- You might've seen a new trend
pop into the podcasting and livestreaming scene
that involves cameras switching
what looks like automatically.
But if you're a one-person production crew without a team,
how do you do that on your own?
There is an easy way in Ecamm Live to make it look
like your cameras are switching automatically,
and it's almost like magic,
so I guess you could call it "automagically."
(lo-fi beats to subscribe to)
So if you want to switch between different scenes
at different intervals, this is the way to do it,
and this is not a smart switching situation,
where it automatically knows, when somebody is talking,
to switch to that camera.
I don't know how to do that.
That would be cool, though.
This is kind of a dumb switching situation,
but you can set it up so that it actually ends up
looking pretty darn good!
And it all has to do with just using Scenes in Ecamm Live.
So for example, this is my Ecamm Live right here,
and I have all my Scenes...
It's a mess. Please don't judge me about that.
And the first thing that you need to do
is create a new folder.
So if you create a folder in your Scenes window,
we're just gonna call this one Switching,
since that's what we're doing today,
but I might change my mind later,
I might switch the name later, you know?
And in this folder is where I'm gonna put all of my Scenes.
So I'll create a new Scene,
and this will be Camera 1,
and then I'll create another new Scene,
and we'll call this one Camera 2.
Now, right now I've only got one camera
connected to my computer, so this Scene here,
when it plays, is this main shot that you're looking at,
and when I switch to Camera 2, it's the same thing.
Now, one thing I like to do is make
different angles with the same camera shot,
'cause it's a cool little trick.
So right here, Camera 1 is my main wide shot.
Camera 2 is the same thing, but in this case,
I'm gonna zoom and pan.
We'll zoom in a little bit, we'll crop it up,
so that way it's more of a punched-in, close-up shot of me.
And now when I go between Camera 1, which is wide,
and Camera 2, which is close-up,
it almost looks like two different angles,
even though I just have one camera.
Now, of course you can assign hotkeys.
You can click the little button right here
and then type whatever command you want
to switch between those.
You could assign these angles
to something like a Stream Deck.
But if you wanna take it one step further,
where you don't have to be thinking
about switching your angles while you're also streaming
or talking to someone and everything just goes too crazy,
then all you need to do is add a countdown timer
to each of these Scenes, so I'm gonna go here,
and I'm going to go to the Overlays window.
Move that over here, we'll move it over here. (chuckles)
And I'm gonna add a countdown timer,
and now you can decide how long you want
that angle to be up for.
For the sake of this video, I'm only gonna do five seconds,
just to keep it short.
And then we just have
Go To Next Scene When Finished checked.
We don't want a background.
And now we've got a countdown timer here.
And we go to the next shot
and we're gonna add a countdown timer there, boop!
This one, we'll do for three seconds.
And so now we've got these countdown timers,
and when I play, you'll see, it switches,
and then it automatically goes here
for a few more seconds and then it goes back,
and it's just gonna keep going back and forth
between these two Scenes because they're in a folder.
Whenever you have a folder in Ecamm Live
that's full of Scenes and you have countdown timers,
when it gets to the last Scene,
it just goes back to the top of the folder,
and it just loops within that folder.
So anything you have in there, that's what your timers...
As long as each one has its own timer,
that's what it will go between.
Now, of course, you don't wanna see this timer up on screen,
so you can click the little edit pencil
and go over here to where it lets you select colors.
And then in the Color window,
you just lower the opacity to zero,
and that's gonna make your timer invisible,
which is a little tricky because you do then have
this invisible thing that's just sort of floating
all around the screen.
So now we've got our two Scenes
where the countdown timers are invisible
and it will just automatically switch
between them the whole time, and that works.
Now, what we don't want is for things to look too robotic
by just being the same intervals over and over again.
So I can go to Camera 2 and click Duplicate,
and then go to Camera 1 and click Duplicate.
And these ones, even though they're the same Scene,
I'm going to edit the countdown timers.
So maybe this one will be 7 seconds,
this one could be 10 seconds.
So now what I've done is I've got four Scenes
and each one has a different interval countdown timer,
so they're going back and forth
and changing at different times.
And that way, you can keep doing that
over and over and over again and just changing the timings.
So even though you're going between the same shots
or the same Scenes,
the intervals of time will be different
and it can feel a little more organic
and a little more random.
Now, again, this doesn't have to just be camera angles.
This can be anything that you want in a Scene,
and you have a lot of flexibility and a lot of room
for creativity with it.
Now this is an example of a thing
you wouldn't wanna do here is have it flashing
all over the place 'cause that would be distracting.
Up here, I have my podcast camera,
so the way I have my Ecamm set up is,
when I do a video version of my podcast,
I can push a button that starts the intro,
and then it's going to play the intro to my podcast here,
and then when that is done,
it does not automatically advance,
because maybe I'm gonna mess up and I'm not gonna be ready,
but when I'm ready to advance,
I have a button on my Stream Deck that goes
to Camera 1 in this folder.
