 Ecam Live version 4.2 beta 3 has just been released with really two headline new features or at least one new feature and one new implementation of an existing feature. That is namely that the sort of backend architecture of the virtual camera has been changed and I'll talk about the implications of that in a moment. And also we now have commenting coming directly from Instagram into Ecam when you are streaming to Instagram from Ecam. So let's start off then with that virtual camera. It is essentially the same thing we've always had the ability to take all of the production quality that you get from Ecam Live and take that into your virtual meetings, presentations, webinars, whatever it happens to be on platforms like Zoom, Discord and so on. So in that sense, nothing has changed really, you'll still be able to do all of that. But what's happened is they've changed the way that this has been implemented, which is that it is now a system extension level virtual camera rather than the way that it was before. Now, it doesn't really matter how this has been implemented, but I'll just tell you the net effect of it. You'll probably know that in Zoom, it was as simple as just toggling on the virtual camera in Ecam. Then in Zoom, you just select your Ecam Live virtual camera as your camera and hey presto, all of your Ecam Live production is going straight into Zoom. However, with certain platforms, I'm thinking things like Discord, Vivo meetings and a few others. We had to go in and type in this little bit of terminal code to enable the Ecam Live virtual camera to show up in our list of cameras in those platforms. Basically, what's happened now is because it is now a system extension level implementation of the virtual camera, there is no more terminal code required. Furthermore, though, you will also know that the Ecam Live virtual camera never used to show up in Apple's own products. So I'm talking things like FaceTime, QuickTime, Keynote, if you're using the Live video feature, if you wanted to bring in sort of Ecam into Keynote in that way. Usually I go the opposite way, Keynote into Ecam, but in any case, yeah, so this was something that wasn't possible before with terminal code or otherwise. However, now that it is a system extension level implementation of the virtual camera, it will just show up everywhere just like a regular camera. This is actually massive because personally I found it a massive headache every time I went into Discord and realised that, oh yeah, I need to put in the terminal code because it happened every time Discord did an update which was every few days or so. So it just became part of my routine before even firing up Discord, fire it up, let it update, close it down, run the terminal code, go back into Discord just on the off chance that the camera wasn't going to be working again. Anyway, all of that said, let's take a quick look at what you're going to see then when you update to this latest beta. By the way, I should say a link to find the beta is down in the description. I should also say that this is beta software so use at your own risk. However, I will also say that I just use the beta exclusively. Since I updated my laptop to one of the new M3 MacBook Pros, I haven't even bothered putting the regular version of Ecam on it. I just use the beta all the time. So I'm pretty confident in the stability of it from that point of view. Links to the Ecam Live beta Facebook group are down in the description as well. Anyway, when you do update your beta or when you install it for the first time, you're going to see something that pops up like this. Ecam Live needs to update the virtual mic and camera. So you'll click on OK. Then it'll say install virtual mic and camera. Click on continue. And then you'll see this pop up somewhere on your desktop saying that the system extension has been blocked. You'll also see a notification in Ecam telling you the same thing basically and telling you that you need to go into your privacy and security settings in your max settings and just hit that little allow button. So this is all within Ecam telling you how to do this. But here it is showing up exactly as expected in my privacy and security settings. So you just need to hit that allow button. Now at this stage you may well get a second pop up saying that you're not able to allow these system extensions. And so you need to modify the security settings in the recovery environment. He says reading directly off the little pop up. There is just instructions there as to how to do that. So you just basically have to reboot your mic, go through and follow those simple steps that it gives you. And then ultimately though you will be in a situation like this where it says that the virtual mic has been installed. So once that's done, that's essentially you'll find that now your Ecam live virtual camera will just show up everywhere. One thing you may have to do though is if you have if you're on macOS Sonoma and you've been using Ecam live, you'll know that there's that. It's either an issue or a feature depending on the way that you look at it. These new reactions that were added into Sonoma so that if you put your thumbs up, then a little thumbs up bubble appears somewhere on the screen. I find them super annoying. Other people really loved them, but you will if you were one of the ones like me who went to deactivate them. What you may find is that you might have to go through and just deactivate those again because it seems that it is just showing up as basically effectively a different camera now. So I noticed that as soon as I did the update with that virtual camera, then I just had to go and disable those once again for the new virtual camera. So that is the new Ecam live virtual camera. Not much difference to the effect of it, but just an implementation aspect that now makes it available in more places effectively. So next then let's take a look at the commenting on Instagram live. So if I go over to the settings, you'll see something like this. What we need to do is if you haven't already connected your Instagram account to Ecam and you want to try this out now that commenting is available, then you're