 new beta of Ecamm Live has just been released. Ecamm Live version 4 beta 16 and it's got some great new longer waited long requested features as well. So we'll be digging into all of those that includes the new ISO video and new camera switcher functionality and also some new functionality for live streaming as well. So we'll dig into all of that before we do though. I just want to mention that if you are on the regular version of Ecamm Live and you want to try out the beta there's no sort of barrier to entry. You can just go and download it from the link in the description. You're definitely going to want to try out these features I would say. It doesn't really interfere with the main version that you've already got so they run sort of side by side so don't worry that you're going to mess up the settings on your current live production version and saying that you know just make sure that you are aware that this is beta software so you may not want to use it for anything mission critical. I like to live dangerously so I use it all the time. But anyway you can find a link to that down in the description. If you've got any comments feedback or anything like that about the beta then also make sure that those go in the Ecamm Live beta Facebook group or the appropriate beta channel in the Ecamm Live Discord as well to sort of keep that distinction between the beta and the regular version. Anyway enough of waffling let's get straight on into the demo shall we and I'm going to start with the camera switcher because this is some great new functionality and I really do like this new feature that's been added in. So we've always had this camera switcher here which is the way that when you have a scene source set as camera as I do here you can use this to just sort of switch between your different cameras but what they've now added is an entirely separate camera switcher window because a lot of people had asked for you know can we make this a little bit bigger so that we can see the actual previews of all of these different cameras or can we reorientate it maybe you might want it down the side or something like that. Well in my view they've gone one better because we've now got this button up in the top corner and you can click on that one and that's going to pop out this entirely separate camera switcher window and so this has the same functionality as the other one but it's actually got so much more so you can just drag this open we can make it long we can make it tall like that so that the little camera windows stack up like that. We've also got a slider down here as well so you can zoom in so this actually becomes almost like a sort of full you know camera monitor where you can just see all of the the different cameras that you've got at any one time. There is another way to do this as well which we'll get onto in a moment but I really like this it means that you can really see clearly you know what is going on in these different cameras so it means for example if you are using interview mode and you've got you know a series of guests then even if they're not in the active scene you'll still be able to see you know what's going on if they're on camera if they're ready to be ready to be on screen or whatever you're going to see all of that because as you can see you've got the connected cameras but then we've also got the the guests here and if you had multiple guests they would just appear in there. So just like the camera switcher in here it's simply a case of just you know clicking one of these and we're going to switch to that camera change to this camera so it is really easy to see what you're at switching to. I really like that you may then find that this little camera switcher in here is now completely redundant and if you want to you can actually disable it so you can come into settings in the general then you've got here show camera switcher in main window so I'm going to just disable that because it was always just getting in the way for me. I should also say that previously as well the little floating window appeared all of the time when you you know whatever you were doing in Ecamm. This actual switcher only really applies though when you've got scene source set as camera so the way I normally build my scenes is I generally start with a completely blank scene and so let me just show you what I'm talking about if I just come and create a completely new scene and then you can see the scene source is blank and then I'm just going to build this up by adding in camera overlay so let me just add in a camera overlay there just like that. Well you'll notice that now actually they've completely removed the camera switcher because it's kind of redundant really in any case if you are using just camera overlays because the switcher never applied to those the way that you would change camera overlays before would be to come into the little pencil icon and then just pick whichever camera you wanted to be using nicely upside down there for that instead. So yeah it has actually removed it completely from the way you've got the scene source as blank but even when you've got scene source as a camera so if I just come back to this one as I say you can just come into the preferences and you can uncheck show camera switcher in main window so I'm going to do that so that basically that camera switcher is just no longer part of my main window interface. I'll definitely be using this one. In fact I mentioned that I never used to use the old camera switcher because I use camera overlays in all of my sort of scene building whereas I will be using this one with scene building and the reason is because if I go back to that one where I had the scene source as a camera in fact let me just change this one I'll come into here and I'll change this to scene source is blank now what you can do is you can just drag and drop the cameras I think that is fantastic it's going to make it so quick to just sort of build out scenes putting people putting elements putting cameras wherever you want them so you can just literally drag and drop them that one's not showing up obviously because I've got no guests on this current stream at the moment so I really like this this functionality I really like the way that it does sort of switch between these things let me just put my source back to camera again going to make it easier to do some of these things so yeah being able to just sort of drag and drop things like that I think is is really great the other thing that this opens up as well is another little bit of functionality and time saving which is the camera effects window so we've obviously had the camera effects for a long time where you can basically make adjustments to different cameras just the zoom adjust the brightness the picture and all of those kind of things but previously you would have to come into here and actually select the specific camera that you want from