Outside Looking in with Crestron Automate VX

Tom Arbuthnot: 0:00

In this Teams Insider podcast, I talk to Sam Kennedy from Crestron. We dive specifically into the newly team certified Crestron Automate VX solution. We talk about the benefits of having an outside in camera perspective for meetings. We talk about pricing, we talk about layouts, and we also talk about how AI direction is coming. Thanks to Sam for the pod and many thanks to Crestron for being a supporter of Empowering Cloud. We really appreciate them. On with the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the pod. Really looking forward to this one. Topical timing as well, because Crestron have had some recent announcements I wanted to dig into. Sam is always who I go to get the inside track on what's going on in Crestron. Hey, Sam.

Sam Kennedy: 0:43

Morning, Tom.

Tom Arbuthnot: 0:43

Do you want to give us a bit of an intro? I think most people in our space are going to know you from history, but give us a little bit of background just to set the scene.

Sam Kennedy: 0:50

Sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Sam Kennedy. I currently run product marketing for Crestron. I've been in the UCAV industry for over 25 years. I spent 17 years at Polycom and Poly. I've been even before that I was at some of the Channels with Wire One and ViewTech. And so I go way, way back, but yeah, I've been really excited to be at Crestron and help Crestron with telling our story.

Tom Arbuthnot: 1:15

Awesome. And I was at your Modern Work Summit earlier in the year. So Crestron getting into the Android space, so there's stuff to talk about there. And we were saying before this session, I think we could talk for hours between us on this topic, but the thing I wanted to zoom in on for this pod is the whole outside in kind of conversation. So at the moment in the industry, there's a lot of vendors going for the center of room camera experience and it's really in the MTR world. And Crestron have just announced the Automate VX being certified with Teams, which is the opposite. It's outside in multi camera. Maybe you could just give us an intro because I feel like it's certainly in my world. Automate VX is definitely the high end experience. So not everybody might know the background. So what is Automate VX and how does that work with Microsoft Teams Rooms?

Sam Kennedy: 1:59

Yeah, sure. So first off, I think part of the driver for all of this is the experience that the end users are expecting. As people are coming back to the office, they're looking for a lot more equitable experience when they're joining meetings. So everyone who's been at home for the last few years, or anyone who's hybrid, who's remote, they're coming in there. You see a nice headshot of them no matter where they are. But as people start to get back to the office, I think that the user expectation is. They don't want that long bowling alley table. They don't want the view of tables and chairs. They want to be able to see people. And I don't want everybody around a table to be little itty bitty. I can't even tell who it is. So it's this real drive around an equitable experience the need for multiple cameras in the room. So that's, I think, the big driver that we're seeing in the industry is that I want a more equitable experience. How do I deliver that more equitable experience? I most notably do it via multiple cameras. A single camera, I could potentially do it with but again, my resolution, there's a lot of challenges with a single camera.

Tom Arbuthnot: 3:06

Even, on bars, we're starting to see some different lenses on bars to try

Sam Kennedy: 3:10

Absolutely. Even the Crestron bar, we have four different lenses on our bar. So single camera, but four distinct lenses there with different fields of view so that we can get better video quality from certain from distances. So we're as an industry trying to solve it with a single camera, but the reality is the different angles that multiple cameras around the room give you, gives us that other that that next level of quality of experience. So that's where the industry is. And then, what's tending to happen is This kind of 2 approaches that are coming to the forefront. And we tend to see in that smaller spaces. At least I believe it's a smaller spaces kind of a solution that I have a bar in the front of the room and then I have a device that sits on the table and the cameras do that inside out that you were describing. So it's, In the middle, and then looking outside as to what's the best view of that particular moment. Crestron had the opposite.

Tom Arbuthnot: 4:10

It's a hark back to the round table. We both go back that way. I know you have a particular attachment to that in the Poly days, that idea of having a center of table camera. As you're looking across at each other in theory, I question how often we look across the table these days. We seem to all look at the content, but if you were looking across, you'd get a nice framed image because it's coming from the center of the table.

