IP Video Production Fundamentals (Chapter 7)
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- 25 Jul, 2024
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Few video meeting companies have provided the same level of professional broadcast features as Zoom. Zoom has gone above and beyond, through feature releases, new product launches and acquisitions, to cater to the broadcast market. The Zoom Events platform is a prime example of Zoom’s presence in the virtual events space. Zoom’s acquisition of Liminal, the creators of ZoomISO is another. Zoom has become a primary tool for broadcasters working on podcasts, talk shows and other remote guest situations. Therefore, this chapter is dedicated to valuable tools available to broadcasters in the ecosystem.
Here’s are a few key Zoom feature for Remote Production:
- Direct Streaming Integration: Zoom Meetings and Webinars can be directly streamed to YouTube, Facebook, or any custom Content Delivery Network (CDN), facilitating live broadcasts to a wide audience without needing complex setups.
- NDI Output: With Zoom Rooms and Zoom ISO, video sources can be outputted via NDI, allowing seamless integration into larger production workflows. This feature enables professional-quality video and audio sources to be incorporated into more extensive broadcast environments.
- Preparation Tools for Guests: Zoom provides waiting-room functionalities; including “breakout rooms” that are particularly useful for prepping guests before they go into a meeting or webinar that is being live streamed. This feature helps in managing participants and ensuring a smooth transition to live sessions.
- Comprehensive Event Platform: Zoom Events integrates the capabilities of Zoom Meetings and Webinars into a robust virtual event platform. This service simplifies hosting complex events involving multiple sessions and tracks, offering tools for both live and pre-recorded segments.
These features make Zoom an adaptable tool for enhancing broadcast and streaming production, ensuring high-quality outputs and efficient management of live interactions.
Capturing a video from a Zoom meeting can be done in several ways. A screen capture solution with your video production software might be the easiest way, but you have multiple options to choose from depending on your workflow. It’s important to note that in order to gain 1080p video quality, you will need to use a Zoom Professional account and have the 1080p video option enabled.
Those who work with Zoom should be aware of Zoom ISO which can separate each participant’s video feed into its own video output. This is particularly useful for professional video productions and broadcasts, where a director might want to manage individual feeds separately. Additionally, Zoom ISO can output each video feed via NDI to be integrated into any production software that supports NDI.
When you are working with Zoom, you may want to consider sending a “reference” video feed back into Zoom for meeting participants to see your production. You can use the NDI Webcam Input to bring NDI video back into Zoom via a virtual webcam. To take this NDI Zoom capture project one step further, you can see the next diagram includes two different video capture methods in the same Zoom meeting. How is this possible? Using multiple computers, the StreamGeeks will often connect to the same Zoom meeting to display the content in various ways.
During certain live streams, it’s nice to be able to show the active speaker in a larger window. And as a producer, it’s good to have the active speaker in the Zoom meeting available as its own input to appear in a full screen. Here you can see the active speaker is actually shown in a regular screen capture. This means that vMix, or another type of software, is simply capturing a screen that is connected to the computer directly without NDI. While this does take up precious monitor space, the StreamGeeks will often use NDI on a separate computer to capture the active speaker view.
Understanding ZoomISO
ZoomISO is a valuable remote production solution from Zoom made specifically for remote contribution and broadcasting. This macOS-based application enhances Zoom’s capabilities by offering flexible video management and control options.
ZoomISO allows for individual Zoom participants to be exported as isolated video outputs, making it ideal for productions that require separate feeds of each participant. It supports a variety of output formats compatible with mainstream production systems, such as NDI 5, Metal Syphon, SRT, and SDI through Blackmagic Desktop Video. Outputs can be assigned not only to these video technologies but also to multiple display options including Physical Displays and DisplayLink.
The application can export video feeds in HD quality, provided the Zoom Meeting or Webinar supports HD video. Audio feeds can be embedded in the video outputs or managed independently. ZoomISO supports various audio tools including Dante Virtual Soundcard, Loopback, and Black Hole, allowing for flexible audio routing and integration into broader production setups.
The application can be controlled remotely via Open Sound Control (OSC), facilitating complex feed routing. This feature is particularly useful when using devices like a Stream Deck to manage feeds dynamically during live production.
ZoomISO is designed to streamline the production workflow by replacing the need for multiple “pinning machines”—setups where multiple laptops screen scrape individual users into production software like vMix. A single instance of ZoomISO running on a macOS machine can replace several Windows-based pinning setups, offering a more consolidated and flexible approach to vision mixing.
It is recommended to use dedicated hardware for specific tasks to prevent resource conflicts. For instance, having a dedicated macOS computer for ZoomISO to handle decoding, while a separate Windows machine manages encoding and vision mixing tasks ensures efficiency and stability in production workflows. With ZoomISO, production teams can achieve higher flexibility and quality in handling remote contributions, enhancing their capability to produce dynamic and engaging live broadcasts and events.
ZoomISO Lite is capable of exporting up to 4 video feeds. In contrast, ZoomISO Pro features a “high bandwidth mode” that utilizes additional bandwidth from the Zoom Cloud to support more outputs. The capacity of ZoomISO Pro to export additional participant video feeds depends on maintaining system utilization below 80% and ensuring the network WAN link to the Zoom Cloud does not exceed 100mb/s. Each 1080p video feed from Zoom typically requires 4-6 mb/s.
Exceeding the network bandwidth limit could lead to throttled frame rates, while surpassing the system utilization limit might result in Zoom sending a lower resolution video feed to ZoomISO. This could trigger additional scaling processes, potentially increasing CPU usage, and possibly forcing a reduction in resolution to 360p to maintain stable CPU utilization. It’s important to note that not all Zoom meetings support HD; this capability must be enabled by Zoom support and activated in the user interface. Regardless of the input resolution from the Zoom Cloud, ZoomISO always strives to output the specified resolution and frame timings, employing upscaling, downscaling, or frame adjustment as necessary. For detailed benchmarks and further information, users are encouraged to refer to the Liminal website.