this drop down whereas now what they've done is they've actually added that little shortcut to get to this into each of these little windows in the preview because you can see we've got the little magic wand symbol which is the the same symbol that you have for the camera effects normally for this button over here is what we used to toggle that on and off so now if you actually just click any one of these cameras you'll notice that if you look at the camera effects down below as I click through here it's actually switching those cameras so this is again makes it a really easy and quick way to go make those adjustments I think it's a massive improvement on the old camera switcher whether you're using scene sources camera or whether you're using camera overlays as I say they've also gone a little bit further though with this because what you can also do is if you click on the little three dots you can also pop out any of these particular camera sources and have them as an individual window so now you really could have you know a monitor built up with you know all of your sort of key cameras that you want to be able to to monitor and so if I just click on this one show source in separate window you can see it's just popped out that so now I've got a completely separate floating window which is that that particular camera and I could make this you know however however big I want so I can certainly imagine somebody doing a production with lots of different different people coming in perhaps you know maybe a virtual conference or something like that and you want to have all of the speakers or maybe you've got you know multi-camera shot for interviews or whatever it happens to be you can just pop out multiple different cameras like this so now we could have maybe these three cameras are the ones that we want to focus on and why have we got this in addition to the camera switcher well it gives you a lot more versatility because as you can see you can actually make these you know maybe I might want to make that one the biggest one make that one down there I could then add in this other one as well and so where's that one gone I think it's gone onto a different window I'll pop out a different one for the purposes of this demonstration like that there we go let me try that again shall I show source in separate window where's it gone there it is okay so now we've got those all like that so the reason why you might want these on a separate window as well is imagine for example that somebody's running the show and you you're using the camera switcher but you might want to move these all onto a completely separate monitor that you know everyone else can see or it might be for you know sort of for other people viewing as well so there's lots of reasons why you might want to sort of pop these out completely separately the other thing that you can do as well with this is you can probably saw it there source video monitor so you can actually send one of these to a dedicated monitor or you know if you've got multiple monitors set up you could send individual sources to individual monitors so I've got two other additional monitors here so I could just actually have you know a monitor dedicated to one particular camera feed I really like that feature what they've also added in here though as well is an entirely new concept which I think is going to be really powerful as well which is this idea of placeholder cameras so you'll notice at the top of the camera switcher at the moment it says all sources but if I come over to this a slash b that is what they call placeholder cameras and what that means is that you can build out a scene and instead of putting a specific camera in that place you can actually use one of these placeholder cameras this is really powerful for a couple of reasons first of all if somebody has got you know multiple different cameras attached to their computer specifically using cam link then sometimes what can happen is if you shut down your computer and restart it the max sort of loses the order or loses the idea of which camera is which and there have been cases where you know people shut down the camera shut down the computer start it up again and then find that oh they've got to remap the cameras to the right scenes in ecamm and it's not ecamm's fault it is a mac issue but nevertheless it is a problem for ecamm users sometimes there are ways around it but anyway this actually basically solves that issue because now what you can do is you can assign a placeholder camera instead of an actual camera and then that means you can just come and switch them out in here let me show you what I mean if I create a completely new scene as well come down here create a new scene so now let's say I want to put placeholder camera A in here and I'll put placeholder camera B in there then what will happen is that one's upside down let me just go and fix that fix that in here there we go I've mounted it upside down so now we've got those two placeholder cameras but I could come and just in here switch out this one for any one of those other cameras and you'll notice that it changes it in that scene but you can do this for you know as many scenes as you've got so in all of your scenes as long as you have used placeholder cameras then basically you can just come in here and tweak them and if your your computer has lost your cam link order then you could just come in here and and change those out just in here and it would propagate that through all of your different scenes the other place where this is going to be really useful is actually if you are somebody who is you know creating scenes for other people maybe you are you know the producer and somebody else is you know running the show sorry you're the designer somebody else is producing the show or maybe you are offering this as a service you know designing profile packs for people then this is going to allow you to drop these placeholders in so that when somebody loads it up onto their computer then they all they need to do is go into the the camera switcher go into the placeholders section and then just switch those out you'll notice that there is just two there at the moment but actually there's also this little plus icon at the bottom so you can just add another placeholder camera add another placeholder camera and just sort of keep going and add and change those all out. One thing to be aware of with this is that you've actually just seen it that you know one of my cameras was upside down so the settings that you assign to the placeholders are separate from the settings that you apply to kind of that same camera in the regular view if you see what I mean so here I've got my Canon EOS 60D this is my camera A so if I come in here and make some changes to this like I'll I'll just wait a second come in here camera A like that I forgot to press the little button there so if I was to say I don't know change