Zoom Smart Gallery public Beta
Today is the official release of PolyOS 3.5.1 to support Zoom's Smart Gallery feature which was included in the Zoom Rooms v5.7 release last week. [See Zoom Room Release Notes here for 5.7 details as there are other updates in this release to be covered at a later date (Zoom Room Voice Commands etc.)]
This initial iteration of Smart Gallery (Phase 1) is a public Beta being driven by Zoom and is available to all Zoom customers assuming certain pre-requisites are met.
What is Smart Gallery?
Zoom Smart Gallery extracts images of regions of interest (for example, a person that is speaking) from the video stream of a camera into separate, individual video streams. It also displays the single video stream showing all call participants. Zoom Rooms uses the term Logical Camera to describe a system’s camera (for example, the Studio X50’s built-in camera) and Virtual Camera to describe a region of interest extracted from the logical camera’s image. The individual streams are then placed as separate participants in a remote users Zoom client Gallery View. The objective being to create an equitable meeting experience for all participants, both within the room and remote.
While Zoom is providing the "plumbing," Zoom's partners must deliver the required camera sources to the Zoom Room application and effectively manage production rules to find and appropriately frame active speakers in the room. As of today, only Poly is providing the ability for customers to begin leveraging and testing this capability.
- See Zoom's Getting Started Guide here and Blog post here.
- See the 1-minute mark here for Zoom's conceptual review of the capability.
- Poly Blog post and concept video are here.
Poly's Implementation of Smart Gallery
When you enable Smart Gallery, the Poly system continuously determines multiple regions of interest based on people found in the camera’s view who are currently or have in the past been active speakers. Note that the determination of a region of interest is dependent on:
- The ability of the system to automatically detect a face in the camera’s view. Best results are achieved when an individual is directly facing the camera, their face isn’t obstructed by other individuals in the camera’s view, and their face is consistently in the view of the camera.
- The ability of the system to automatically detect an actively speaking person in the camera’s view. Best results are achieved when an individual is speaking towards the camera.
- The camera’s resolution, field of view, and distance from the camera to the individual. You achieve the best results when the individual is sitting closer to the camera and isn’t obstructed by other individuals in the camera’s view.
When the system determines a region of interest exists, the region of interest is centered on the person and cropped from the overall camera image as tightly as possible, constrained by the camera’s resolution, field of view, and the person’s distance from the camera.
The system presents the regions of interest to the Zoom Rooms application on up to two (2) virtual camera(s) based on this priority:
- The current or most recent actively speaking person in the camera’s view
- The previous actively speaking person in the camera’s view
- If there are no active speakers, or the active speakers leave the camera’s field of view, the virtual camera(s) are stopped
As different individuals in the camera’s view become the current active speaker, the regions of interest change. The Zoom Rooms application always sends the logical camera video to the Zoom meeting. As the virtual cameras appear and disappear, it also starts or stops sending additional video streams to the meeting.
What are the Pre-requisites?
Zoom Smart Gallery is available for Zoom Room Appliances (Android) only today.
For Poly that includes the Studio x30 and x50.
The Studio x30 or x50 must be running PolyOS v3.5.1-346016 as well as ZR app v5.7.0.1439 which is bundled with 3.5.1. Both are available via ZDM now.
How do I use it?
Once your system is running both PolyOS 3.5.1 and ZR 5.7 you will have the option to Enable Smart Gallery ad-hoc while in Meeting via the Zoom Room Controller
