Streaming and TeleVisits

During the pandemic, my oncologist was only doing televisits for her regular patients.  I'd still go the hospital for all my bloodwork and other tests but our discussions about the every six month test results would be done over the internet on streaming video as well as through messages in the hospital portal.

Since the pandemic, we've been back to visits in the hospital.  This was mostly due to my insistence though.  The last time we attempted a televisit, I was sent the wrong link...  or my oncologist was given the wrong link...  which meant it was a missed appointment and a waste of an hour for me since I had logged on early enough to not miss my doctor.  Then I stayed online using the provided link for another 30 minutes after our appointment starting time.  I eventually got a notification for a missed appointment.  

Needless to say, I responded to this "missed appointment" notification informing them we (Sheila and me) were indeed online and that my assumption was that the wrong link must have been sent to one of us.  For the next couple of years, we've been traveling up to the hospital instead.  Actually, I don't mind the 30 minute drive to the hospital.  It gets us out of the house which is a very rare thing since the beginning of the pandemic.  This provides us with a reason to have a meal out at a restaurant which is nice since we go nowhere in recent years.  As one might expect, I'm not too fond of televisit medical appointments after that bad link fiasco.   

Anyway, my oncologist wants to attempt another televisit for my next appointment in June so I set up my camera and microphone yesterday morning.  I figured I should test everything to ensure I can still flawlessly stream video and audio.  Four hours later I was still struggling with the software!  (Yes, I am getting old and have a bit of difficulty figuring out the logic of today's apps.  Software packages are typically no problem for me but small apps for cellphones are ridiculously illogical to me.  It is these small apps such as Zoom that have a completely different logic and user interface.)

Last night, as we watched a couple of basketball games on television (University of Dayton...  women followed by men), I did some research trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.

The first and biggest problem was that I had about a half second delay in the video and then an additional delay in audio!  That would not work for a flawless televisit so I needed to resolve this problem.  This delay was rendering effective communication near impossible.  As I said, I spent four hours troubleshooting this problem yesterday morning and then researched for another hour or two while watching basketball games last night.  

My research proved to be fruitful last night because I quickly ironed out the delay problems the following morning.  

I had been trying to save on bandwidth and CPU loads by dropping my framerate to the standard film/movie framerate of 24 frames per second rather than the overly popular 60 frames per second (which happens to be terrible for fast moving objects so I only use 60fps if I plan to turn footage into slow motion).  My desktop computer is getting old and high framerates as well as 4K video tends to bog down the computer causing stuttering video.  

Until now, I've never experienced any lagging or stuttering for video at FullHD, 24fps.  Unfortunately, at 24fps, the streaming video going through OBS and Zoom was now lagging by about half a second...  and the audio was lagging another 1/2 second behind that.  This lag rendered streaming video pointless, in my opinion.

During my research last night, I quickly found that many people were having this same delay problem so there was plenty of info on the subject.  Unfortunately, most of the recommended things to try didn't apply to me because I already had all of that set up correctly.  I needed to find another resolution to this problem.

One thing I did eventually find in my research was that, apparently, the capture card I'm using was designed for a minimum of FullHD at 60fps so it was recommended that I increase my framerate from 24fps to 60fps.  My thoughts had been to avoid this higher framerate because it would use more bandwidth and increase my CPU load.  Against all logic, this huge increase in CPU load made things more fluid and worked to eliminate that huge delay in video and audio!  It is a 4K capture card but, apparently, it must be run at only 60fps whether in FullHD or 4K which is insanely odd if you ask me.  So, although it is illogical that this resolved my lagging video and audio, it is due to a hardware limitation of the capture card I am using.  I never would have thought to try increasing my framerate to eliminate a delay!

Running streaming video at 60fps also introduces another problem though.  Whatever framerate you use, you should use a shutter speed that is a reciprocal of double the framerate.  So, when I go from 24fps to 60fps, I need to shorten my shutter speed from 1/50th of a second to 1/120th of a second (1/((60fps x 2))).  This means I need two and a half times more light to get proper exposure!  I'm working in a rather small area so adding light is difficult but I did manage to add a small LED light in the corner of my desk where my camera is mounted.

Another option to resolve the lighting issue is to increase my ISO setting but then you introduce more noise.  In my case, I increased my ISO slightly while also adding a small LED light just under my camera washing me with a little bit of soft, warm light.  This combination seemed to work fine.

My sound wasn't so great so I wanted to fix that too.  I am using a little stereo microphone mounted on top of my camera but it was sounding a bit on the trebly or tinny side...  sort of resembling the sound from an old AM transistor radio rather than the sound of a bassy DJ on FM radio.  Using this stereo microphone is an improvement over the built-in microphone in the camera but it is still lacking in sound quality.  I was confident that using some filters meant for this purpose would improve the sound quality but I needed to figure out how to do that.

The software I am using has all sorts of useful filters so, after a bit of self-education, I was able to correct the sound quality within the software but I had a problem in getting Zoom to use/recognize the improved filtered audio.  Zoom still sounded like an old AM transistor radio regardless of what I did in my studio software.  

After some additional research, I found that I needed to download and install a few more plugins for the software to get Zoom to use the audio I was producing.  I downloaded and installed two additional plugins so I could use "virtual cables" which finally resolved that problem after setting up these virtual cables (input and output) in Zoom's settings.

Another issue I was having is that I hadn't used Zoom in a couple of years and the app changed significantly in these past two years so I was a bit lost inside Zoom.  I still need to spend more time poking around in Zoom but I resolved all my major problems and am now fairly familiar with the updated Zoom app.  I really should totally familiarize myself with Zoom in case something goes wrong during my televisit with my oncologist. 

Below is a screenshot of everything working as it should.  I should note that I go through all this trouble for video conferencing because it does make a tremendous difference in quality which also makes a difference in effective communication.  (Actually, my primary care doctor had some positive remarks about the high quality of my last televisit with her so I know my streaming efforts are noticeably above average.)  Anyone who knows even a little bit about me (those whom have taken the little bit of effort to get to know me), I'm all about doing things as best as I can.  "Good enough" is rarely good enough, in my opinion.  Anything less than high quality should never be associated with me.

On the downside, this drive for quality is a serious sticking point for me getting recordings of me playing piano.  I'm so focused on the video and audio side of capturing video of me playing that it distracts me enough to negatively impact my piano skills.  If I am going to record myself playing piano, I really need someone else to do all the video and audio so I can focus on piano.

I still have a little bit more tweaking to do and I still want to completely familiarize myself with the Zoom app but things are working as they should now!