you're sharing a High definition screen for example your full monitor Then it will broadcast that at high definition So that is how they get around that or that's how they they do it and the reason why they reduce the Resolution of video is because it's just a bandwidth thing really You know the more people you get on the more bandwidth it is taking up in order to broadcast those high definition Images and so that is why they do it. So how are we going to get around that in here? Well There are three ways to do it And some apply to all and some only apply to those on the pro plan. I'm afraid of of zoom So if I come back to my screen sharing for a minute and share the correct window, this might help Where is it? There we go get these out of the way You just drop those down. So here we go. I'm in my settings in zoom now So if you are on the pro account in zoom or higher It doesn't work on the free plan. I think it's a free plan. Isn't it the one below that? But if you are on the free plan, then I'm afraid this doesn't work But uh, if you come down to your account settings So go into your account account settings and then come to the in meeting and advanced section here And then we're going to click on that one and it's going to take us down to all of these settings As you can see, there are really quite a lot of settings in zoom on that and in fact If anybody would like to see a video specifically about all of the different settings in zoom Then leave a comment down below and I'll make that video In fact, I will probably make the video anyway to be honest with you But uh, you know, leave a comment down below if you'd like to see that and maybe I'll pump it up the list a little bit So, uh, yes, but anyway as I was saying so we come into the in meeting and advanced section And then if we scroll down a little bit what you'll see is uh, this one here It says group hd video and that's the one that we could toggle on And basically as it says this activates higher quality video for host and participants And what that means is it's going to stop it dropping down that quality when you add more people into the meeting But as it says here, this will use more bandwidth. So do bear that in mind It's going to be a bandwidth issue for you But also it's going to be a bandwidth issue on the other end If you are broadcasting those things over to the other side as well So that is something that you may or may not want to toggle on But it will resolve this issue because you'll then be broadcasting In higher resolution and so that will then mean that all of your Ecum live will be broadcast over to your participants And that will let as I say it will resolve the issue So there is another way to do it because as I say that is something that's only available on the On the pro plan and above for zoom So but there is another way to do it and it's a bit of a work around but it does work and ecum live I've thought about this so first of all, let me come into my demo mode of ecum live again And There's two ways and it's to do with using screen sharing in zoom whereby instead of actually having the zoom Instead of having the ecum live virtual camera feeding into zoom to share our screen What we're going to use is we're going to use the zoom screen sharing To share our ecum live window And our ecum live window can then share whatever else we want to share So it's kind of like two layers of sharing if you like and so the way that you could do that is Now i'm in ecum live obviously in my demo mode if I go into the output You can also output to a monitor so we could output to a video video monitor So what i'm doing at the moment is I've got my ecum live window that you can see on the screen the one that i'm actually sitting in And i'm doing my live demo mode of my whole desktop But i'm actually also I've got a video monitor of my output from ecum live which is going to my third monitor. So I've got Here i've got my The main monitor that i'm using but I could also output it to my this one This is actually I don't know why it says color lcd because that is actually my macbook So it could be labeled a little bit better. But anyway, that is actually my macbook's main monitor My macbook screen and then I've got this one here, which is a a third monitor So I am currently putting out the output from ecum live is going to this particular monitor So that is showing everything that you're seeing in the output and in the same way on zoom call If I wanted to share my my output from ecum live what I could do then is I could make sure that this is on So video video monitor is going to this other monitor And then in zoom what I could do is I could go to my screen sharing in zoom So let me just come out of this demo mode for a moment And what I'll do is I'll come over to This little screenshot. I haven't decided to Actually open zoom and do this live because then I would be running zoom and this at the same time And it would cause a bit of a infinite loop of Of screen sharing. So I've just taken a screenshot of the screen sharing window in zoom So presumably if you're a zoom user, you'll be familiar with this little screen that I'm going to show you now And this is basically when you're in zoom and this is just a screenshot of it But when you're in zoom and you click share screen With the little sharing feature that's built in in zoom you get a few options You get to either share a particular screen. So it's called desktop one desktop two or desktop three Or you get to share the little whiteboard that's built into it Or you can share a device