SELECT THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY FOR YOUR MEETING SPACE
Video Conferencing Camera Options
There are a variety of video conferencing camera options to choose from, and selecting the right technology is key to ensuring the best experience for all participants, no matter where they are located. To help you make an informed decision, we've provided an overview of the main camera technologies, along with their features, benefits, and potential drawbacks, so you can choose the best option for your unique use case and meeting space.
Group Framing Cameras
In small spaces, the most common type of camera is the group framing camera. Group framing cameras are cost effective and typically small enough to sit on top of the display like a standard webcam.
These camera frame all people in the room and remove the unused space in the camera shot so the people take up as much of the frame as possible. This provides people in the room better meeting equality in a video call. However, this camera works best for rooms set up for 4 people or less, if there are more than 4 people in the room, participants become too small to have an equal share of the screen, and another camera option would be more appropriate.
Active Speaker Tracking Cameras
Active Speaker Tracking cameras automatically identify and frame the person speaking, giving remote participants in a meeting a close shot of the person talking. These cameras come in two basic types, Digital Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) or Analog PTZ, and are ideal for rooms with between 4 and 12 people.
Analog PTZ cameras have a moving camera head and optical zoom that allow people sitting in the back of the room to look just as good as those in the front. However, you can see the camera motion as it moves from person to person, which can be distracting. Digital PTZ cameras crop the image to make the speaker fill the screen, and their lenses do not move. While cropping may degrade the quality of the image, it also means that it can cut to other participants without movement or without adding a second camera.
Center of Table Cameras
Often in meetings, people in the room talk across the table to one another, which can look awkward for remote participants, since they are not facing the front-of-room camera. Center of Table cameras work in conjunction with the front-of-room camera to dynamically decide which camera to use based on where the active speaker is facing. These cameras work best in smaller rooms with less than 8 people and can help improve audio quality since they also have built-in microphones, but do have an aesthetic and space requirement that may be limiting.
Smart Gallery Cameras
Smart gallery cameras create a composite image of each participant framed independently. (These frames will automatically change as the participants change) There is a special type of Smart Gallery camera called a Multi-stream camera, that works in conjunction with a UC provider like Teams or Zoom to send a stream of video for each participant and allowing the cloud service to further process which unlocks potential features such as individually naming participants in the room. Most Multi-Stream cameras do not support more than 8 people in a room and work best in a room where everyone is facing the camera in one-sided table layout.
Presenter Tracking Cameras
If you have a dedicated presenter space, like a classroom or auditorium, then a Presenter Tracking camera is an excellent option. These cameras come with a tracking zone, which is a fixed area in the camera’s field of view used to identify and follow movement. If you walk through the tracking zone, the camera will follow you. These cameras have exclusion zones which are fixed areas the cameras do not track so movement from the display our audience does not trigger the camera.
Presenter Tracking cameras can operate over much larger distances than typical conferencing cameras, over 50 feet, so they can be installed in the back of a room behind the audience.
Automatic Camera Preset Recall
Automatic Camera Preset Recall (ACPR) represents some of the most sophisticated and customizable camera solutions available. These systems require significant up front planning because they can scale to support many cameras from various angles for different use cases such as conference rooms, auditoriums, courtrooms, and more, all completely autonomously. This type of system is different from other camera solutions because the camera works in conjunction with a custom audio solution, it is the microphone system that identifies who is talking and communicates it to the camera system by recalling camera presets. These systems can also blend other camera technologies into one platform, from group framing to speaker tracking, to presenter tracing via AI driven software to further enhance the experience.
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Reach out to Cenero for a free demo of any of these camera types.
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