Hi, everyone, and welcome to The Daily Show, I’m your host, Jon Myer. Now I’d like to tell you what this show is all about, but this is a special edition here. We’re talking with video ninja developer Steve Seguin about a recent release of 18.3. Now, if you want to find out about version 18, take a look at that podcast a little further down. I typically get together and capture the major releases and sometimes in between we capture those individual ones.
Now, part of The Daily Show, I usually give you some useful news around public cloud and some useless news. But since this is a special edition, I’m going to get right to the show. Please join me in welcoming Steve to the show. Steve, thanks for joining me.
Guest: Steve
Hi, Jon. Thanks for having me.
Host: Jon
Yeah, of course.! So, Steve, you just recently released 18.3. Let’s talk about some of those new features.
Guest: Steve
Cool. OK, Some of the highlights, for 18.3. We have the starting of more style focused functionality so you can change the fading effect of the videos. You can also add animation features to your videos. As we move forward, we’re going to be adding more and more of those custom layouts, custom styles to all the scenes.
There is a tally light system that always existed, but it was revamped pretty heavily in version 18.3. It’s less obtrusive. It works a little bit better now.
Guest: Steve
So stand by is gone. You have active now and you have on air still as well. So you get feedback when the users live on it or not. There’s two different ways you can disable that now. You can disable it either through disabling the signaling or you can disable on the guest side with a flag. So you do have control over that. Um, it’s just not going to be as verbose as it was. We also added the ability to cycle the camera on mobile so you can just tap a button and we’ll cycle between front and rear cameras on mobile.
The mini preview window, you can drag that around, you can click it on the desktop in full screen. People wanted a little more control over that mini preview window, especially if you’re in broadcast mode. So that was one of the more user focused features. The entire release as a whole has been mainly focusing on polishing up on some bugs, fixing a few small user features. And that’s why it was 18.3 and not considered like a large feature release like version 19 will be.
One other thing that really got a lot of focus, though, was iFrames. That’s existed for a couple of versions now. But in version 18.3, we really worked on a lot of the bugs and we worked on finding new ways of using it. And we can always go through and demonstrate how to do that in this video.
Host: Jon
Yes, Steve, that’s actually one of the main features. By the way, when you said just a little bit, it’s been done for 18.4. I went through the docs and I keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. There is a lot of fixes and additions that you did. You’re only highlighting just a few of those. And one of them that stood out to me was the iFrames. And I reached out to you and I was like, you know what?
I think this is going to be really valuable to those who are streaming and want to add some of the twitch chat into it. So Steve, can you give us a walkthrough on how it can be utilized?
****Guest: Steve
So I’m going to open up the control room on the Director, and if I invite a guest in the room. Which is. Switch to virtual camera, so I join as a guest now, if I’m a director, I have this button <<insert image>> and I can select a website and I can share that website with the viewers. So in this case. I shared a YouTube video, a default is a little bit fun, and you can always stop it. Another guest no longer sees that video.
Where this could be used is let’s say the guest joins in broadcast mode. And so just let me pause you one second. It looks like your video is getting the rainbow puke a little bit, I have to tell you, just the video on. One change, I was looking at the screen the entire time, we can leave it on and I’ll keep it for the recording for the viewers, because we’re really showing the screen share and all the capabilities completely up to you.
Guest: Steve
Yeah, I’m not sure.
Host: Jon
Maybe it’s just on my end. Just keep going and we’ll go with it.
****Guest: Steve
OK, so now the guest has joined in broadcast mode. We added the broadcast and what that does is they only see the director when the director is active. Otherwise they just see their preview. So also share the same video. Just give you an idea of how that works. So, you know, full screen. That’s useful, so let’s say I am using a site like Meche cast, I can randomize a stream and the live gets a link.
And if I pay SLIDIN. And then I sure that what you’re going to see is the output of mesh cast. Um, maybe if I was queen capturing, you’ll see that I’m sure.
Host: Jon
OK. Wow, that’s a little trippy there. Yeah, that’s pretty good.
Guest: Steve
All my cameras are new but, that gives you an idea and that’s a little different than if I turn off my camera as a guest just to show you the output is still what you’re seeing from miscast. Miscast in this case allows you to use a server to broadcast to many people. So if he had a room of 30, 40 people, you could use mesh cast via the iFrame and everyone would see the iFrame and not have to watch the video peer-to-peer.
Guest: Steve
So that reduces the load on your computer. If that makes some sense on the director, I just want to show everybody a little status indication that the video is off for the user. You see that little red video that means they disabled their video. I love the pictures that you’ve done and the director panel and all the capabilities and control that I had.
It’s just a frozen last video frame of where the person stopped the video, so it’s not actually still going in. I think us for a future, when you meet the guest, the directors meeting you, so I added your future request and I was going to call that out in the release notes. So I was putting together the latest video. Take a look up here on the top five features of video ninja. And then I talked about the director panel and one of those features that I was hoping for.
Host: Jon
And Steve put those in there. I found it valuable. And as a guest that I don’t think I’m unmuted. I’m talking and people are hearing me. Thank you for adding that!
****Guest: Steve
So another feature is, let’s say you’re doing a Twitter stream. You can pop out of the chat, copy the link for the chat, and then when we go into the director’s room you can paste in at Poppit Chat Link and now you can see the full chat if we get rid of the broadcast mode. And I join the room at. This way, so now now takes up one of the windows, and so if you had a group of 10 people, you can include the Twitch chat for example, in that group room.
Guest: Steve
And this is going to be expanded more in version 19, where you’ll be able to resize the chart and position it. People have also asked for things like a clicker so you can embed like a remote PowerPoint clicker. So the Gaskins remote control. A presentation on the director site. Right now, it’s very one to one aspect ratio, like all the videos are the same size in version 19 you will be able to change that, but you can still embed twitch chat using the iFrame.
Now, you don’t have to be a director to share a video or to share an iFrame. You can always add website and you can as a guest join a room.
Host: Jon
Oh hey, didn’t feature alert. That was pretty cool that you had. It wasn’t even a selection. But there’s all these awesome things that I always find out about it by adding it afterwards, not realizing I’m usually like clicking on the UI. But some of the things that you’ve told me that I can add to the URL just enhances it.
Guest: Steve
So in this case, you know, the director sees which websites are being shared from that participant and so the director can open it if they choose to. So, yeah, there’s been a lot more integration between iframes and video Ninja into the future. Potentially, you’ll be able to to have a dedicated button for each performer where they can share widgets or have full screen overlays or other aspects, but that’s currently what was introduced with version 18.3.
Host: Jon
That’s actually very powerful and a small version released. I can’t wait for version 19. I’m sure we’ll put together an awesome video for everybody to watch some of the features. But we’ll have to reference back not only version 18, but 18.3 on the enhancements and improvements that you did or added to video ninja. Really cool stuff. I enjoy the product so much they can catch on.
All right, everybody, if you continuously like the videos that I make and the content that’s created for you really quick and get together with Steve, don’t forget to hit that like and subscribe and also the notification. I do want to hear from you and your comments on how you’re utilizing Video Ninja, a.k.a. OBS Ninja Steve. As always, thank you for joining and quickly doing this recording for the audience. I really appreciate it.
Guest: Steve
My pleasure. Thank you for having me!