Forum Discussion
SfB broadcast : producer controls
I've love to see this as well... Have you submitted to https://www.skypefeedback.com/ ?
I happened to stumble upon pretty much exactly what I was talking about - a cheap consumer orientated video control desk https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck.
An SfB Broadcast API which would allow makers of this sort of device (and indeed more professional desks that could for e.g. control lighting camera zoom / pan / tilt etc etc) to control the Broadcast meeting would be a massive upgrade to the Broadcast tool capability. Keep it really simple with anybody can be a producer and the current set up as the default but have a pre-defined producer option at broadcast set up which either gives the producer richer controls within the producer's SfB screen (or associated App) or allows control via an API and the Elgato type desk. If I am about to broadcast to 10K people I would much prefer to be pressing a physical button to a mouse click if there is any chance of broadcasting the CEO "picking his nose" because he isn't supposed to be "on air" just yet.
Also - in that same vain, there is the 20 second or so transcoding delay. At present that is being used to do transcriptions for captions. A broadcast kill switch (or bleep out) would also be a useful addition. In a public company conference call situation the company lawyer could be sat with his fingerover the button in case the CEO accidentally blurts out information which would be an SEC violation. Or, of course, someone blurts out something profane or defamatory. When you start broadcasting essentially live to large numbers of people these things start to matter and a lot of people using the service will be relative novices at broadcast - that's the point and it is great to give that capability but it does create potential issues and richer broadcast controls / a hardware interface API would help reduce those risks.
Further to my earlier post I found a couple of Youtube videos which will I hope be a lot of interest to anyone interested in a way of creating hardware producer controls for SfB Broadcast (via hotkeys at the moment) and which also illustrates exactly what I mean regaring what could be done with an API.
They are very consumer orientated but they convey the information well for anyone interested. I have no connection with Elgato or the Youtube streamers - I'd never even heard of them before this morning but I believe that the information maybe helpful for people looking for a solution to hardware producer controls that they could set up today in SfB. In a Full API type set up then one would expect that the individual buttons would show the meeting participants video or at least picture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOAdb5CNCMA