Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

VSX Camera Control

The Polycom VSX 6000 and 7000 systems has a good quality, top mounted camera that can pan, tilt and zoom. These setting are controlled through the use of the arrow keys and the zoom bottom.

 The up and down arrow keys will tilt the camera up or down. The left and right arrow keys will pan the camera view to the left or right. Note that what is controlled is the direction of the screen view. The camera itself moves in the opposite direction specified so the resulting picture on the screen will pan in the direction selected by the arrow.

The camera can also zoom in for close up pictures or out for a wide angle view. Pressing on the top magnifying glass with the + will cause the camera to zoom-in toward the center of the current view. Pressing on the bottom magnifying glass with the - will cause the camera to zoom-out and broaden the field of the current view. Any magnification between the extreme settings can be used.

If you are in a point-to-point videoconference with another Polycom unit you may have been given the authorization to control the remote camera. This is an option that is determined and set by the administrator of the remote unit. Having remote camera access can be helpful if the person at the remote site forgets to adjust the camera for best display or you want a different view. When in a videoconference with more than one remote site you will only have control of your local camera.

In either case you will need to specify the camera that you want to control. On some remote control units there will be a single rocker button like the one used for zoom. On other controllers there may be individual buttons.

	The near camera button displays a large head and shoulder icon. When pressed, a small camera pointing toward you will briefly appear in the upper right corner of the video display.
	The far camera button displays a small head and shoulder icon. When pressed, a small camera pointing away from you will briefly appear in the upper right corner of the video display.

 

Preset Control - While the control buttons make it easy to move the camera to provide a different view, it does take time to reposition the camera to the exact view you are after. It is possible to use predefined camera positions for easy, predefined camera positioning. A total of 100 (0 - 99) presets can be created and stored on a VSX unit. To retrieve a preset video display simply press the near or far camera button followed by the number(s) associated with the desired view. The near or far camera button only needs to be pressed if changing camera selection. Once the camera is selected you only need to press the number key.

In addition to automatically pointing the main camera to predefined positions in the meeting room, presets can also be used to easily select alternative sources of video input such as an Elmo, auxiliary camera or a DVD/VCR if they are connected.

From the notebook of Thomas Hintz
the AgriGator