going to your Ecam live preferences. Click on the add new destination button just down at the bottom there. And this will give you a pop up where you can select Instagram from the from the list there. And once you do that, you'll see something that looks like this. Now at this stage, you can give it a nickname. You'll also see the server URL. I'll come back to that one in a moment because it has put in one of the sort of default Instagram URLs, but you may need to change that. I'll show you how to check that in a moment. And you'll also see where it says Instagram account there. Now if you click on that box, you'll see a list of all of the accounts that you've got linked essentially to your Facebook account. So it does need to be an Instagram account that's linked through your Facebook business manager. And so here are all the ones that I've got linked to my account just sort of pixelated out, but the take one take one is in there. So I've click on that and then that's how I had this account. But as I say, don't just click the add button right now because we do need to check that server URL. So the way to do that is to over in your Instagram on the desktop, you want to go into your Instagram account, click the little plus icon here. This is where you click on create. And you can either create a post, but we're going to go to live video. So when I click on live video, we have to go through this process first. I'm just going to give this a title of test. Also select the audience and I'm going to click on public. And then I'm going to click next. Don't worry, you won't be going live just yet. I'll talk through that process in a moment and click on next. And this is where it's going to give you your stream URL and also your stream key. Now this stream URL is going to stay the same every time essentially, but the stream key is going to be different every time. So this stream URL, this is the one that we need to copy right now. And then you're going to go back over to the page we were just on over here. And then in that server URL in the little pop up, you're just going to drop in that stream URL from there. Once you do that, then you are good to go. That is now being added as a new destination. So when you then actually want to want to go live on Instagram, you need to do that from within the main window in ECAM and just when you're set to stream and just click on the button to schedule a new stream effectively. And this will pop up this one where you're going to create a new broadcast. Select the Instagram account at the top there. So where you see the little add button if it's not already selected. And you can see that we've now got this new thing here, which is additional platform options. This is something that's changed in this beta as well. It used to be that the stream key and the stream URL that we've just looked at were all in that other section, but now the stream key has moved over to here because it is something that is individual to each stream. So what we would do now is if we were going to go live onto Instagram where it says additional platform options, we would just pop back over to here in the browser. We would grab that stream key from here, go back over here, drop it into the platform options into that take one tech stream key and then you could either schedule it or you could click go live now. And then when you click go live now, that is basically just going to start the stream. Now in actual fact, what's going to happen is it's not going to start the stream. It's going to start the stream into Instagram. So what you'll see is if I come back over to Instagram, if I had just click that go live now, you would see that it is going to start streaming into here. So once you start the stream from Ecamm, it starts streaming to Instagram servers, but in actual fact to initiate the live stream, what you would see is this button up here, go live, that's where we actually start and stop the stream from. So it's just important to note that it's not fully integrated in Ecamm, the way that Instagram have implemented this, it's not all the way there that we can just control everything from Ecamm. So you're going to start the stream from here. This is where you'll also see the main Instagram comments box will be up here as well. But the thing that has been added into this Ecamm beta is as well, you will also see in the regular comments box from Ecamm that you're used to with streaming to any other platform, the comments will also pop into there and so you can then bring them up onto screen and so on. I'll do another full video all about streaming to Instagram in particular, but to just also note that when you want to end the stream, you also end the stream from here and then end the stream in Ecamm as well. So we still have to do it in two places at the moment. But really those are the two new features, the updated virtual camera and the comments coming from Instagram into Ecamm. There is one more new feature technically, apart from all of the other sort of minor improvements and bug fixes and things like that. We can now also anywhere where you used to be able to advance to the next scene. So I'm thinking things like a countdown timer where the countdown ends and you select what you want to happen, go to next scene or when a video finishes go to next scene, that kind of thing. It always used to be that it could only go to an actual scene. Now it can go to one of the automatic groups. So if in your scenes panel you have got a folder, an automatic folder, an automatic group as they call them of scenes, then you can now actually just advance to one of those as well. So that's just another relatively minor, but I'm sure some people will appreciate that too. Another little change there. That's all for the major updates then in this beta. I hope you find it useful and do feel free to drop any comments down below or let me know how you are finding using it as well. I'll leave a link to some of my other Ecamm content over on the right hand side there. Thanks for watching. Thanks also to all of my awesome channel members. I really appreciate all of your support. Have a wonderful day everyone and happy Ecamm-ing.