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Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

cuecam-presenter.com

71–80 of 91 posts

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#71
post #47

I don't like presenting my screen or slides via the camera feed. In certain apps, like MS Teams or Zoom, the bitrate for camera feeds is much lower _and_ you are just one of the several feeds on the screen. A screenshare takes over the layout so everyone is looking at the same thing. It would be better if this gave a virtual screen rather than a virtual camera.

> A screenshare takes over the layout This is exactly what I'm trying to avoid :-)

When a screen share takes over, a conversation turns into a broadcast, which isn't always what you want.

There will always be scenarios where the improved resolution of a screen sharing codec will be necessary (and nothing is stopping you!), but I find a lot of the time there's a big white screen with a bit of branding and one bullet point on screen, and I can't see the face of the person who is talking.

I was on a group call recently where the speaker presented in this way for half an hour as a tiny thumbnail and I found it quite painful, thinking "I've been listening to this person for ages but I wouldn't recognise them in real life".

Sure enough, a couple of weeks later I had an awkward conversation where this exact person kinda recognised me but I didn't recognise her, so I felt pretty vindicated .

If we avoid the overhead of screen shares, the conversation flows a lot better, and everybody can be seen without the host having to turn anything off. And don't forget, if somebody's on a phone screen then they can't see all the detail anyway. This is why I prefer zooming in on important content than sharing my whole screen (I zoom in on my desktop using a pinch gesture in Video Pencil on my iPad and it feels magical).

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#72
post #15

I've been a paid presenter for a bunch of years, and switching to online presentations in 2020 was a huge chore. You're absolutely right about OBS being hard to work with. This solves pretty much every problem I encountered. I would buy this in a second. But I have to ask, why a subscription? Why can't I download this software like I do with all my other presentation software? What value does a subscription buy me?

I've been thinking about this and while it's true that I have been trying to find a viable subscription model for my business over the last couple of years, that's not really important for you.

But it does benefit you in a very real way.

I work alone. I'm very good at spinning up features in a few hours. With a subscription model I can release these changes continuously, so you get new features and improvements on a weekly or monthly basis.

If I had to come up with a release schedule I'd have to make a lot of decisions about cordoning off different features, coming up with names, marketing materials, deciding what goes where. This is a huge mental and technical overhead. I'd be juggling git branches across multiple pieces of software, the website, and beyond. I'd be incentivised to put more and more things behind the next paywall and I'd be getting less and less real work done.

I don't have the marketing clout of Apple or Microsoft. They can take a different approach. I've tried a few and now I'm trying this!

One more thing, I do plan on adding some more cloud-based features as time goes on. I'm already managing a Chat GPT integration, and in future I'm picturing an online content library and search to let teams quickly access decks and slides for demos. But that's future stuff, so not relevant to your question just now.

Short answer: it lets me, as a solo developer, give you more cool stuff.

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#73
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical answer is it funds ongoing development, support, and maintenance. The alternative is new versions requiring repurchase of a new license to fund ongoing development. As a developer I would much prefer reoccurring revenue as an incentive to keep developing vs having to build large shrink wrapped releases and managing LTS etc. Whether $120/year is reasonable or not is debatable though. Seems steep for the ca…

There are lots of pieces of software where that makes sense, but presentation software is not one of them. Specifically, adoption of new features in presentation software is rare and slow because you don't want to be fiddling with unfamiliar things while trying to give a presentation. I would be extra upset if a feature changed or the interface changed between practicing and giving a presentation for example. I want…

> I want my presentation software to have a set of features and then never change until I make a very deliberate act of upgrading to a new version while still having the old one around in case I get stuck.

Note that I'm not using the App Store for distribution, I'm using Sparkle, which means that it never updates without you allowing it to.

Also , if it's a dealbreaker for a lot of people, it would be trivial for me to make older versions available for download! (I keep them all, and this has come in very useful on some recent support calls).

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#74
post #10

Was interested until I checked the pricing and saw it sold as a subscription. Just let me buy it and I'll decide if I want to buy version 2 next year.

I was thinking about your comment when I responded to [this one above](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39346050)

This reasoning obscures the huge overhead of creating a distinct "version 2" next year. I can do a much better job on the software if I don't have to spend 70% of my time marketing the next version or sectioning off this or that feature for commercial reasons.