Beginning with version 27, Vmix connects with the Zoom API and can bring Zoom participants into Vmix in much the same way that Zoom Iso does; as individual video feeds with individual audio. While not as robust as Zoom Iso, Vmix runs on a Windows PC and doesn’t require an additional computer for Zoom integration.
ZoomOSC
ZoomOSC is an advanced version of the Zoom client designed to enhance the management and control of virtual meetings and events by integrating with third-party software and hardware via the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol. ZoomOSC is now available for both Mac and PC computers. This tool elevates, automates, and streamlines virtual events by enabling OSC to send commands to control various Zoom functions such as pinning, spotlighting, video toggling, and screen sharing. Additionally, ZoomOSC outputs real-time data for meeting status, participant information, gallery positions, and chat messages, which can be utilized to create custom control surfaces for Zoom using OSC-compatible hardware controllers or applications.
ZoomOSC is particularly valuable for broadcasters, theaters, content creators, and anyone involved in producing virtual events and interactive experiences. The software facilitates complex event sequences with features like multi-pinning and spotlighting, allowing users to execute precise participant management and control with simple button presses. This capability enhances the reliability and dynamism of productions, making it possible to manage complicated sequences easily.
The user interface of ZoomOSC is designed to be intuitive and accessible, making it easy for non-programmers to use. Users can adjust application IP and port settings for compatibility and customize their control surfaces to fit into their specific workflow needs. Enhanced output features in ZoomOSC provide detailed feedback about participant actions and meeting dynamics, enabling integrators to drive functions based on real-time data. These features collectively empower users to create sophisticated and highly interactive virtual event environments without the need for extensive programming knowledge.
Tiles
Tiles for Zoom is an innovative macOS application developed by Liminal, designed to transform how Zoom audience galleries are customized and displayed, particularly for hybrid event auditoriums and live streams. This application offers a user-friendly editor interface that allows for the simple composition of Zoom participants onto customizable gallery canvases. These galleries can then be exported to various production protocols, enhancing the integration with professional broadcasting tools.
The core feature of Tiles is its deep customization capabilities. Users can design their Zoom audience galleries with precision, setting any canvas dimension and customizing tile layouts to fit the specific needs of their event. The design features include custom borders, rounded corners, aspect ratios, drop shadows, and transparency effects, all of which can be adjusted to create the perfect look and feel. Additionally, Tiles offers live pre-visualization, allowing users to see and tweak how their galleries will appear with different audience sizes in real time. This feature is complemented by the ability to set rules for animations and layout changes based on the gallery audience dynamics.
Organizing participants is streamlined with Tiles’ robust moderation tools. Users can filter participants to display only those who are necessary, with options to favorite or block participants, sort them by roles or video status, and set rules to exclude non-video participants or other specific user categories. There is also a participant rotation queue feature, which automatically replaces participants displayed in the galleries to ensure everyone in the meeting is featured.
In beta as of this writing, Tiles supports exporting galleries to NDI, facilitating easy connectivity with other hardware or software on the network. The developers plan to support additional production protocols in future updates, which will further enhance its utility in professional settings. Tiles is available through the Zoom App Marketplace, and while the free trial version offers full functionality, it does not allow users to join Zoom Meetings or Webinars. Full functionality, including the ability to join any Zoom Meeting, Webinar, or Event—even those outside the Zoom Events platform or owned by other Zoom accounts—requires a licensed activation. This is available to accounts that are designated as Hub Hosts through the Zoom Events platform, with the number of available Hub Hosts depending on the Zoom Events or Zoom Session license purchased.
Tiles for Zoom promises to be a significant asset for broadcasters, event organizers, and content creators who are looking to elevate, automate, and streamline their virtual events with professionally styled and highly interactive audience galleries. The application is set to be available soon on the Zoom Events platform, and interested users can sign up for the newsletter to be notified when the beta is available for download.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CHAPTER:
- Advanced Broadcast Features: Zoom has established itself as a leader in professional broadcast features compared to other video meeting platforms. This is evident through its continuous updates, product launches, and strategic acquisitions aimed at enhancing its offerings for the broadcast market.
- Zoom Events Platform: As a standout example, Zoom Events showcases Zoom’s commitment to the virtual events space, providing a comprehensive platform for hosting complex, multi-track events with both live and pre-recorded content.
- Acquisition of Liminal: The acquisition of Liminal, the creators of ZoomISO, underscores Zoom’s focus on catering to broadcasters, especially in settings like podcasts and talk shows where high-quality video and audio are crucial.
- The Zoom API: Integrations with Zoom via its Application Programming Interface (API) allows production platforms like Vmix to bring individual participant video and audio to their programs.
- Direct Streaming Integration: This feature allows Zoom Meetings and Webinars to be directly streamed to platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or any custom CDN, facilitating broad distribution without the need for complex setups.
- NDI Output: Available in Zoom Rooms and through Zoom ISO, this feature supports seamless integration of Zoom’s video sources into larger, professional broadcast workflows by outputting video via NDI (Network Device Interface).
- Preparation Tools for Guests: Features like waiting rooms are particularly useful for preparing guests before they enter live-streamed meetings or webinars, ensuring smooth transitions and well-managed participant interactions.
- ZoomISO and ZoomOSC: These tools are tailored for enhanced video management and virtual event control. ZoomISO provides flexible video control on macOS, while ZoomOSC integrates with third-party software and hardware via the OSC protocol, enhancing control over virtual meetings and events.