Sam Kennedy: 4:31

Yeah, so I do have a special heart. The roundtable was under, uh, I was One of my team members has run that product for a while. So it definitely is a special spot for me. And I think the challenge that the vendors that are doing the center of the table solved now that the roundtable did not, Was the roundtable typically would get the side of my face when somebody who was remote was talking, right? So it wasn't all that great of an experience. And so now that have multiple viewing angles, it does solve for that. So I think those that are in that space have elevated the industry. For us, we have a bit of a different approach in that we look at that outside in. So we remove the devices from the table. And we put cameras around the wall. So we have those outside views looking in, and we believe that this is a better experience, especially for those medium to large, or even extra large type rooms. At Crestron, what we do is we choose optical zoom cameras because it gives you that better quality of experience, especially in those larger rooms. Automate VX Is this software that runs inside of a room that can take up to 12 cameras placed anywhere around the room. So it can be a circle room. It could be a square room. It could be a rectangle room. It could be odd shaped room, but it takes those 12 cameras together. And then it takes all those different feeds and intelligently. Figures out what's the best view at that particular moment. This person speaking, that person speaking, someone's at the podium, walking around. It takes all of those different camera feeds and then feeds that into your Microsoft Teams Room, your Zoom room. So it is Codec independent. Of course, we would want it to be with the Crestron Flex, but it can be with anyone. It's not...

Tom Arbuthnot: 6:17

Yeah that's part of the Microsoft Teams certification, isn't it? Technically, can attach that to any

Sam Kennedy: 6:22

So it can be to any MTR. The biggest news of the last few weeks for us is we've had this multi camera solution. Now it is Microsoft Teams certified. And with that certification, yes, you can plug it into any Microsoft Teams Room. And it really drives that equitable experience that people are looking for and gives you that really high quality because it's optical zoom. Our optical zoom cameras do anywhere from 10 to 20 times optical zoom. So it's a really high quality video, visual image. And again, the view that people see on the far end can be either the active speaker. It can be composited shots of, say, the active speaker, the full room. There's so much flexibility in the approach that we go that again really drives that equitable experience.

Tom Arbuthnot: 7:05

Yeah. And this is a whole new capability in the Microsoft Teams Rooms ecosystem. We've never really had this external multi camera controller doing all the intelligence and pumping it in. It was interesting. Ilya spoke at your Modern Work Summit and he was saying how, that very high end experience, just that there's something about multi camera and framing that that just blew people's socks off when they see it live.

Sam Kennedy: 7:26

Yeah, it's it really is. I'm lucky enough that I get to show a lot of people their first time ever experiencing anything like this. And it really is that amazing of just this very produced effect. That's all driven automatically. One of the things that Ilya says that really strikes me. One of the things that he likes that resonates with me is this is even a two camera solution where we typically right, the cameras are sitting on the wall with the monitors. But if you think of the opposite wall, we can put another camera like a tracking camera there. Because one of the use cases that they see that Ilya talks about is he may be remote. There may be a bunch of people remote. But then there's a large group of people in the room. Someone inevitably when they go to present to the people in the room stands right in front of the camera. So you're seeing the backside of the person.

Tom Arbuthnot: 8:16

Yeah. Yeah. and so we haven't the industry term for this butt cam of like, you know,

Sam Kennedy: 8:21

Butt cam, right? I didn't want to say it, but since you brought it up. Yeah. So then, we solve that butt cam problem so that the camera, as soon as someone walks into this particular area, they start speaking. The microphone is going to trigger that that should be the camera. And then as the person follows around, instead of seeing their backside, you're seeing their face and it all happens automatically. And again, the users don't have to learn how to do anything. They walk in, they press join in their Teams on the MTR and done.

Tom Arbuthnot: 8:48

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things you touched on there. I want to dig into actually. One is like you immediately talk about 12 cams because that's the max, but it doesn't have to be 12, does it? So that's the high end, but you could have twos and threes and fours if appropriate for the space.