But I take your point, I don't love subscription software either, but most of my current users are pretty comfortable with these so it's good for now while I'm working alone. And my hosting / API access fees are not _zero_ so there is a vague justification there too.

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#75
post #40

Hello Michael, fellow former-Canonicaler! This looks super interesting, and might be a useful alternative to the OBS setup I currently have for work calls. One thing I would really like is for there to be a clean preview feed rendered in a separate window, so I can screen share that window into Meet/Zoom/whatever. I've tried before to share content through the webcam feed to those systems, but generally the video qua…

Hello! Been a long time since I was at Canonical!

CueCam has a "Teleprompter Window" that you could adapt to this purpose. You can "Include Camera Feed in Teleprompter Window" and then whatever you're sharing will come through. Although it does have window chrome so maybe not ideal. Another option is to fire up a QuickTime window and use "New Movie Recording" and use that as your sharing source window.

You definitely want "Original Sound for Musicians" switched on in Zoom if you're doing any audio sharing with CueCam.

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#76

I love this. For structured presentations, this is really awesome. It would be great if you also had more of a non-linear mode for content that is less structured and more suited to live events where anything can happen at any time. For video meetings, podcasts/talk shows, etc. there is often content repeated between calls/presentations (theme song/intro, memes, sound effects etc) and also planned content from a topi…

> It would be great if you also had more of a non-linear mode for content that is less structured I have a "Dashboard" that sits in your Status Bar for quick access to sharing and camera switching which might be enough.

> Maybe it would look more like a sound effect board/stream deck/TV Mixer where there is a matrix of buttons to playback videos, add titles, show images, play sound effects, etc. I think you're talking about a Stream Deck! CueCam gives you the other part of the Stream Deck puzzle when you do have structure, but lots of its features can be accessed with the Stream Deck plugin.

It's already possible to deep link to specific cards so you could set that up if you didn't feel like scrolling. But I'm usually fine to scroll (it's a pretty low friction interaction!) and it's less fiddling-about up front.

I have chroma key support already.

Other things may appear over time. If I find myself wanting to do some data-driven motion graphics you can bet that feature will appear within a week

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#77
post #65

I think there's a "market mismatch" here. If you're a professional presenter, you're already used to OBS, which is complex but free, open-source, works on all platforms (as opposed to Mac-only). Sure the "draw anywhere" feature is nice, but there are ways to achieve the same thing in OBS using a tablet (various free or paid plugins do this). If you're not a professional presenter, sure this is easier to use than OBS,…

As someone who speaks to a lot of Ecamm Live users, I beg to differ. They're paying >$300/year for a tool that is basically a less-convoluted version of OBS (and Mac only).

The drawing feature is possible using other apps but it's always a bit of a compromise and awkward to set up.

I help people to do this every day and I know lots of them would prefer something easier!

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see this without login in https://cuecam-presenter.com/pricing

Figured it out. There’s a pricing menu at the top. If you scroll down, you only get the buy now button which requires auth. Thanks for pointing it out.

I just updated the pricing last week and missed this button. I've fixed it now, sorry about that!

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#79

My main issue with any virtual camera-based screensharing is that Zoom (and others) seem to degrade camera first, screensharing second, audio last. If I share a static image, it'll eventually get through. Internet lagging, laptop lagging, some random updater running, whatever. But if I share everything via a single "camera" channel, it's all or nothing. The only "in between" is "image is blurry, face is barely legibl…

Something that gives me confidence here is that in macOS Sonoma Apple have gone all-in on sharing screen content on a webcam feed. I feel this will motivate Zoom and Teams to take this into account when compressing video. But don't forget, if high fidelity is super important, you can always switch to a normal screen share. I just find that a lot of the time, this isn't the case, and it hurts the communication overall. But yeah, I do encourage nice big, short, bold bullets in an attempt to minimise this risk.

Re: Show HN: Presentations for your webcam, not a projector

#80

Would this also make sense for video recordings, educational content on YouTube? I wanted to give making educational YouTube content a try, but the whole setup and video editing were just daunting.

Yes. This is how I do all my educational content and there is a Record feature for just this purpose. I prefer to record another take than to spend hours editing!
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