Member-only story

Microsoft Intelligent camera category — Let’s talk about it

Jimmy Vaughan
5 min readMar 10, 2022

--

So, the first thing that anyone reading here should do is know the definition of Microsoft Front Row and you can find the article explaining that here to explain the front of room layout experience that it is.

Read first because there is so much confusion over what Front Row is and much of the confusion comes when people are trying to explain Intelligent camera and how it might fit into Front Row. The 2 are not synonymous and need to be separated when discussing the technologies although they will come together in future releases of Teams Rooms technology.

Even more of the confusion comes around what role the camera plays in the Microsoft Intelligent camera category. So, lets break it down and see if maybe I can help clear up some of the confusion because I am having this conversation many more times than I would like to admit. (HA)

TODAYS MICROSOFT TEAMS CAMERA TECH

First let’s define what today’s technology is doing and what many of the OEM certified partner devices are delivering as advanced camera technology to help meeting room participants elevate to the levels of those who are remote.

Today it’s relatively easy. There is a camera, and it sends a single video feed to the Teams Rooms devices and that single video feed is sent into the Teams meetings and you might experience the image as outlined below.

As in the picture above with the camera at the table, you can see that the far end is delivered the single image of the room and all of the people via a single stream. This is a very traditional idea of how the systems work and how many of the traditional video conferencing systems have worked for year.

Now, some of the certified OEM partners that have partnered with Microsoft are doing some interesting identification through the camera sensor to identify people who are in those shots as you can see below, but the limitation still exists today that they can only deliver a single stream of video into Microsoft Teams.

--

--

Jimmy Vaughan
Jimmy Vaughan

Written by Jimmy Vaughan

With over 20 years of experience in AV and IT roles for a well diverse combination of employers, I have a specialty in devices and solutions for meeting spaces.

No responses yet