Sam Kennedy: 9:01

And it's much more common to be a handful of cameras than it is to 12 cameras. I can't help myself to get all excited that it's 12 cameras. That but yeah, there's so much flexibility you could build out. I mean, people go crazy, especially in the Crestron world where, we have a lot of people that love to do all sorts of customization. So you could get all that, but the majority of customers here, we're talking about a handful of customers and the price point. I can't help but call it out when we think at a basic level of Automate VX, it's around$15, 000 MSRP. So, with the experience that we're able to deliver, I believe a lot of people think, Oh, my God, it must cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars

Tom Arbuthnot: 9:40

I think that is a perception because you're straight into multi camera high end boardroom. Like we must be like 100K kind of price point, but you're coming in much lower.

Sam Kennedy: 9:47

and it's almost never that right? Again, like I said, there are people that have certain applications, certain high level boardrooms where they're trying to deliver something very next generation. Yeah, you could get to that price point and you can deliver it with Automated yet, but a normal installation is a few cameras. It is a much more reasonable price point and it's not as inexpensive as just a bar but you're getting that next level of experience.

Tom Arbuthnot: 10:14

It's the kit for the use cases, isn't it? So you touched on install there because that's another one I think is really interesting is that the brains in this scenario is not in the MTR, you're essentially subbing that out to Automate VX to do the intelligence. So how does that work? How automatic is that? How much is programming? You mentioned that speaker tracking is there as well.

Sam Kennedy: 10:33

Yes. So a couple of things to call up. So first off, as it relates to AutomateVX, we have two different types of cameras. One is an automatic tracking camera. We call it the auto tracker. So it will leverage some AI and will follow a person around. So that's one type of camera. Typically you have one of those. Where you have a presenter zone or a podium, a whiteboard the butt camera. So again that's, that's, I'm, it's not the marketing term, but

Tom Arbuthnot: 11:00

yeah. Marketing are going to tell us off aren't they. So you could set a range for that, but you're essentially saying to that camera, like use AI intelligence to frame appropriately.

Sam Kennedy: 11:07

Correct. So you typically have one auto tracker camera, and then the rest would be just plain pan, tilt, and zoom, optical zoom cameras. And then from there, the Automate VX tells those cameras. the coordinates when someone's speaking. So the way Automate VX works today is it's a combination of this, the Automate VX, which is that software that sits inside of the room, the cameras themselves, and then the microphone or microphones that are in the room. So what happens is when someone's speaking. Speaks the microphone is going to say, okay, someone's speaking in seat one or this particular area. It's then going to tell the Automate VX as to, okay, someone speaking there leverage this camera shot. Now, today we do this all with tracking. Very shortly we're going to add some AI capabilities so that when it zooms into a particular seat. Even if someone is sitting like off center, the AI will take the camera and move it. And so the person will have that rule of third so that someone will be properly centered. Today we track the presets very shortly here. We're going to track the presets and then leverage some visual AI on top of that.

Tom Arbuthnot: 12:10

Yeah, that visual AI is really exciting because the presets are cool and like in a, in the boardroom scenario where the chairs are basically nailed down and they're going to sit where they're going to sit, that's fine. But as you go to different shaped rooms, inevitably, everybody shuffles a little bit left, shuffles a little bit right. So the fact you can correct for that is really interesting.

Sam Kennedy: 12:27

Yeah, absolutely. I think it easier to deploy these, makes it easier for the admin. As people are moving things around, you don't have to get as involved and definitely helps the end user because experience is just much better. But there's one other piece I wanted to talk about if I could, and that is this tool that we have to configure and design these rooms, because I think it's one of the big differentiators for us with AutomateVX is we have this design tool that makes it very easy. So it's a web based tool. So anyone that could go wants to try it out, you can go to crestron.com and you can play with it. It basically, it's a very easy tool that first, you come up with your, how big is your room, right? It's a, it's 10 by 10, 20 by 20, whatever size room you have. And then it has this drag and drop capability. Okay. So I put the table here, put the chairs here. It easily allows me to put the cameras, the microphone, and it basically in a few minutes, I can design my room and when once I'm done with that. Okay, this design looks great. I then output a file and that's my configuration file and so that when the person that goes to set the room up, of course, they got to mount the cameras. But the configurations are already done. And so you can set these up and automate even with all this capability that's built into this in a matter of minutes. I mean, you know, Typically because it takes time to mount the cameras. It's a day. It's 2 days. Maybe because again, you got to run cable. But other than that, it's a very straightforward set up. There's no. Command line. It's a very easy design, very easy set up installing, but that just helps with the troubleshooting because inevitably people are going to have problems in rooms. Every room, no matter what room you're in and so the troubleshooting mechanisms that are built into this are also really critical.

