Hi everyone.

While learning vMix, it became clear that users were at risk of making a few mistakes that would cause undesired PTZ camera movement while the camera was Actively going to the Output: here are a few examples:

List of sample inputs:
Input1 = Camera 1 = PTZ camera with no PTZ movement programmed
Input2 = Camera 2 = 2nd PTZ camera with no PTZ movement programmed.
Input3-10 are saved PTZ positions for Camera 1.
Input11-20 are saved PTZ positions for Camera 2.

1. Preprogrammed PTZ setting overwrites adjustments made in preview window.
Camera 2 is up on the active output.
Operator calls up Input 3 in preview, and using the game pad adjusts the PTZ position because the talent is taller than most of the talent and the shot needs ore headroom... so the shot needs adjusting.
Operator then cuts Camera 2 to output, but the PTZ is 'corrected' back to the saved position live... OOOps... looks bad seeing the PTZ movement live, and the guy's head is partially cut off.

2. Accidentally moving active Camera.
The operator/director, etc. has Camera 1 up on the active output.
The operator, forgetting that inputs 3-10 are variations on Camera 1, proceeds to put Input 3 up on preview. Input 3 then shows up on the preview screen and moves the camera. Except since the camera is active, viewers see this camera move to this new saved position live. OOps...


The fix:
With the script in place on shortcuts for each PTZ input, now when the user presses one of the saved PTZ shortcut buttons, instead of just calling up that input, a vbs script is called that does the following:

1. If the camera for the PTZ shot being called is NOT up on the active screen: Put the called input/PTZ shot up on preview and moves the camera to this position, then sleeps for half a second and then changes the input to the default camera shot on input 1 or input 2 (depending in which saved PTZ is called). Now when the operator cuts to the shot after making minor PTZ adjustments in preview, the camera does not move when it is put on the active output

2. If the camera for the PTZ shot being called IS up on the active screen: A big 'X' graphic with a message saying 'Can't auto PTZ - camera active' shows up for 1 second on the preview windows. After one second, the camera that was being asked to move will be put up in preview with no auto PTZ movement while it is still up and active. The user can make adjustments manually using the game pad.

This helped us quite a bit. I have attached of my code with comments in it. You can paste that into a script in the scripting section of vMix and then assign a short cut to call it. Note that because vMix does not currently support command line arguments being fed to the script via shortcuts, you will have to edit the start of the script showing the PTZ movement saved input, the default camera name (the one with no movement programmed), and the input where the user will find the error graphic that goes up on preview... and do this for each saved PTZ shot. If you do wish to call the actual PTZ shot movement and all live, you just select it via the program bus shortcut for that PTZ.

Hope you find this useful. You can probably shrink the code somewhat, but since I don't do a lot of visual basic programming, it was a bit of trial and error.

Jeff

I, too, am evaluating vMix for streaming solutions at a UK Cathedral. With a varied team of operators, I can see situation #2 above being a common problem. With OBS I have worked around it by using visual feedback on Streamdeck buttons (to colour ALL preset buttons for a given camera the preview/program colours - so don't press a RED button).

I like the idea of virtual inputs, all showing their last position as images, but i'm certain that there will be mis-clicks galore. This script sounds great. A couple of questions:

• does it work? I haven't been able to test it with PTZ cameras yet, so would love to know whether to get to that point.

• is this something that might be build into vMix in the future? I see the original post is from 2017, so I'm not hopeful, but it strikes me that it would be a very useful function to have

Any input on this would be really valued,

thanks

@smartinec - That looks great! I went a slightly different route with mine, electing to make it a tad more complicated than the original with the addition of a backup camera. However, I've been thinking lately that I'd like to use .Find instead of looping through the xml. I may follow your example to use .Find to make the changes.

Have you worked out how to deal with the active camera in a multiview?

What is the point of putting the Virtual Input into Preview and then replacing it with the real camera input 500 ms later? I don't like arbitrary sleeping. Why not just use the PTZMoveToVirtualInputPosition function? ("Moves to the Position of the PTZ Virtual Input without selecting it into Preview.") Is there some additional behaviour that vMix does when putting the Virtual Input into Preview?

Sorry if your feelings got hurt but I wasn't trying to "present an idea" - it was an honest question (hint: abundance of question marks). This is the sub-forum for discussing API usage.

I noticed you were loading the Virtual Input into Preview, so that caused me to wonder if perhaps you were doing so out of necessity in order to achieve some desired vMix behaviour. I'll be working on something similar but hadn't tried yet, so I asked your reason for doing it that way.

Since you interpreted my question as a critique and changed your code, I take it the answer to my question is that it's not necessary to do it that way. ;-)

I'm leaning towards a slightly different approach to the original problem... thinking about multiview-overlaying a tally indicator (e.g. big red X) onto all of the Virtual Inputs whenever the real camera input is active.

I tried to lay it out in my post above: #post88678

Let me know if you have specific implementation questions that I can answer.

Hello,

Your scripts are great.
I don't have your scripting skills but wouldn't it be possible to have it all in one script (instead of a script in each shortcut) ?
And to refer at the first post of this thread : When you call back your PTZ shot in Preview, that you do some adjustement, would't it be possible to update the PTZ input ?

Thanks

Thanks so much smartinec! I came to this forum looking for (near) exactly this solution! You say you made some changes to the code, can you post an update please?

The first problem (accidentally selecting a PTZ input for the active camera) still plagues us a year after using vMix. It would nice if vMix incorporated something like this as in a popup "Are you sure you want to move the active camera?", like they do with "Are you sure you want to stop streaming?" etc. I'm familiar with VB programming in general, but not the vMix API. In my setup, I have two different Input tabs for the two different PTZ cameras, each includes the real camera and all the PTZ inputs. My first programming thought was to program an event that when the Preview input changed (by doing a Merge/Cut), then change the active Input tab to that camera. I haven't researched the vMix API enough to know if it could do that.

The second problem (moving to saved PTZ position rather than current adjusted PTZ position upon Cut/Merge) I actually reported as a bug to vMix. The answer was "as designed", which I think is dumb. But I made a Shortcut key to "Update Input" the operator presses before they Cut/Merge. Training has pretty much alleviated that problem, but I might incorporate your 0.5 second sleep then change to real camera to overcome that.

Thanks again for the code. It gets me started accessing the API object.

I just realized I never uploaded a copy of my current script with the changes. After almost a year using Find it's still working great. I have a script setup for each seat position, and all of the PTZ inputs follow the same naming schema - "{CameraName} {PositionName}" ("Camera 1 Chambers Wide" or "Camera 5 Chambers Wide").