Camera Switching (btw built-in Quad & SpeakerTrack 60 cams) On 70D G2?

[J Haga]

I have a Room 70 Dual G2 on one of my sites, to which we have added a SpeakerTrack 60 camera array.

2/3 of our users just want to seat themselves at a couple rows of tables that face the end point and interact with remote participants. easy, works fine. (Use case 1).

1/4 of our users want to have someone standing at a podium that faces the tables and address in-room participants as well as remote participants, and for the cameras to switch between the "audience" seated at the tables and the "presenter" at the podium (I imagine using either SpeakerTrack or PresenterTrack functionalities?) (Use case 2--and why we procured the SpeakerTrack 60).

The other 1/9th of our users want to arrange the tables in the room so people are facing one another (presumably on axes covered by the "front of room" built in quad and the "back of room" SpeakerTrack 60) (Use case 3).

My dilemma: When the SpeakerTrack 60 is connected, it makes itself the primary camera, meaning the the most common "Use Case 1" users are shown from behind. The built in quad camera is manually accessible/manually controllable via Touch, but my users have no interest in switching cameras manually (however, they WILL expect a member of my staff to switch cameras for them lol).

My question (thanks for reading this far!): Is there a combination of Speakertrack/PresenterTrack and Classroom/Briefing Room/Presenter and Audience configurations will allow me to support Use Cases 1 & 2 with a minimum of manual intervention (or no more manual intervention than I can put on a 1-page user guide?) Is Use Case 3 a silly dream?

Digging around, seems like this needs a macro, which I'm open to if no other choice.

Admin console says all these cameras are properly connected and functioning normally. Cam 1 (the built-in quad) displays a green LED, Cams 2 & 3 show green also. Camera Numbers correspond to Connector Numbers (Presentation is going to Connector 4).

Last dumb question (for now). In "Status/Cameras/SpeakerTrack", "ActiveConnector" shows as #3 (the rear-mounted Precision 60 in the SpeakerTrack 60 array)--which makes seeing everyone from behind make total sense:

SpeakerTrack Connector 3 

Does anyone know how to change this in "Configurations" or is this another Macro task?

Thanks in advance  for any insight you can share!

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

Cisco has a limit of a single SpeakerTrack-capable camera (i.e. Quad Camera or SpeakerTrack 60) per-codec. You can connect additional cameras up to the input limits of the endpoint so long as they don't support SpeakerTrack (e.g. PTZ4K, Precision 60, and/or 3rd-party). You can also have a single SpeakerTrack and PresenterTrack (PTZ4K or P60) on the same endpoint. Supporting multiple SpeakerTrack cameras in the same room requires additional codecs, one per additional camera, which are configured to output a full screen self view input to the "primary" codec.

Ok, so back to your use cases:

1. The Room 70 G2 handles this by itself.
2. Options, either of which can use Presenter and Audience, the successor of Briefing Room and Classroom.
   1. Pluck one of the P60 cameras out of that ST60, mount it where appropriate to cover the lectern, and configure PresenterTrack to automatically select the presenter standing at the lectern.
   2. Connect the ST60 to a spare Room Kit Plus (or any model that supports it) and then connect the output of the secondary codec configured for full screen self view to an available input of your Room 70 G2. The Room 70 G2 would see a second camera (which it cannot natively control BTW, it's just an HDMI input in this setup) and can switch to or even composite that camera alongside the Room 70 G2 built-in Quad Camera as needed. The example macros in gve_devnet_Webex_devices_executive_room_multi_aux_switching_macro and/or gve_devnet_webex_device_audio_activated_video_source_composition_macro may help if you go this route. Reminder that macros, even those authored by Cisco employees, are not supported by TAC.
3. Options, admittedly without understanding the exact room layout.
   1. This sounds like Cinematic Meetings Cross View (demo video, Cross View at 0:25) - which is supported on the Room Kit Pro within the Room 70 G2 but I have not seen a Cisco document that explicitly states the latter form factor is supported. You may want to run this by your Cisco account team but you'd need different supplemental cameras and the new Cisco Ceiling/Table Microphone Pros to do it. (Yes, this is a new exception to the "single SpeakerTrack camera per codec" rule.)
   2. Take both P60s out of the ST60 and mount them to cover the opposite "side", ideally in an arrangement where one of them can also cover the lectern; however, this would force you to toggle PresenterTrack off during this use case. Alternatively, you use the primary/supplemental codec approach here to support additional Quad Cameras for each side; users tend to dislike physical PTZ movement these days. Either composite the cameras together (example macro video-matrix-macro may help) or use microphones to detect where the active speaker is and switch to that camera. Microphone-based speaker location detection can sometimes be done with Cisco mics and the macro examples I provided above. Otherwise, the traditional approach was with 3rd-party mics, a DSP, and control processor. The mics/DSP identify where the speaker is while the control processor triggers an appropriate camera & PTZ preset on the Cisco endpoint. This option usually cannot support rooms with movable furniture though.

[J Haga]

Thanks for this detailed reply, it was incredibly helpful. You say, "Cisco has a limit of a single SpeakerTrack-capable camera (i.e. Quad Camera or SpeakerTrack 60) per-codec." Is this published anywhere? I'm not disputing this (makes total sense, given how UNWILLING they  are to work together), I'm just wondering if literally everything else I need to know about the challenges I've been having is near this golden morsel of wisdom lol.

Thanks so much for the leads on the macros, I will dig in to those.

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

My first guess was the Admin Guide but it wasn't there. It's buried in the Camera Guide on the "Connecting multiple cameras to <codec model>" pages.

Only one camera with speaker track functionality can be connected at a time. Cameras with speaker track functionality are the Quad Camera and SpeakerTrack 60.

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