Tom Arbuthnot: 14:11

Yeah, I'm glad you touched on that because that's another one of Crestron typically known for like high end complex programmers can do amazing things, but you need to bring in the SMEs(Subject Matter Experts) to spend three days programming the things. The fact you're bringing that to an easier experience is something that we talked off camera about. You were saying obviously, there's a good opportunity for the AV partners to do that piece, but also there are enterprises that can do this stuff in house. They have the skill in house.

Sam Kennedy: 14:35

Absolutely. A lot of our enterprises just managed to do the install themselves. And the hardest part is, you'd have to be able to set up an audio DSP. If you know how to do that, you're pretty much good to go. And again, mounting the cameras. That's probably the hardest part of the whole. So anybody that can mount cameras can ultimately, I believe pretty much get through all this. We have the tools. A lot of our customers do all the management themselves. So once it's installed, like I said, everything breaks. It's how do you react when something breaks? Yeah. And so I think with this tool that we have, it makes it extremely easy to troubleshoot. You can see real time that same tool I was talking about in the design in a post sale. Someone who's supporting this room, let's say one of the cameras isn't picking up a particular area. You're able to see real time where the audio is picking up in that room, and you're able to modify very simply from there. So we have amazing tools that help, so it is very cost effective. It's easy to design, easy to set up and very easy to manage. And like I said, because we're leveraging optical zoom cameras the quality of experience is just, even in, we see this in some of very large rooms. I get often asked like, how big is the biggest room? I don't even know how to say it because we can do so many cameras. We can do x20 optical zoom. We see some of these cameras in auditoriums because x20 optical zoom. You could be 30 meters away and it's amazing. There's just an overwhelming amount of flexibility and ease. And again, that outside in, I believe delivers the best experience for the users as well.

Tom Arbuthnot: 16:10

How do the, again, non AVX, but how do the cameras connect back to the Automated VX? Is that like dedicated runs? Is that POE? Do they need power? How does that work?

Sam Kennedy: 16:18

So we support SDI, NDI, HDMI, right? Typically it's gonna be SDI or NDI. So that means it's either a direct cable run or I'm plugging it into the network. The cameras themselves, are POE. So I can just have a single ethernet cable run and call it a day. So typically that's how most organizations would just do it. Just NDI from the camera, like again, just a standard category cable, run it back to the POE switch in the room. Typically, that's how it's done. And therefore, I don't have to plug it into my corporate network or anything like that. So I just keep everything local. It's relatively, I guess it's straightforward from a deployment perspective.

Tom Arbuthnot: 16:56

Awesome. And then this got certified a couple of weeks ago, officially like this is shipping, this is real. This is things that they can do. Customers can do today.

