 In this video, I'm going to be talking about the new virtual mic feature that was added in Ecam Live version 3.10. So if you have been using the virtual camera, the idea behind this might seem quite obvious, really. The virtual camera feature that we've got in Ecam Live takes all of the visual output from Ecam, so basically just exactly what you're seeing of me now. And then it presents that to the computer as if it was a camera source. So then in other applications like for example Zoom or Microsoft Teams or Google Meet or whatever it is that you're using, you can then select that as your camera source. And that means that all of the Ecam Live visual goodness goes into those applications. And so you can do great looking presentations and things like that using the full Ecam Live production capabilities to feed into those other applications. But until now, the audio wasn't actually making it from Ecam. So you would either be just having all of the Ecam visuals going in but then just using your regular mic going directly into those applications or you would use a program like Loopback to sort of do some slightly more advanced routing of audio from Ecam into those applications. And I know it's something that a lot of people found confusing. There was often questions about this in the Ecam Facebook group of exactly how to use Loopback and all these sorts of things. And if people even needed it, certainly I've got a video on my channel which is do I need Loopback? And now certainly that one is a little bit out of date and the answer is probably for most people, no, because the virtual mic will do it for you. So basically the virtual mic does for audio what the virtual camera does for video. So that basically means that all of the audio from Ecam Live including your microphone going into it but then also any sound effects, any background music, any things like that that is all then going to feed out of your Ecam to this virtual mic that can then be used in any other application. So I think it's easy if I just show you this, isn't it? Let me come into my demo mode and so here I am. I've got my just my Ecam window open and if I go to output here is where we can see our virtual camera and this one is on and now we've got virtual mic just beneath it. Now if it is the first time you have installed version 3.10 and you haven't activated this then you will see a thing that says install virtual mics. You just need to click on that and then it will prompt you to enter your password, your Mac password and it will just do a couple of seconds to install it and then you're ready to go and then just make sure that it is toggled on. Incidentally with these things in here, so we've got virtual mic, virtual camera, audio monitor out, video monitor out, the sharing window and so on you do get this little notification just up here in the sort of top left of the main window, the main Ecam window and so this is telling me that my virtual monitor is on this one is my sharing window, my virtual camera and my virtual mic so that's what these little symbols are here they just indicate which of those is on or not. Once you have got it on though then you can go into whatever application it is you want to use it in so let's talk about zoom shall we, one of my favourites and I'll come over to zoom now and so this is in the zoom settings and just as before where we went into the video and in video settings we could select the camera and we're basically just selecting the virtual camera and as you can see it's given a preview that is basically a preview of what you're seeing now just in there so that's basically taking all of the Ecam video stuff and putting that into zoom as a camera. There's a few little caveats around this and I've made plenty of videos about this before about using Ecam with zoom so for the virtual camera so I won't go into all those now but we'll go into the audio because that's what is the new feature. Well now just like we could select the virtual camera from Ecam Live now we can also select the Ecam Live virtual mic and you can see that as I'm speaking this little bar here is sort of bouncing up and down showing me that is hearing my voice but also if I was to play a little piece of music out of Ecam Live you'll notice that it is also picking that up if I stop talking for a moment so the fact that that little bar is jumping up and down tells me that zoom is hearing that audio and that's showing that it is picking up the virtual mic and this is the thing that it just was not doing before you would have to use something like loopback now there is still a potential use case for loopback because all we're doing here is we're taking the audio from Ecam into zoom that is what the vast majority of people would ever need to do certainly with loopback so they've got some sort of production going on in Ecam and they want to feed it into zoom there is still a use case for loopback though and that is if you are in the rather niche situation where you are say you've got interviewees in Ecam Live interview mode and you also want them to be able to hear what's going on in the zoom so say you're going to have like a panel discussion you're feeding that into zoom and then you've got a number of guests in zoom that are going to be asking questions and you want those to be heard for example by the panel then at the moment the routing of the audio from zoom is not becoming back into Ecam in quite that way so I mean if you're just doing a webinar for example where it was just only one way then the virtual mic would still work perfectly for that because you could have your Ecam Live interview mode have your guests coming on and then that would just be feeding into the webinar the one way discussion if you like of just speaking to your webinar attendees in that case you still wouldn't need loopback but that is just where you may still consider using loopback but again I've got videos on loopback on my channel so I won't go into all of those there are a few audio settings that you may want to consider checking though now that we are taking our Ecam Live settings into here before I tell you about that I do just need to mention this thing that's just down below me actually the Ecam Live Masterclass so this is a course that I've created to basically, if you're online encyclopedia for all things Ecam Live you'll always know that the information here is up to date and there is 150 videos plus more being added as we speak