Adjust image crop via streamdeck

Hi there,

i’m wondering if there is a way to move the crop on an image while streaming.

We are streaming live to instagram (9x16) with the use of the crop function.
In the Pearl 2 Layout, we’ve set a background image in 1080x 1920. In an second layer on top of that image lager with use an SDI Input which is cropped to an 4x5 image. As we are streaming mostly press conferences with two or three people i would like to have a function to move to crop horizontally over the picture to set the talking person into the center of the crop.
is there a way to do this while streaming and in best case additionally using a streamdeck with preprogrammed buttons to move the picture left or right.

I’m looking forward for some great tips

Thomas

This is a great question - I believe it would in theory be possible as changing the crop would be a settings API command, but simply moving a crop left or right might be fairly complicated to program into a stream deck. Reason being, as Pearl can have multiple layouts and multiple channels, the command to change crop settings would need to be issued for the specific channel and layout you want to edit.

I’d like to reach out to our engineers to see if they have a better option, but likely easiest way to do live edits would be to simply use the Pearl WebUI. Changing a layout settings live is actually a fairly common thing we do during our shows to accommodate unforeseen things, just like in your example where someone isn’t positioned correctly.

Thank you for your patience while I look into this

Thank you for your patience - While many of the features Pearl has available can be easily and conveniently be accessed via API using third-party controllers, some of the “drag and drop” type elements of the Pearl WebUI are much more complicated. After speaking with our engineers, changing crop settings is certainly much easier using the Pearl WebUI.

This is because crop settings (position) are specified in pixels (px) and/or percentages (%) of a particular layout item (video source), for a particular layout, in a particular channel. New crop settings are specified inside the “layout save” command.

Parse of API payload
{"video":[{"type":"source","position":{"left":"0%","right":"0%","top":"0%","bottom":"0%","keep_aspect_ratio":true},"settings":**{"source":"AutoA"},"crop":{"left":"469px","top":"0px","width":"540px","height":"720px","fixedAspectRatio":"3x4"}}],**"audio":[{"type":"source","settings":{"source":"D2P490182.analog-a"}}],"background":"#000000"}

When a crop is changed, the absolute value of the position of the crop is changed for the layout item. As there is currently no way to increment horizontal or vertical crop position without sending a new command with new absolute values, for example, changing horizontal or vertical position by 5px in each new command, using an external controller would likely be a bit clunky and over complicated, requiring a new key for each incremental change.

What I will do is make a feature request for something that might make it easier to change these settings via third-party control. Another option might be scripting the command to increment via specific values after each command +/-. However, I am not aware of anything that is pre-built at the moment by the community.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if you want the full API command to experiment with. I’d be happy to help!

1 Like