Sam Kennedy: 17:05

It's shipping. Absolutely. It's in a lot of, fortune, 500 again, you think high end boardroom. So it's in a lot of rooms. It's in a lot of organizations today. And, Microsoft has talked publicly about how they've been deploying it internally. It's in the Hive. It's in some very important boardrooms inside of Microsoft. So it has been available. Crestron acquired a company about two years ago, so that company went beyond it had years of development built into this, even before Crestron got involved. And then with 2 years of development on top of that. So it is a product that's been in the market for a long time. We've done significant enhancements. We've learned so much through the years that this is, it's very tried and true, because typically this is going in the most important rooms. Inside an organization, so it has to work. It has to work consistently with very little hands on, right? So it just has to always work. And that's the type of rooms where we see this today. It's very interesting with it almost opposite of most devices or solutions inside of organizations. We typically start high end here and then start to work our way down where you would almost go. Oh, my God, it should be like start here and then work your way to the boardrooms. We tend to start in the boardrooms and work our way down. But yeah we're Microsoft. I would say that they had, they didn't even have a category for multi camera solutions before this. So it was something that they really loved the Crestron solution. They've been deploying it internal. And again, I can't speak for them. But what it seems like is they see the value of this multi camera solution. They see so much value in it that they wanted to create a whole new category for this type of solution. And yeah, we're the only one, right now, I'm sure there will be others. But we're ready for that. We're happy to discuss the competitive market. Competitive is good for everybody, right? Keeps us on our toes, makes everybody stronger. Right now we're the only multi camera solution certified by Microsoft Teams.

Tom Arbuthnot: 19:02

Yeah, I think it's important for the Microsoft ecosystem because there's always the conversation in the Microsoft Teams Room space of is there a cap on what you can do with MTR? Can you do an auditorium? Can you do that, worldwide boardroom experience? And this is a big unlock for that higher end. Like we want the multi camera, we want it to auto, do the framing and all that kind of stuff. But today, you can't do that with. Single camera even single camera windows MTR. You're not going to get the exact multiple angles that you can get from multi cameras.

Sam Kennedy: 19:28

Yeah and like you said, the flexibility that again, I can't say 12 cameras, of course it can go up in those auditorium and those big boardrooms, but even for those large conference rooms or even medium sized conference rooms where I want to solve that, backside camera. It's it is a cost effective and delivers a really great solution, even in rooms where maybe I just need two or three cameras to give you those different angles. Maybe I want one cameras on three walls, right? Both sides of the table and then one at the front. All of this flexibility is built into this. And so yeah, I think you can start to put these multi, especially this outside in view that I believe delivers the best experience in the market. You can do it in a very cost effective, and you can start to get in and deploy these in rooms, where you may not be able to even put collaboration in before.

Tom Arbuthnot: 20:18

I'm really excited about where we are in this space at the moment, because this is a chance for the OEMs to differentiate, not just on camera technology, but on the auto-framing the AI, the direction even if everybody's got the same hardware, which of course they haven't, but imagine it's similar. There's still a huge Delta. And I get to test a lot of different kit from lots of different vendors around how good that auto-framing that, that auto-cutting, and if we get into AI direction, others have talked about this, Cisco have talked about this as well. Like the idea that in, we're going down a journey now where your meeting will be directed and the cuts will be nice and it will be clean. I think that's going to be a real chance to see how people differentiate.

Sam Kennedy: 20:56

I know a lot of people are talking about it. We're there. That's the beauty for us is I think our biggest challenge at Crestron is just getting the word out to really educate folks that we do have a solution. And the fact that Microsoft has gotten behind us and certified it as a solution. It's been interesting again. We've had the solution almost 2 years now. And, we've been screaming it, talking about a lot, and like I said, it goes into a lot of the highest end rooms, but it's very interesting to the way people are listening now that Microsoft has certified this, that it is a full on MTR certified solution. It's everyone's listening a little deeper now.

Tom Arbuthnot: 21:34

Yeah, that totally happens though, because there's a lot of solutions that are right on the verge of certification. So there's a lot of OEMs always running around saying this is about to happen. It's from a supportability standpoint, everything else, we just want to see that tick box. So when you get it suddenly okay, now I'm really listening. Like we could do this. What exactly is it?

Sam Kennedy: 21:51

Yeah, I would encourage everyone if you haven't seen a demo, sign yourself up for a demo. Check our website to see some of the videos we have there, but nothing's better than seeing it live.

Tom Arbuthnot: 22:04

You've had it at the shows as well, haven't you? So I've seen demos over here at one of the biggest shows that Crestron are at. Usually, there's a fenced off boardroom to actually have the experience. And the cool thing about that is, and I think if you are going to get this demoed, you have to sit outside and watch people use it, right? Booth tour people are really good at that because I see a lot of people's demo room kit and they take you into the room. It's this is for the remote attendees.