and this is all everything from beginner to advanced level of Ecam Live and all the different ways that you might use it so for example I do have a whole section there about using Ecam Live with Zoom with Teams, with Discord, things like that but then also obviously for using it for live streaming and recording which I also do and cover extensively and really just all of the different features and they're all broken down into different sections so we've got sections on specifically overlays all the different kinds of overlays working with scenes, different ways that you can work with scenes all of these different things and then what this means is because they are broken down individually section by section it means that as Ecam Live is updated these videos will be updated for those specific things and if there is a new kind of overlay that is added in, who knows then that new video will just slot into place as well so it will be continually updated I cover Stream Deck obviously how to use Stream Deck and Loop Deck with Ecam Live how to use Ecam Live for presentations with PowerPoint and Keynote and things like that it's basically your, as I say, online resource for all things Ecam Live you also get $150 worth of bonuses with it as well and the course itself is $147 so effectively you're $3 up before you even start so head over to Ecam Live masterclass.com and sign up there today but I digress slightly let's get back to Zoom and I want to tell you about these audio settings that you can change in Zoom because you are a, certainly if you're a good Ecam Live masterclass student you'll know to pay a little bit of attention to your audio and buy a little bit of attention, I mean you will be really concentrating on getting good quality audio when you're using Ecam Live and that also goes when you're feeding into Zoom as well through Ecam Live now Zoom is going to assume that you are one of the masses you're not one of the tiny few top percentile as you are is concentrating on looking and sounding good in Ecam and on Zoom as well and so it is assuming that you've got probably pretty bad audio quality maybe you are using the Max built-in microphone and you've got an old Max so the fans are wearing up and maybe you're in a noisy coffee shop or something like that so it is assuming the worst possible case and Zoom is going to be trying to fix all of these potential problems that you might not even have so down here you've got a few settings that I want you to just draw your attention to so the first one here is automatically adjust microphone volume so that is something that if you are paying attention you don't really want Zoom trying to be in control of your volume especially if you are doing things like playing in audio playing in sound effects maybe you're playing sort of movie clips or things like that I'm sure that you are you know being attentive to your levels and things like that so that one probably is on by default I would recommend turning it off again if you are paying attention to these things you've got this one here suppressed background noise and that is to try and filter out some of this background noise I'm going to skip over this one for a moment because actually if we do this next thing this one is actually irrelevant so this background noise suppression the default is auto you can leave it there if you want but I'm going to recommend that you come down and you toggle on this one here music and professional audio so it says show in meeting option to enable original sound now original sound is basically meaning it is just going to take whatever audio it gets and this is you know assuming that music and professional audio is people who are like you professional audio people who are spending a little bit of time and care and attention on their audio so we want to enable this one because we do not what we're doing to a much greater extent than the majority of zoom users so we're going to do that one where it says enable original sound and we've got a couple of other options here so once you enable that one you'll see this little pop up comes down here all these extra options and the first one is high fidelity music mode now we might not be playing music you might not be you know playing guitar or piano in your zoom meetings however toggling this one on will just improve the overall audio quality and take more of exactly what's being given to it there is a little caveat here and a little little box which is basically saying this is going to have a greater impact on your processor power and it's also going to have an impact on your bandwidth usage as well I'm going to assume that if you are an e-cam folk you've probably got yourself a reasonable setup and you've also potentially got a reasonably good bandwidth as well so it's something to just bear in mind but I think with modern bandwidths modern internet speeds and with modern max and things like that this is perhaps not so much of an issue so I certainly leave this one on high fidelity music mode echo cancellation I leave that one off because like all good people I wear headphones whenever I am on zoom calls either in ear monitors or over the years or whatever it is and I recommend that you do the same and if you're doing that then you do not need this echo cancellation the next one is stereo audio mode now obviously this is a mono mic so there's no need for stereo right well yes except if you wanted to play music and things like that maybe you're doing like I don't know a zoom co-working session or something and you want the audio to go over in stereo then you can enable that but once again you've got this caveat that it is again a sort of potential going to lead to potential increase in bandwidth usage and all those sorts of things so that is just another thing to bear in mind but I would certainly have my settings set like that that is in fact how I have my settings and that will just lead to a better quality audio for your participants so that is basically all there is to say about the e-cam virtual mic actually from the e-cam point of view it's pretty simple to set up isn't it it's just a case of toggling on and then select that as your audio source this works as well in obviously teams anywhere else that you want to use your mic on your system so that is all for this video we don't go anywhere because there is some more videos about some more great new e-cam live features coming up right now so I'll see you in those videos