the the change the brightness just completely screw this over you can see that it's done some weird things to my camera there so if I come back into here and select my camera in here you'll see that the the settings are are different so just make sure that you know when you are tweaking things you understand the distinction between tweaking the settings on the actual placeholder versus tweaking the settings on the the actual camera itself. This makes perfect sense though because you do want to be able to have this sort of you know separate control over these these settings as you might may want to use one in one place and one in the other so I totally get to why it is this way and it makes sense. We've also got the ability to record isolated video of these cameras as well and the way that it's been implemented is kind of related to this because if I come into the settings once again we've now got a completely new recording tab so this tab up here recording and there's a couple of things that have moved actually so audio previously recording isolated audio tracks which we've had for a while now that was previously in the audio section now that has moved to recording so I'll just jump ahead but recorded isolated audio tracks is there and then you can see here we've got to record all broadcasts so that's worth choosing whether you want to record a local recording of you know all of your all of your your streams basically all your broadcasts and so that's a toggle now there as well but this is the really new section record isolated video tracks and basically what that means is obviously you've got your main ecamm production let me just change back to this scene for you there obviously you've got your main ecamm production which is being recorded as a video file whatever size that happens to be obviously we set the stream size there to be either you know low medium high 1080p 4k whatever it happens to be 2k you can set that in in the options and the output but now what we've got is also the option to record as you can see camera a camera b and also interview guests so essentially of the cameras that you've got coming in you've seen that I've got basically six or five different cameras connected here then I can record basically two of those but then any interview guests a couple of things to note about this well three things actually first of all it is only available to people on the pro plan it's also only works with m-series max so apple silicon max because of the sort of processing load involved in it and that being the third one you're basically recording now in addition to the regular outputs that you've got going out from ecamm you're now asking the computer to encode an entirely new video file at the same time and in fact maybe not one maybe two maybe three maybe 12 because you've got two of your own cameras and you got to 10 guests so think about how much extra processing power is going to be required to that and just sort of bear that in mind really when you're deciding you know what to do with this and if you have any issues then before jumping up and down and saying my computer's really slow I've just been trying to record you know 12 isolated video tracks isolated audio tracks and also my main feed which is being recorded at 4k you may find that you have some processor issues so just bear that in mind that's a computer limitation not an ecamm limitation so on that point as well the other thing about that is that the the maximum recording size of the isolated video files is going to be 1080p so you can't record at the moment 4k for the iso files your original recording obviously still will be whatever you've set that to but just the iso videos are not going to be up to a 4k maybe when their processors increase they can bump that up a little bit but as I say computer limitation anyway what you've also got though is you can as well as recording isolated audio tracks just as we've been able to before you can also choose which audio you want to be included with those those cameras and those are those guests as well so the default here is that the is program audio for the camera feeds on your computer and then guest audio for your interview guests which makes sense because you want you know an isolated feed for your guest and their specific audio but what you can do here is you can change this to either non maybe you just want a feed with no audio you can also change it to program audio or primary mic or secondary mic so it may be that you've got sort of you know the like in this case this shot here I would likely want to have my camera recording my audio and just have the the primary mic so this microphone and I want that with this shot but maybe the you know over the over the head shot or something like that coming from this side maybe I want the full program audio maybe it's a wide shot of you doing an interview or something like that and you want the full audio in there whatever it happens to be so you can choose this and as I say this is related to camera A and B in the switcher so if I was to come into camera B you'll notice that it does say in brackets with the name of the actual camera that's allocated to that that camera in the switcher so if I come back to the switcher and change this to say this one then now you'll see that that is now recording that separate file there as well I should say that as this is recording I am recording ISO video at the moment so it is technically you know switching these as we go through as well so that is something to bear in mind you can have an all ISO video file and then sort of switch partway through as well if I come over to the finder what you'll see is this is what it's going to look like basically in your output when you've got the the files out at the end of the recording here we've got ISO video sorry ISO audio to start so main mic sound effects and guest and then in this case for this test that I did earlier and then we've also got the ecamm live main recording then I've got camera A camera B and I've also got the guest one there as well so that was basically ISO video with one guest and so I've got four files hopefully that all is pretty logical and makes sense but yeah do certainly bear in mind the processor hit that you're going to be taking with all of this now I should say that all of these updates when it makes it into the final release we're not far away from ecamm live version four the developers Ken and Glen have said that you know this is pretty much the full features now there will be sort of tweaks and things like that based on sort of feedback from these beaters but we are pretty close now to the ecamm live version four now when that happens I will be updating my ecamm live masterclass you can already get access right now though it's over 100 videos covering everything from absolute beginner all the way through to advanced of ecamm live it's your online encyclopedia