Dual Quadcams? Cisco Webex Room Kit Plus

[tyronerg]

Hi there,

Has anyone ever connected two cisco quadcams to a single Webex Room Kit Plus?  

We have a wide, but shallow space where the 80 degree FoV of the Quadcam is not wide enough to capture the entire audience.

The client has suggested using two Quadcams...

Thoughts?

[RICHARD MESSINGER]

I do not think this will work.  The Quad Cam need 2 HDMI connections and the Plus only has 2 input ports for video.

The Room Kit Pro might work but I am not sure that it would have things set to be able to switch cameras "intelligently" as Speaker track/presenter track are able to do.

[tyronerg]

The Webex Room Kit Plus combined with the Quad Camera uses a single HDMI connection as per the camera guide below:

Page 14, Cisco Camera Guide (D15296.08 Cisco Quad Camera, Precision 60, SpeakerTrack 60, and PTZ-12 Camera MARCH 2019)

The Webex Room Kit Plus admin guide states that the device can support up to two cameras - but doesn't state whether it could be another Quad Camera.

My assumption is that it's not going to work, but I need something more definitive in order to go back to the client.

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

No codec, including the Pro, supports more than a single Quad Cam Areay or SpeakerTrack 60. I’m afraid you will need to either pick a zone for coverage or use a Precision 60 camera from the corner to get an overview shot.

The only way to get multiple SpeakerTrack cameras is to have a second codec, configure one of the outputs to be the camera self view, connect that output to the input of the other/primary codec, and use a DSP along with an A/V controller to switch camera input selection on the primary codec based on which side of the room is talking. This is fairly common in divisible rooms but would be quite the hardware investment for a single static room.

[Mike_Brezicky]

If you consider disabling speakertrack, dual quad cameras work just fine.

I have my training room setup with a codec plus and it has 3 cameras connected.  2 quad cameras and a P60.  With speaker track disabled, I am utilizing the video layout and Matrix commands to "stitch" the two quad cameras into a single image for a panoramic video layout, and the P60 is pointed at the front of the room with Presenter Track enabled.  If I did not have the P60, I would just leave the cameras as source 1 and 2.

However to get the audio to work on both, you would want to utilize the Line Out and a basic RCA cable to the Line In on the second quad camera.

Of course as I mention, this only works if you are ok with turning speaker track off on the quad cameras and accepting a single still image of the full room.

[jcuadros]

Hello, do you know if by connecting two quad cams can i have speaker track enabled on one single quad cam?

thanks

[Mike_Brezicky]

Speaker track does not work when I have both quad cameras active. Well it does, but it breaks the Matrix layout and stops sending the dual image. For that I have it disabled when both are in use together.

[brian.r.huizenga]

I have been working with a Cisco engineer on a project whereby two Quad cameras are to be used in a single room with full tracking capabilities. However, it requires a secondary (slave) Room Kit Pro, in addition to the primary Room Kit Pro. Each Quad camera is controlled by its own Codec, and it also requires multiple microphones to allow the Primary codec to switch to its own internal feed, or the secondary Codec feed. This is accomplished using a third party Java script which is loaded to the primary codec. I would advise contacting your Cisco Engineering rep to determine if this could work for your specific situation though.

[JohnnyMLloyd]

Thanks for the answer Brian. Can you let us know how the second "slave" codec is connected to the system?

Johnny

[robertb]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for this info. Can you share your procedure in achieving this? Are you doing this via XAPI and Macros?

[JohnnyMLloyd]

Thanks for the answer! Can you clarify the connections here? Is it HDMI out from the secondary codec to the HDMI input of the primary codec? Is the secondary codec still connected to room control, for example if there is a third part processor, or does it function only to process the SpeakerTrack of the second Quadcam. 

[Enrico Conedera]

Hello everyone - in my role as a Technical Marketing Engineer within the CTG Business Unit at Cisco, I have designed and implemented literally dozens of conference rooms, for internal Cisco as well as customers, using two Quad Cameras.  It is true that we cannot daisy-chain them.  Instead, a Codec Pro is the Primary Codec, and a Codec Plus is used only to host the second Quad Camera.  (If you attach two Quad Cameras to one codec, tracking will not work correctly because the codec does not know what to do with the second Quad Camera.  It is pretty much a useless scenario and definitely not supported by Cisco, and not advised either.)

For a dual-Quad Camera design, using two codecs, Gerardo Chaves and I have just completed a macro that can be used to automatically switch between the Quad Cameras - in other words, automatic SpeakerTrack across both - and this macro is available for download now.
https://github.com/gve-sw/GVE_DevNet_WebexDevicesExecutiveRoomQuadCamSwitcherMacro

[videoalchemy]

hello Enrico and/or anybody in the know,

with the availability of the EQ codec since your post 3 summers ago, would your macro still work if we use a combination of the EQ and the Codec Plus, rather than the Codec Pro and Codec Plus combo you tested/verified?

Thanks much in advance!