And now I've got a timer somewhere here, there it is,
and this timer is for a minute and 30 seconds,
so it'll stay on my main shot for a minute and 30 seconds,
and then it'll go to a second shot,
which we'll talk about in a second,
but the second shot is 20 seconds,
and then a duplicate of the first shot is two minutes,
and a duplicate of the second shot is 20 seconds.
So now I'm working with longer times like a minute
and a minute and a half.
It's not distracting and annoying for the viewer,
but it's keeping their visual interest
and their visual engagement,
and I don't have to worry about it while I'm podcasting
and while I'm talking.
The cameras are all switching on their own.
Sometimes I'll notice they're switching
and I will look and talk at the other camera when it's time,
but other times I won't and I just sort of have
this shot where it's from the side,
and just you see me kinda doing my thing.
I think both look good.
And then when I'm ready to end the podcast,
I have my outro here,
and I also just have a button on my Stream Deck,
so I just push Outro,
it plays the outro and then when it's done,
it just stops the recording automatically.
Because the way I have this set up is it is a video clip
that's playing as my outro and I have it set right here,
to when it's done, to end the broadcast.
And if you're not actually streaming,
"end the broadcast" just means end the recording.
Now, I know this isn't as slick as having the cameras
automatically switch when someone's talking,
but it can really help and really automate things,
again, if you're a one-person crew like me.
But we can take it a step further.
When I was in the folder for my podcasts,
there's multiple cameras,
but I only have one input right now.
Fortunately, I have two capture cards.
This is the basic ATEM Mini,
and then I also have the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO,
so I have the lowest-end version
and the highest-end version, for some reason.
And this can work with any capture cards.
You can use Cam Links, you can use ATEMs,
you can use whatever you have.
I have these two ATEMs, which I love,
so I'm gonna use these as my two capture cards,
and now I've connected them separately to my computer.
Now, if I connect my B camera to my B switcher,
you will be able to see that through USB-C,
I now have two capture cards connected,
which now, in Ecamm Live,
means that Camera 1 is my main camera,
and Camera 2, since I've set the source as this ATEM,
is now this camera over here.
And so as it's switching between them,
it's gonna switch between the two entirely separate cameras
because they're coming into Ecamm as separate sources.
Now you could do this with something like NDI,
you could do a USB webcam,
you could use multiple capture cards.
The crazier part about the AETMs is,
since the basic one has 4 inputs and the Extreme has 8,
between that I have 12 inputs.
So in theory, I could have 4 things connected here,
8 things connected here.
I could switch between those sources
as Ecamm is automatically switching,
or I could take it a step further
and go into the ATEM software and set up macros,
so these are switching at intervals the same way here,
and that's just really too complicated,
so it's just two cameras.
This is all just a two-camera setup,
because that is too complicated otherwise.
And this is just one of those little tricks that Ecamm has,
that makes your entire workflow, your streams,
your recording, whatever,
a lot simpler and a lot smoother.
This is not a sponsored video or anything.
I'm just quite a fan of Ecamm Live, and of course,
the community that's also connected with Ecamm Live,
which is absolutely incredible.
But this has really been a game-changer to me,
especially when paired with the Stream Deck,
because now everything is just at the touch of a button.
Once I set up my switching Scenes in Ecamm,
I never have to touch those again.
So I did that once like a month ago
and I haven't touched 'em since.
And then once I have the ATEMs set up,
I don't have to touch those again while I'm recording
and everything's just here on the Stream Deck,
so when it's time to do my podcast or even a livestream,
I can press the Intro.
It will play the intro on its own.
When I'm ready, I can just press one button
to start the Scene and it will automatically
go through those because they all have countdown timers.
And when I'm done, I just press the Outro.
And of course, if you want to take
manual control over things at any time,
you can always just manually select whatever Scene you want,
you can go back to however you want it to go,
and then you can just jump right back into your folder
at any time and the countdown timers
will pick up right where you left off.
So it's a really simple, really fun trick
that can be super effective.
Somebody who does this really excellently is Peter Gregg.
He's kind of where I learned the basics of how to do this.
He does a livestream every Friday night.
I'll put a link to his channel right here,
where he has at least four cameras,
four separate capture cards going
in cycles between them during a livestream,
and he's really good at actually switching
and addressing each camera as it goes.
So if you want to check out one of those,
you can kind of see this in action.
And it puts what used to be an entire production team
and production crew worth of people down to one person
with a few buttons,
and that is pretty darn cool.
So speaking of buttons, you can click the Subscribe button,
or you could also click the button to go check out
some of these other videos about livestreaming and stuff.
That was super smooth.
(lo-fi music that makes you want to watch another video)