basically where you've got all of the latest information and part of the reason I made it was because there are so many features constantly being added to ecamm live that I wanted to have a place where you know you could always know that you get the latest information I've got hundreds of videos on ecamm on my channel well 150 to be precise and but some of those are out of date because of the new features well ecamm live masterclass resolves that because you basically pay once you get lifetime access to all of those updates always the latest information it also covers stream deck how to use stream deck with ecamm how to program stream deck how to use ecamm to go into zoom and level up your zoom presentations how to use it with things like keynote as well and of course all the other tech that goes along with ecamm so you can find out more about that at ecamm live masterclass.com and use the offer code cyber 22 from now through to cyber monday and you can get an extra 35% off so link to all of that in the description as well but definitely check that out okay so aside from the camera switcher and the iso video only a couple of minor features there is also some new functionality when it comes to live streaming but you'll see here that we've got the view count just up at the top corner where is it just there we've got the view count and also the number of thumbs up well what they've added in now is if i click on this because i am multi streaming which obviously is another feature of the beta coming to version four in one of the previous beaters it was added in so i'm streaming to two platforms directly from ecamm at the moment well this little drop down now can show you exactly where those viewers and those likes are so i'm watching myself on youtube very sad and you can see that i've just got one thumbs up so it's going to show you that differentiation so when you are multi streaming you're going to see where your audience is which i think is a really great little feature the other thing that you can do from here then as well is you've got this little icon next to each one well first of all let me just highlight this you can see how it's got a little green icon and it says streaming so you've got that little sort of confidence of knowing that you are actually streaming to those platforms but if i click this little icon next to that you've got a few different options here so we can say view in safari copy the video url so if you're live streaming and you want to i don't know you've started the stream you want to copy the url paste it into twitter or something like that to let people know that you're streaming whatever happens to be i mean a message you can do that from there you can also go directly to facebook producer or if you are in youtube then you can go to youtube studio and so on but now what we can also do though is actually end the stream on individual platforms so i might say now right well i'm actually going to end the stream now on facebook so why might you want to do that well you may want to just sort of have a start of a stream on a particular platform or multiple platforms but then you go into like a member section or something like that or you start the stream on a certain platform but then send everyone over to someone else to somewhere else to sort of continue the stream on and sort of close down all the others so whatever the case you can do that from there now so now you can clearly see we are stopped on facebook but we are still streaming to youtube the other thing that they've done related to live streaming is actually they've added in the ability to activate captions in linkedin so what you'll see is when you are scheduling a stream now in linkedin you've got this extra little checkbox to additional platform options generate automatic captions so that is specifically a linkedin feature that they've added another thing they've done is they've updated the widget overlay feature so if i just come back here then what it looks like now is i've just got a a widget here which just happens to be my website obviously you may have some different types of widgets but previously widgets were basically just on the screen i mean they can be for all sorts of things i use one for my buy me a coffee link link in the description i also use it for you know subscribe accounts and things like that but what some widgets allow for sort of interaction or maybe require interaction and a case in point would be if you'd got some sort of video player that you wanted to put over the top as a widget as an overlay or in this case i'm just showing you my website just for the sake of demonstration widget overlays by the way are just down here so the one that looks like the little world icon click on the little plus icon and there you can add in the url for the widget and give it a name if you want so that's how it'll appear in your overlays list but from here now what they've added is you'll see just below the widget overlay we've got this little icon of the finger pressing there and then you can toggle this one on and this basically allows you to interact with the widget so if i toggle that one on now what you'll see is now that i'm hovering over the widget i can actually scroll the web page i can go and click on some things if i click on this button the button is going to actually work it's going to go to the next page like that and then you can also use the forward and backward buttons here so if you are on a web page you can scroll forwards and backwards so obviously you know screen sharing and screen sharing a web page is one thing but there may be cases where you actually just want that embedded as a widget like i say for things like video players and and the like then it's going to be really useful for that if you're on macOS Ventura then you may be familiar with the continuity camera feature which allows you to use your ipad and iphone as a camera as a webcam for your mac the way that that would work is that every time something wanted to use your continuity camera then it would just pop up in a little alert for you to say that something was trying to access it well obviously with ecam you know you might have that running a lot of the time and you might not want it making these sort of calls to continuity camera so now although it will appear there in the switcher there is just a sort of click to activate for continuity camera within ecam now that pretty much wraps up all of the awesome new features as i say you can get a link to this down in the description if you're not on the beta already definitely worth trying it out i'll leave a link also to another great ecam video over on the right hand side and i've just got to say a big thank you to my channel members whose names are coming up now because they help keep the lights on in the studio thank you so much i really appreciate your ongoing support have a great day everyone and enjoy the beta