Sam Kennedy: 22:25

Absolutely. It's all about the far end experience, right? The people in the room. That's the beauty. The technology needs to fade away. I shouldn't even be thinking about, I should just be walking into a room and I have my meeting, right? I don't think about the technology. And I think that's 1 of the values that we believe the outside in brings. I don't have this camera sitting in the front of the table that's always I can always see the camera sitting there. So our approach is to put the technology outside and that allows people to act a little bit more naturally. But you're absolutely right that the experience is for the people that are remote. So I want to see the visual. How close does the camera shoot? What's the quality of experience when the camera shoots? What are the delays? What happens when multiple people on the same side of the table starts speaking? There's a number of things to look at that we'll show you when we do a 30 minute demo you get to see it all. And it's really it's such a powerful solution. Like I said, very cost effective as well.

Tom Arbuthnot: 23:22

I feel like you've given me that there's definitely a checklist in the works there. If you're going to test, like multi camera or AI camera direction, try this, like all the edge cases to see how it works.

Sam Kennedy: 23:30

Like I said, we have years of experience into these multi-camera solutions yeah, absolutely. Ask, talk to us, talk to our sellers. We have subject matter experts specifically tied to multi-camera. These guys have been doing this for years, and absolutely. Pick their brain. We have so many years of development into this. That we do know a lot of the challenges and we, I think at Crestron, we somewhat take them for granted, but a lot of the other vendors that are out there. Talking about this is to come where we've thought through things that we think our competitors are going to face in the future. We faced that years ago and have already lived to it.

Tom Arbuthnot: 24:06

Pre MTR as well,

Sam Kennedy: 24:07

Yeah, so we're years into this, so we're a very mature platform. And this is why we believe that outside in is a better experience, especially for those medium up. Because of all of these years of development and in reality, it's not just in a lab, like I said, those high end boardrooms, that's where we live today.

Tom Arbuthnot: 24:27

I feel like one of the AV partners need to set a room up that's both center of room and outside of room and run the same meeting and see what the experience is.

Sam Kennedy: 24:35

Yeah, I do see them somewhat complimenting each other. Right? I, like I said, I said, I have a soft, soft spot in my heart for roundtable. So I'm a believer in those types of solutions. But for me, I think they're just more tuned to smaller spaces. A few people around the room. I think it really does deliver a unique and in certain cases, valuable experience, but as it starts to go up in room size, I hit medium size, certain medium size and definitely large and extra large. The outside in is just a overall better, it's just a better experience and I would be happy to have any partners that wanted to, I would absolutely support that because again, so I think inside of organizations, we will see a mix certain customers that put that have the center of the table in certain smaller rooms and solutions that are outside in

Tom Arbuthnot: 25:26

Yeah, this is the beauty of ecosystem is there's plenty of options. I don't see any customers doing one vendor top to bottom these days. There's always a mix. So that's good to have options.

Sam Kennedy: 25:37

Yeah. And again, for us, we encourage that, right? Of course, we want everything to be Crestron, but, that's not reality. And, we play in lots of different

Tom Arbuthnot: 25:45

To be fair to you, getting there with the Android bar coming with the MTRs There's a case to be made, but that's another podcast on the Android bar at points.

Sam Kennedy: 25:52

I'm sitting, I have the staring at my video bar, right? It's right over the camera here. It might be running Teams on there.

Tom Arbuthnot: 25:58

We'll have you back Sam, when that hits GA, we'll do another one and we'll dive into that because it's super interesting you're getting into the Android space as well. But I think we're time. Thanks for diving in. Really appreciate it. If you want to find out more, I guess you guys, Crestron Partners, website, all the usual places to check this out. I would say, yeah, go and get a demo if you can, check it out at the shows because it's something you have to see from the outside and see what's going on to really get the benefit of it. But yeah, exciting technology. Cheers Sam, appreciate the time.

Sam Kennedy: 26:25

Appreciate it. Thank you very much Tom.