I mentioned this in the other thread, but is it possible/practical to add the option to sequentially autopopulate inputs as guests join the meeting?

While those who need/want/can would be able to continue to manually assign, those of us one-manning our shows with a full screen multiview spanning a few different programs with Stream Decks, MIDI controllers, and no mouse in sight could really benefit from automating that feature with an option in Settings (or elsewhere).

But, of course, I understand if the Zoom SDK doesn't allow for it or there aren't enough people in my boat to make it worth it, but I'd love to be able to take full advantage of the functionality.

It would be better than the manual, physical selection there is now.

If they did it, I'd take it.

It does introduce a potential failure point if someone's name isn't set on Zoom the way it is in the shortcut.

You can try to head it off, but I've seen tech challenged individuals have difficulty changing the name and being confused about why it's set to what it is.

It's a potential failure point.



Honestly, this is (for my setup) the easy part.

The reason I need this so badly is because I'm running my entire show with a Stream Deck Mobile instance, a Stream Deck, a Stream Deck Mini, a Stream Deck pedal, and a MIDI board, with a bunch of shortcuts, scripts, and activators, with a full screen multiview showing me every other program I need to see, as well as the guests themselves--no room to also run the vMix GUI.

There are a lot of options to reposition guests. The key, especially when you're running more than 2 guests, is dynamic inputs.

I already do this with desktop capture or other meeting programs where I'm doing the "crop and set" method.

Since I want my guests in 3 places (the show multiview, my multiview, and an input I use to take snapshots), I also use Mix inputs to keep everything tidy.

Let's say I'm running 4 guests.

Mix 2 is assigned to Guest Slot 1. Everywhere I want Guest Slot 1, instead of the Guest input, I put the Mix 2 output.

Mix 3 is Guest Slot 2.

Mix 4 is Guest Slot 3.

Mix 5 is Guest Slot 4.

By default, I assign Guest Input 1 to Guest Slot 1, etc. so everything fills in on my screen (and elsewhere) as people join.

And, of course, each guest slot is reserved for a specific guest, with the proper titling, etc., which also appears on my view.

If everyone joins in the proper order, then we're all good. If their video populates above their name on my view, it did the same on the show view and the snapshot view, and we're set.

If, however, Vicky joins before Tom and ends up in Tom's spot, that needs to be fixed.

So I hit a button on my Stream Deck called "Reposition Guests", which opens a folder, which has 2 rows of shortcuts.

The top row says: Guest 1, Guest 2, Guest 3, Guest 4.

The bottom row has the guests' names.

Hitting the guest number in the top row makes that guest input Dynamic1.

Hitting the name then runs a script that sets Dynamic1 to the mix that corresponds with the named guest and applies the proper channel matrix presets.

Now Vicky is in the right slot but she's also still in Tom's slot. (There's probably a way to script it so the inputs switch instead of duplicate, but I'm not particularly good at VB.net scripting and there's an easy workaround.)

So you just hit the button for the guest that's supposed to be Tom, hit Tom's name, and everything is fine.

Then you hit the button to leave the folder and go back to the main preset.

During production, it takes maybe about 5 seconds at most, per switch. During pre-production, it's really easy after the first time, since you only need to write the scripts once and change the names on the Stream Deck. If you're not using a Stream Deck and you're using a keyboard or MIDI pad, you don't even have to do that much and you just run everything universally.

I'm honestly a bit surprised how hung up people seem to be on positioning guests in the right slot.

I know I'm not the only one who was carving up gallery views from desktop captures.

this is how I did it.

The crop sizes were consistent based on the number of participant videos and the monitor, so I set them in advance and moved people as they joined.

Before they expanded the number of Mix inputs, you had to have the script set each layer you wanted a particular guest, but the expansion to 15 Mix inputs really made it easier to route one guest to the right spot on multiple inputs.

This, for me, wouldn't be any different, except that it comes with better quality video and ISO audio.

Like I said, if they go with your idea where guests are manually selected via Shortcut, fine--I can still make do with that.

It just feels like adding an option to just autopopulate as people join would be an easier thing to program, with less room for error in production.

But, at the end of the day, I really want to switch to this from the desktop capture and crop with summed audio.

And I can't do that until the absolute need to manually select names with a mouse from the GUI is supplemented in some way that's either automatic or easily controlled by shortcut without the vMix GUI being in focus.


Edit: put in words, it sounds really convoluted, but action wise, it’s really simple. Happy to provide simulated images and/or video if anyone is curious and needs help visualizing the process.

I figured you wouldn’t, but you weren’t the first to bring it up. And others in the same boat but who haven’t found a method yet might find it helpful and be encouraged to back me up on this.

And a lot of it was because the vMix team seems to prefer feature requests where the requester knows what they’re getting into. The repositioning seems to be big the biggest hang up, so I figured I’d point out that methods do exist to overcome it and highlight mine specifically. Again, with the added benefit of assisting anyone else who might need this same lifeboat but can’t overcome that hurdle.