or you can share a specific window Well, what so what I was just telling you there was because I'm using the the monitor The video monitor feature of ecamm live This is my desktop one which happened to be the zoom call that I was running at the time of just testing this Desktop two was this main desktop that I'm looking at now Which has got my so all my ecamm live controls on it and desk three was that one that I was using as the The video monitor. So if in zoom I was to share desktop three then what that would do is That would then rather than zoom thinking that this was a virtual camera It would treat the outputs because it's taking the full the full output from that monitor It would think that that was screen sharing and so it would maintain that higher resolution Which is what we're trying to do Now what you need to bear in mind though is for your Guests or the other people that are on the meeting with you If you think about what happens normally when you share your screen in zoom You get your screen sharing window, which is the screen that you're sharing But then you also get your little camera picture in the top as well Don't you because then you can see all of the participants of the meeting and you are one of the participants But you're just sharing your screen whereas now what they're going to see is they're going to see the ecamm live window Where you might be sharing your screen through ecamm live But they're also going to see your little what's normally your camera window But that's also going to be the same thing because you're using ecamm live as your virtual camera So what you may want to do is just actually toggle off your camera On in zoom so that it just doesn't duplicate those two things And so then you just get the the main live sharing window And if you're doing something like this you can still have yourself in the shot For example, if you're doing a screen share and you could still be in the window in this in this way Like as I am in this little box if you see what I mean So that is how you would do it by sharing it to a desktop now What happens if you're on a laptop and you don't have an extra desktop? Well, there's a couple of ways around that now. First of all is I'm going to link to another video. I did about this, but There's these little things that you can get called virtual monitors and it is basically a little hdmi plug But with no cable on the end of it. It's just a little sort of dummy thing and they these are used in Sort of servers and things like that where you want to have it's called a headless mac or a headless computer And it basically means a computer that's got no monitor But you plug one of these in and the the computer thinks that there is a monitor attached and you can actually share to that So I won't go into this in full detail here because I did do a whole video about it But this is a way that if you wanted to have like a secondary display to share things to that you didn't actually need to see There are use cases for that and this is one of them then these little things that cost Five dollars or something like that is a way around that. So I'll link as I say link to that video Up in the top corner and in the description as well Now there is another way that you can get around this issue the third way And I'm going to show you that if I come into my demo mode What we can do also is if we come into our outputs again So all of these things that I'm talking to you about the virtual camera and everything They're all in this output menu. So here we've we've already looked at this video monitor one We've looked at our virtual camera. We've also got this one called sharing windows So you can toggle this one on and off and by the way, this shows up here is this little symbol here It looks like two windows the virtual cam is there and then this one is says out when we've got this little The the output monitor switched on but so we come down and we have sharing windows switched on And what that does is once again in sharing in ecamm live. Sorry in zoom. I beg your pardon Then what will happen then is if I come over to my Demo screen here again, and I need to come out of demo mode do too many things at one time here So this is back into our zoom screen sharing So we've already looked at how we could share our desktop if we've got it going to that one But we can also use this one So the ecamm live sharing window and that will do exactly the same thing It will share the output from ecamm live And we just need to make sure that that is toggled on in those settings So I hope that I have explained that adequately and I hope that that is clear I know there was a couple of different pro plans we're talking about so ecamm live pro plan and the zoom pro plan Two different screen shareings ecamm live screen sharing and zoom screen sharing So it can sound a little bit confusing, but hopefully Uh We may have managed to cut through some of the The confusion there I hope but if I haven't and there's any questions left unanswered Then please do feel free to leave them in the comments And I will certainly get around to answering them as soon as possible Because I'm here to hopefully help and make things a lot easier rather than adding complexity And while you are down there if you did you do go down to comment Then don't forget to also like and subscribe to the channel turn on notifications So you get notified whenever I do make any more videos I'll leave a link to some of my other zoom related videos over in the bottom right and until the next video. Have a great day