PTZ-IP Camera and Bridging Setup

One of the most important components of a modern conference room

is the ability to run a video conference call.

There are a lot of excellent video conferencing software platforms out there:

WebEx, GoToMeeting, Skype etc.

But they all suffer from one simple problem: your computer’s webcam.

This little guy just can’t provide the high quality features you need for a professional video call.

Historically, this leads system integrators to use a higher-quality camera, and feed its video to your laptop or PC.

There are many USB cameras available, but these have their own inherent difficulties.

USB isn’t designed for long cable runs,

so you need to implement USB extenders which are extensive and can’t be field-terminated.

Integrating multiple USB cameras require additional pieces like USB hubs and USB switches,

and it starts to feel needlessly complicated.

Another alternative is to use HDMI cameras, which bring their own pain points.

HDMI is also impossible to field-terminate,

and the room now requires an HDMI video matrix which will require a control system as well.

Not to mention that you’re running HDMI, and control, and power - and all of this can be made much easier.

Meet the Q-SYS camera – this is my new friend, PTZ20-60, how’s it going?

The camera is a native Q-SYS peripheral

Which means its control is built into the Q-SYS Designer software,

And you can place all its control buttons on the same touchscreen device you’re already using to manage the audio in this room.

Plus it’s a PoE device, meaning it’s powered by a single Cat5 cable –

that means your installer is only running a single cable in the room from the camera to the network switch.

That one cable sends the video, control and power, and then Q-SYS manages the switching between multiple cameras.

This allows for any number of cameras in the room to be delivered to any number of laptops and PCs.

And how good is the quality of the camera? Well, we’re filming with it right now.

Let’s take a look in the mirror.

The Camera can stream up to full HD 1920x1080, up to 30 frames per second on the network.

It also has an HDMI and SDI output on the back of the device that can produce up to 60 frames per second,

which can be simultaneously used to feed video into hard-codec VTC appliances,

allowing the same camera to be used for both soft and hard-codec systems.

So now let’s take a look at how you can build all this inside the Designer software.

The Q-SYS cameras are located in the Inventory section of Designer version 5.4 and higher.

You’ll see that there are two models – the 20x60 and the 12x72, that offer different zoom depths and fields of view.

Once you add one to your inventory, you can drag its Status/Control component into the Schematic.

You’ll see a new pin on this component – a video camera-shaped pin!

Like other pins, this can only be wired to another pin of the same shape.

There’s also a new branch of components in the Schematic Elements called Video Components.

In here you’ll find a Camera Router, which you could use to switch between multiple Q-SYS camera video feeds.

I’ll wire the two cameras in my design to this Router.

You’ll even notice the wire is a different size and color so that you won’t mistake this for an audio connection.

I’m going to save this design to the Core and Run, so that I can actually connect to the camera.

If you open the camera’s control panel, you’ll see all the controls you need to aim and focus the camera.

Full Pan, Tilt, and Zoom controls are here, as well as speed control for these features.

By default, the cameras operate in auto AAA mode – auto-focus, auto-exposure, auto-white balance –

to simplify operation in any lighting environment.

At the bottom of this control panel you’ll see a Preview window

which gives you a JPEG image of what the camera is currently looking at.

This preview window is refreshed once a second –

so while it isn’t a fluid live stream, it’s more than enough for a user to frame up a good shot.

So this brings me to an important point – the video stream itself is not actually entering Q-SYS –

Q-SYS only manages the control of the camera.

The video stream itself is routed to a USB bridge, which is then connected to your PC or laptop via standard USB cable.

So where can you find this USB bridge? Well one of them is available on the Q-SYS Core110f.

If you go to your Core’s properties, you can enable a USB Video bridge.

This will create a new component in your Inventory that you can add to your schematic.

This Bridge only has an input video pin,

because the output leaves the Core and is delivered to your PC via any standard USB cable.

Your PC will detect this as a USB webcam, which will be automatically used by most teleconferencing softwares.

The Core’s USB Bridge is great if you’re using a PC in the room that is in the same rack as the Core,

but often times meeting participants will bring their own laptop to the table and want to connect there.

So in that case you would use an IO USB Bridge,

This is a discrete peripheral device that can be placed underneath the desk or in any other convenient location.

This device is also powered by a single CAT5 cable,

and is designed to bring the USB port from Q-SYS as close to the user as possible.

In the software you can add this IO Bridge from the Inventory panel, under Peripherals.

Add an IO USB Bridge to your design, and let’s take a look at its properties.

Just like the Core, we can enable a video bridge, drag that bridge into our design, and wire our cameras to it.

If you have multiple outputs like we do now, we could send the same camera stream to each one,

or they could each get their own choice of inputs.

Again, as far as your video conferencing software is concerned,

it’s only getting a single webcam connection from the USB bridge,

even though Q-SYS can route as many different input sources as you want to this bridge.

All of the routing and control is managed within Q-SYS, and your laptop is never the wiser.

And don’t forget to use that USB Audio Bridge as well!

All of the audio in your conference room,

including all the processing and echo cancellation you’re providing for your conference room’s microphones,

can all be sent to the USB Audio Bridge and delivered to your laptop as well –

at the exact same time and on the exact same cable as the USB cable you’re already using for video.

This single connection gives your laptop access to the high-quality video stream as a default webcam

and the audio as a default speakerphone, which means a user only needs to plug this single cable in

and their teleconference software will automatically use all the features of your Q-SYS conference room.

A few final things we glossed over that I want to point out.

If you open the Video Bridge control panel, you’ll see it looks just like the Camera’s control panel.

Rather than control each camera’s original source,

these controls actually look backwards through the Camera Router

and will make adjustments to whichever camera is currently active.

That means you could place just these controls onto the UCI,

rather than require a different set of Pan/Tilt/Zoom controls for each camera.

Also, be aware that there are a couple other tabs in this control panel.

The Camera Imaging tab gives you access to more complicated image control such as exposure,

white balance, backlight compensation, and video formats.

The Status tab gives you basic connection feedback and other information.

The camera provides two streams of different qualities, as different video conferencing softwares have different requirements.

You might also choose to go to the Camera’s Properties and change its IP Streaming property to “Multicast,”

which will allow other applications such as VLC or QuickTime to pick up your video feed, albeit with a bit of a latency buffer.

To do this, go to the Camera’s control panel and find its “Streaming URL.”

This is what you’ll use for those other programs to receive the stream.

Finally, there are some additional controls in the Administrator under the Cameras tab.

You can change the solution of the IP streams here,

as well as upload custom images for the Camera’s offline screen and privacy screen.

The privacy screen is displayed when you engage the Privacy mode in the control panel,

This effectively turns off the live camera feed,

and also tells the camera to turn around and stare at the wall so that the local participants don’t think they’re still on camera.

So that was a quick overview of the Q-SYS Camera. Did you have a good time PTZ20x60.

Good, that’s what I thought. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.