Playing Video to Zoom call

[richardash1981]

I have an event on Zoom where the organisers want most of the content to be pre-recorded videos which are then played back for all the people on the call to see and hear. I know it's the wrong platform, but it's a church event with a lot of older users who won't make it to anything else, and also copyright - there are various special licenses available for churches, but no way to tell Facebook or YouTube that you hold one!

 

Anyway, I will have about 15 different video files to play back into the calls (and they will be a mixture of codecs, resolutions etc. But I should have them a few days in advance so could transcode).We did a similar thing a month or so ago, and I:

1. loaded all the videos into PowerPoint (Office 365, Windows),
2. Put the PowerPoint full screen on laptop's internal monitor (1366x768)
3. Ran Zoom on external monitor
4. Shared the internal monitor screen to the Zoom call (following these instructions https://support.zoom...-in-full-screen)
5. Asked everyone to mute whilst videos were playing.

This worked OK, but:

• The video resolution was pretty low, I think 360p widescreen
• Several people commented that the sound quality (on music / singing) wasn't good.
• Not everyone mutes themselves, even when asked.
• It was impossible to do anything in Zoom client whilst video was playing, because as soon as PowerPoint looses focus, video playback stops.

Subsequently I found that Zoom "Mute All" doesn't mute video playback sharing, which helps a bit (but you have to press Mute All before starting playback if you are using PowerPoint!).I have the impression that some videos play back with pretty poor sound quality in PowerPoint without Zoom involved - sounds like it might be doing a really bad job of sample rate conversion. I haven't yet gone back though the file to work out which videos sound poor and what their sample rates are.

 

So does anyone have a recommendation for a better way to do this for 6th December? I can't help thinking that something which uses the "Second camera" screen share option in Zoom (https://support.zoom...r-second-camera) would be a better way to deliver the video, and maybe a proper video player application would give better audio? In practice I found that I stopped sharing screen between each video to allow someone to speak, so transitions between videos are not an issue at all (provided they are reliable!).

 

Platform could be Windows 10 or Linux, hardware is an Intel Core i7 (and it's integrated graphics) but several generations back.

[djw1981]

We are taking 3 cameras and our main church PC (spitting out its normal software stuff - song videos, readings, ppt etc) each onto an ATEM Pro mini as HDMI feeds, then squriting this via USBC into a laptop and telling the laptop to see it as a webcam. We feed audio from church sound desk to the audio in on ATEM. We then spotlight that feed in the call.

 

We did need to disable some Zoom audio features so it doesn't try to EQ the audio.

[pscandrett]

You might have some luck with OBS squirting its output into zoom (potentially as another user) using a virtual webcam/video source. I've not done it, but have been told it's fairly straightforward. It means then that the playback of things (in OBS) is indepdendent of zoom capturing things. You might even be able to get VLC to do this too?

[timsabre]

We are doing OBS played into zoom for church services/meetings in a very similar scenario, works really well. The latest obs has a button "Virtual Camera" which makes the obs output appear as a camera input into zoom.

 

You can set up media playback, your own webcam, ppt etc all as different inputs on obs and just click between them. Playback is perfectly smooth and there's no mucking about with zoom screen sharing.

 

You need to handle the audio separately, install vb-audio loopback software and send the OBS monitor output to that (option in settings -> audio) then you can take vb-audio as the mic input on zoom.

 

Also if playing music into zoom, select "use original sound" at the top left of the zoom screen, this turns off the speech/echo processing. If you can make sure everyone else is muted, this gives good music reproduction over zoom.

 

If you want to PM me I am happy to take you through the setup in detail.

Edited November 13, 2020 by timsabre

[bruce]

 

Also if playing music into zoom, select "use original sound" at the top left of the zoom screen, this turns off the speech/echo processing. If you can make sure everyone else is muted, this gives good music reproduction over zoom.

 

 

That's the key bit for doing audio over Zoom. You may need to enable this option under Audio Settings > Advanced

 

 

Also worth considering the Zoom webinar functionality - costs a bit more, but gives you more control over who is seen and more importantly who can be heard.

[timsabre]

Webinars do have better facilities for this sort of thing, but you can get enough control for a church event just with normal zoom - use spotlight to lock the source you want everyone to see, set "don't allow people to unmute themselves".

 

If all "presenters" are trusted, set them to be co-hosts then they can unmute themselves when needed but normal participants cannot unmute.

[J Pearce]

Worth using 2 machines, one for playing audio/video into the call, and another signed into zoom separately for doing admin functions. Dual screen also helps massively.

[Shez]

vMix works very well with Zoom - you can pipe the main video output straight to it but need to use Virtual audio cable to get the sound in.

[david.elsbury]

If you use the free NDI Tools, you can NDI out of obs studio and use the Virtual Input to bring it into zoom pretending to be a webcam. Both video and audio. Vastly simpler

[timsabre]

vMix works very well with Zoom - you can pipe the main video output straight to it but need to use Virtual audio cable to get the sound in.

 

I think vMix is better than OBS in a lot of ways, but it costs $350. If you have the budget then definitely consider it.

The main problem I have with OBS is that it doesn't handle loss of devices very well - if your webcam gets unplugged then OBS won't see it again when you plug it in, unless you go in and set up the source again, or restart OBS. It also seems to be unable to get the audio monitoring working consistently - nearly every time I have to go into the Advanced audio and toggle the audio from "Output + Monitor" to "Output only" and back again to make it work,

 

For a free piece of software it is pretty amazing stuff though.

 

 

David, do you find the NDI runs in sync? I have tried it a few times and the audio and video always seem to go out of sync after a while (OBS/Zoom on the same machine). Couldn't work it out and went back to Virtual Camera.

Edited November 13, 2020 by timsabre

[richardash1981]

Firstly, thanks for all the help and advice, much appreciated.

 

Looking at the settings dialogue for Audio:

I have unticked "Automatically adjust microphone volume" and changed "Suppress background noise" to "Low".

 

Then if I click "Advanced" there is another screen:

OK, that revealed the "Enable Original Sound" control. This looks promising, I have ticked "Disable echo cancellation" and "High fidelity music mode" boxes. I think stereo is probably a bridge too far for most of the target audience and source material.

I have a planning call on Tuesday so will see if I can manage to use the "Enable Original Sound" control there, and see how it sounds to the other end of the call.

 

Worth using 2 machines, one for playing audio/video into the call, and another signed into zoom separately for doing admin functions. Dual screen also helps massively.

 

"signed into zoom separately" meaning a different (free) user account with a different email? I seem to remember when I tried to sign in on a second computer I got disconnected from the first ...

[J Pearce]

Yeah, you’ll need a second user account. Only the user that creates the meeting needs a paid account.

[timsabre]

I don't think you need to have a second account or a second computer. A single computer with 2 monitors works fine for us and we're doing something very similar.

 

If you do have a 2nd computer you don't need a second zoom account, just join the meeting you setup on the first one and make your av playback machine a co-host and your admin machine the hoat.

[Junior8]

I was wondering about this Zoom business but after the first online meeting I was left mystified as to why we've been leaving home at all for this sort of thing for the last few years. Plus the same agenda was got though in about a third of the time. Edited November 15, 2020 by Junior8

[sunray]

I was wondering about this Zoom business but after the first online meeting I was left mystified as to why we've been leaving home at all for this sort of thing for the last few years. Plus the same agenda was got though in about a third of the time.

One of the groups I'm involved with has regular monthly meetings and started adding Zoom for those unable to attend. It didn't take long to realise we had more atendees on Zoom than in the real room, especially in the winter.