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How to use multiple cameras with Meet or Zoom

In the public school space, most teachers and students are using Google meet or Zoom. In this video, I want to show you that you can actually do a Multicam experience, meaning connecting multiple cameras to your computer for Google Meet and Zoom calls. This would enable you to have yourself on the screen then quickly, and easily, switch to a document camera without having to change computers.

Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

Hi everybody. My name is Scott Wyden. Kivowitz, I’m a professional photographer and educator, and I created a classical classical.com. So I can educate both the educators and the students and the public speakers about how to better utilize this virtual education technology.

Now in the public school space, most teachers and students are using Google meet or zoom. Of course, there are other platforms out there, but that is the most common that you will find that either your, your child teachers will be utilizing because that’s what the school requires or that something else that just for whatever reason, most people are flocking to Google meet or to zoom. Now, in this video, I want to show you that you can actually do a multicam experience, meaning if you were teaching something and you need to have a good view of yourself and then maybe a view of your classroom, and then maybe an overhead view of like a document camera or something like that. So you need something overhead. You can do this with making it easy so that all you have to do is have one user logged in into your account to your Google meet or your zoom instead of having your computer logged in your desktop and then your, your, your laptop, and then your tablet, all different things logged in at once.

You could literally do it where it is just one. And you use what’s called multicam. Meaning you plug all these cameras into your computer, using either a hub. If you need it, or just all the USB ports that you have in your machine as is, and that is what you switch you switch, which camera is using. And the benefit of this is you can have one setup, very simple, and you can switch it on the fly when you need it. You can have a good microphone. If you need to, you could actually turn the microphone. If you’re going to be in a different part of the room, whatever it is. In fact, you could even do this with audio. If you want a second, Mike, you can get a USB microphone and you can switch the audio you want, which also show you in a minute.

So, first thing you can see I’m in Google. Meet what I’m about to show you works the same for doing zoom. It’s just the location of where you change the video settings or the audio settings is in a different spot on Google meet than it is on zoom. But the principle is the same. So here I am in Google meet and I’ve got a live presentation open I’m chatting. You would see the great of everybody. If you’re in zoom or Google meet. Now, if I want to switch right now, I’m using a Nikon Z six. This is a professional digital camera that I’m actually using as a webcam. If I wanted to switch to, let’s say a built in webcam. So on my iMac, I have an most Mac books and Chromebooks. They all have these web cam is built into the computers. So if I want to switch, I just go to more options settings and then go to the video settings.

And I was switched from the Nikon camera to the builtin FaceTime camera. And now you can see low quality, different angle. It’s a different camera and all, I didn’t have to switch what computer I was using. I just literally switched the camera in use. And you can see if I was to click this, that there’s a bunch of different cameras. There’s some I don’t use on a regular basis. And I experiment with and beta testing. And then of course, there’s the ones that I do use. Now, let’s say you want a document camera. You can use something like a, an external webcam that right now, right now I have an external webcam. I’m looking up at that right now. And it’s literally just sitting on top of a screen. But if I wanted to don’t mind the mess on my desk, I’ve got cables and devices all over the place to show you this.

You can see that I’ve got that. And my microphone is over here, but I can bring it into screen a little bit to get it closer to me to talk better, but I could actually Mount this to something if I wanted to and have it used as a document camera, which would be really nice if you were trying to demonstrate that. But if we go back to the settings and we go to video again, I’m going to show you one more. I have the camera that’s meant for live streaming, but I can actually use that as a webcam. It is very wide. Let’s move that microphone out of the way. And you can see that I’ve got that as a webcam as well. I have it just sitting on a desk right on my desk right now. Again, don’t mind the mess. No dusty too, but there you go.

I just switched one, two, three, four, four different webcams, and I didn’t have to switch computers or anything it’s just done. Now, if you wanted to, you could actually do this with audio as well. You just go to the audio setting and you have your microphone right here, and I could easily switch which microphone is being used. And as you can see, I’ve got a bunch more options because of various software, uh, being, being tested and utilized. But I’ve got a bunch of options, including my webcam. My external webcam can be audio as well as my live streaming camera, which is currently being used as a webcam can also be used as a microphone. But I prefer the microphone that you see right here. This is the blue Yeti microphone. It’s actually a professional USB microphone, which sounds really nice as you can hear, uh, and I can Mount it on a table or I can have it on a boom arm like this.

If you’re teaching in a school space, of course, you probably wouldn’t have this in a boom arm, but you can use the stand that it comes in and just turn the microphone. And then you have it on wherever you, wherever you need in the room. You could, uh, aim that microphone too and have good audio. So for anybody who is in the education space in, you need a multicam setup, this is a very easy thing to do. All you need is a couple of webcams and you don’t need anything too expensive. You don’t have to do what I have. I do live streaming and webinars and photography and video creation professionally. So I need the higher quality things. You as an educator, do not need the super high quality things. Find a webcam that’s on sale and just utilize that. If it can be mounted on a tripod, it means you can Mount it pretty much anywhere you need, and you can have a multicam experience. I hope you find that helpful. And if you’d like to find more content or you want to contribute content yourself, classical.co, see you there.

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