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Yabbuck
New Contributor

Audio and Video Input

Hi everyone,

i'm new to this community but familiar with the gotowebinar software.

i've done several webinars, small and large ones, and always ended up with the same problems.

Coming from an experienced event company, i naturally used our professional streaming gear for gotowebinar.

The first issue i ran into was, that there seems to be no official supported specs list for any of the LogMeIn products.

I am talking audio sample rates, resolutions, framerates etc. Me and other technicians i talked to, tried all kinds of settings, but never had satisfying nor constant results. I tried different Audio Interfaces, and some seem to work for vocals, but as soon as there is music or anything else fed into the webinar software, it fails miserably. The video interfaces worked even worse.

 

So the big question is: What are the supported settings for gotowebinar?

 

I know that gotowebinar's biggest use case is just webcams and usb mics/headsets, but those have certain specs too. In these times a lot of our customers, who already used LogMeIn solutions in the past, want to host huge shows with this software and at this point  i have to tell them, that it's not possible with gotowebinar right now.

 

If this is not the intended use for the software i'm fine with that, but would like to have something like and official statement from LogMeIn, regarding those issues.

 

Kind Regards

Yabbuck

3 REPLIES 3
Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Audio and Video Input

GoTo crops the webcam input, so you have to allow for that when framing your camera shot, or feeding external video. Go to will automatically mirror your webcam input image. Not bad for a headshot, but bad when text is involved.  We have asked for GoTo to install switches to defeat these feature when we don't need them.

 

GoTo employs a downward expander on the audio input.  Like a noise gate, this audio filter reduces the volume of anything below a certain level.  This is great for reducing background noise for a normal presenter, but destroys music, and ruins the sound of a soft-spoken presenter.  We have asked for GoTo to install a switch to defeat this feature when we don't need it.

 

I've been in the pro-audio business for 40 years and have been using GoToWebinar for 10 years.  I have discussed much of this in these GoTo discussion boards.  Do a search.

 

I often use an ATEM-Mini (all default settings) to input HDMI and audio sources into GoTo.

 

My personal setup when I am hosting webinars is a AKG C535 mic, JoeMeek ThreeQ compressor (carefully tweaked), ATEM-Mini, to the Mac via USB.  Additionally, a JVC camcorder connected to the ATEM Mini for the visual input.

 

When I am feeding a room full of live mics into GoTo, I run the output of my sound board (usually an X32) to a Shure X2u.  I used to use a Blue Icicle, which was great, but did not work on the latest Windows OS.  I normally use Macs, but sometimes have to connect to a house PC.

 

I hope all this helps.

Yabbuck
New Contributor

Re: Audio and Video Input

Hey,

 

sorry for taking so long to reply and thank you for your insights!

I took your advise and did some research in the forum.

As i understand, the ATEM Mini's webcam output only works on mac for now.

In the official FAQs it says:

 

'We provide the highest resolution video conferencing quality currently available among web conferencing providers – up to 25 streams at 640p x 480p for a maximum resolution of 1920p x 960p.'

 

Does that mean that, if you only use one camera at a time you can get nearly 1080p and the resolution is reduced everytime another participant switches on his camera until the maximum of 25 streams is reached?

 

The highest resolution you can use for a webcam input is 720p though, as often stated in the forum. I tried that, using the Blackmagic Web presenter (which converts to 720p30) and GTW accepted it as an input, but the result looked worse than 720p in GTW. My setup was ATEM Mini with full HD camera in input 1 and a full HD computer in input 2. The ATEM Mini output was fed into the web presenter which connected to the webinar computer. I tested this setup for a whole day and it seemed to work fine, not the best quality but fine for the customer. The next day i came back to this exact setup and the video looked horrible on all participant's computers -  not even close to 720p. Network connection was monitored both days and didn't change at all.

The quality seemed to change from time to time but was never good enough to show details in the software that was supposed to be showcased in this workshop.

Is this a know issue or is there anything i can do to make sure the quality stays the same?

 

regarding the audio:

I tweaked the compressor and expander to the point that the music was not chopped off anymore. Didn't sound great but at least it worked. Another post hinted that the feature to turn the audio processing off is on it's way but i couldn't confirm this yet.

 

All in all and with all the testing i did, the quality of the results were really unsatisfying and the customer needs a higher resolution to show their software in the future. On paper 720p should be enough,  but it's not what the participants are getting.

 

If anyone has the same issues or knows a solution, i would be very thankful!

Sorry for all the rambling.

 

Kind regards

Yabbuck

 

 

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

Re: Audio and Video Input

Thanks Yabbuck for your rambles.