Document Visualisers (posh webcams)

[JonathanRyan]

Anybody use one of these? Any recommendations?

Here's my situation....I study Chinese brush calligraphy. I have an online class each week. For obvious reasons, my teacher is more interested in my work than my face At the moment I'm using a Logi webcam on a swivel head that I point downwards - it's OK but relatively poor at showing detail and the support is a bit shaky. It's also despite all my tinkering upside down. I was looking on 'zon and saw things called document visualisers - they seem exactly what I want not least because they can rotate the work so my teacher doesn't have to imagine it upside down.

Any recos? Ideally it would cover an A3ish area, be optimised for black and white and be able to rotate the image. Even better if there's some trick so I can get Zoom to use 2 cameras and show my work and my face on the existing Logi.

Don't want to pay stupid money (an Osbot would be lovely but, no.....) but don't want to buy cheap and regret it.

 

[Nod]

Mrs Nod says that logging in to the same account on 2 devices at the same time MIGHT work to get 2 cameras showing on Zoom. Failing that, maybe another account and another device would get your face and work on at the same time.

 

[Box Brownie]

Never heard of that device so you post piqued my curiosity

Were I looking for one, this one caught my attention especially as one of the promo videos says it use a Sony 8MP sensor.

Amazon.co.uk

As for combining both the document and your image..................does Zoom have a PiP function..............or is there a 3rd party program function to add PiP to a zoom session?

 

[JonathanRyan]

Mrs Nod says that logging in to the same account on 2 devices at the same time MIGHT work to get 2 cameras showing on Zoom. Failing that, maybe another account and another device would get your face and work on at the same time.

Thanks. Other students are using 2 devices but that would be awkward on my desk.

It seems odd that zoom won't support two cameras but it might be a bandwidth issue.

 

[JonathanRyan]

Never heard of that device so you post piqued my curiosity

Were I looking for one, this one caught my attention especially as one of the promo videos says it use a Sony 8MP sensor.

Amazon.co.uk

As for combining both the document and your image..................does Zoom have a PiP function..............or is there a 3rd party program function to add PiP to a zoom session?

That looks a good device among the cheaper cameras, thank you.

As far as I know, zoom won't do pip. I'll look into 3rd party apps though. Zoom will do dual camera but only for the host.

 

[JonathanRyan]

Mrs Nod says that logging in to the same account on 2 devices at the same time MIGHT work to get 2 cameras showing on Zoom. Failing that, maybe another account and another device would get your face and work on at the same time.

This may be useful to Mrs Nod......

Zoom will *not* support 2 cameras from a participant - it is limited to one video stream per person. As you say, 2 devices with 1 account sometimes works. However, it supports OBS and will count OBS as a single "camera".

So anybody wanting to run 2 or more cameras in Zoom simply has to download OBS Studio and spend 5 - 10 mins fiddling with the tutorial. At the end of this you will have a single OBS virtual camera showing what you want (in my case for a test I used an external webcam and BOTH cameras on my Surface pro - you may be able to use a phone as another camera). Then with OBS running go into Zoom and select OBS Virtual camera as your source.

OBS is free and seems a very full featured and well supported product - https://obsproject.com/

ManyCam Lite will probably also work for 2 cameras but has a more aggressive registration / upsell model. The interface looks a lot simpler though.

 

[Nod]

Thanks for that, Jonathan. It's Gibberish to me but I'm sure Mrs Nod will understand it!!!