Make Your Calls Better
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System callStreaming mediaMusical ensembleBroadcasting (networking)Slide ruleComputer animation
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Open setBroadcasting (networking)Software maintenanceWhiteboardDemo (music)BefehlsprozessorOpen setBroadcasting (networking)VideoconferencingGame theoryHacker (term)Computer hardwareWhiteboardConfiguration spaceSlide ruleStreaming mediaSystem callBitDemo (music)BefehlsprozessorComputer animation
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Physical systemStreaming mediaSoftwareOpen setBroadcasting (networking)SoftwareSlide rulePhysical systemDigital video recorderBuildingComputer-assisted translationComputer animation
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Function (mathematics)WebcamSlide ruleBitDemo (music)Point (geometry)Open setMultiplication signWebcamSystem callLoop (music)Meeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Slide ruleWebcamMedical imagingGame controllerLaptopInfinityWindowTouchscreenInstance (computer science)RecursionMultilaterationSurjective functionComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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Demo (music)WindowMathematicsSlide ruleComputer animation
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Open setBroadcasting (networking)Software maintenanceWhiteboardPhysical systemStreaming mediaSoftwareFunction (mathematics)WebcamSystem callMultiplication signComputer animation
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Host Identity ProtocolMoment of inertiaBitOverlay-NetzMedical imagingSlide ruleTouchscreenComputer animation
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AreaSlide ruleLattice (order)2 (number)Source code
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Installation artCompilerSymbol tableElectronic mailing listRevision controlAbsolute valueMeeting/Interview
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Interface (computing)PlastikkarteWikiLocal GroupLimit (category theory)Information securityPhysical systemConfiguration spaceOpen setComputer programmingInterface (computing)Computer fileReal-time operating systemSound cardComputer hardwareGroup actionAsynchronous Transfer ModeType theoryNoise (electronics)System callSocial classIntegrated development environmentCuboidWikiConfiguration spaceComputer animation
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Cartesian coordinate systemSound effectMeeting/Interview
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Optical disc driveBitWindowComputer animationSource code
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Buffer solutionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)DatenausgabegerätAsynchronous Transfer ModeSound cardDevice driveroutputInterface (computing)Set (mathematics)Row (database)1 (number)Befehlsprozessor
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Thomas KuhnSlide rulePulse (signal processing)Bridging (networking)System callSource codeComputer animation
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MIDIMultilaterationGame controllerKeyboard shortcutRevision controlCartesian coordinate systemLine (geometry)Pulse (signal processing)Computer programmingVideoconferencingFunction (mathematics)HypermediaMachine visionStreaming mediaNormal (geometry)Computer animation
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Local ringInstance (computer science)Slide ruleDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Configuration spaceProper mapMultiplication signSystem callSet (mathematics)Computer fileComputer animation
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Interface (computing)Multiplication signSystem callState of matterComputer animation
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Plug-in (computing)Plug-in (computing)System callSound effectPoint (geometry)Level (video gaming)Normal (geometry)Logic gateoutputDistanceFitness functionNoise (electronics)WordGame controllerThresholding (image processing)Multiplication signBitFilm editingData miningSet (mathematics)Equaliser (mathematics)Visualization (computer graphics)1 (number)Moment (mathematics)Volume (thermodynamics)Computer animation
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Point (geometry)Volume (thermodynamics)Logic gateSound effectEqualiser (mathematics)2 (number)Slide ruleComputer animation
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Drum memoryoutputInitial value problemSoftwareComputer animation
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Loop (music)Drum memoryComputer animation
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HookingDrum memoryVolume (thermodynamics)Computer animation
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Noise (electronics)Logic gateSound effectLevel (video gaming)Musical ensemble
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:06
Good day everyone. How's it going? I'm Simon I'm here to talk to you about the talk. You should have had before you're at your calls for the conference about how you can do your calls and your
00:23
online streams and your conference talks better using a broadcast studio and Jack the first slide so spot we're going to cover we're gonna have a quick about me
00:44
Then in a look at all open broadcast studio Then I'm gonna cover a sane way to configure Jack because there's lots of month on same ways and Finally, we might have a bit of fun. So quick about me
01:07
I've used Linux since 2002 Open SUSE since 2011 Worked for SUSE for a few years after Contributing to open SUSE. I'm in my fourth year in the board
01:22
About also kind of relevant to this talk. I have a significant history working with live audio and I've done a bit of videos switching stuff as well Audio is what I'm more passionate about So I'm gonna start with some disclaimers
01:42
Firstly I won't be covering pipe wire Most of what I've worked on for this talk I've done over the last couple of hack weeks That SUSE has had so thanks to them for letting me work on it But pipe wire wasn't ready then it's
02:02
Probably slightly more ready now, but I need another hat week to play with it The second massive disclaimer is This whole talk is a live demo of the things that I'm talking about I've already had some minor issues. I might have more everything might break. I
02:21
Might have to come back and rerecord this tomorrow. Who knows? But It'll be fun There are some things I didn't get to set up because of my issues this afternoon which means maybe you'll learn more the next disclaimer is The approach I'm taking can be CPU intensive
02:41
so If you're Trying to stream video games and stuff like that This may not work for you. You may need more hardware But this generally works fine for calls and the final disclaimer is I
03:00
Don't generally do my audio production on Linux So there's lots of things I don't know But there is a workshop tomorrow Afternoon, I think on it and so go check that out if you're more interested so on to Open broadcaster software, which is often called OBS studio
03:24
It's not the OBS build system we use It's software for video recording and streaming It's letting me do things like show these slides with my face in the corner or Switch to a bigger picture of me or
03:46
Show a spaceship if you don't want to see my cat if I don't want you to see my camera And I can click the wrong button and I'll probably do that again before the end of the talk And I can click the wrong button again, and you can see two cameras. Let's go back to my slides for a second
04:09
Where am I going next? so the way this bit of magic is useful for Um For doing conference calls and talks and stuff like that is
04:27
Using v4l to loop back you can create a virtual webcam and Then I can go to Jitsi and tell It to use my virtual webcam the same with teams. I've done it all the time with them
04:47
Finally on this slide. I've put some notes About things I had to do at one point. I Think some of this is an open sees a tumbleweed. I Probably did it manually when I did it
05:04
Obviously OBS studio is also great for recording or streaming Now we're back on to using OBS studio, so Now is when we get to see a bit of a live demo
05:21
That's changed lots Now what you can see is my control window zooming into infinity think somewhere Here we go. So Here I have a webcam thing
05:41
Image it's this camera image. I Have a jack we'll get on to that later. I only just discovered you need that in each of them for it to work and On this instance. I'm also sharing my whole screen So I could Move that around
06:07
move my camera around You can see it's hiding the kind of recursive windows. It's the main reason why it's there I can add things There's a bunch of things there's text
06:24
there's More cameras we can have as I did before We can have two cameras My laptop has a webcam as well So now you can see me twice. You can add fun pictures and graphics
06:45
That's how I'm doing my borders. We just insert an image If I make that so you can see it. I'm just gonna pick the border image. I hope that's the one I want
07:03
So there we go. We've got that Get rid of it as well. I'm gonna go back To my slides now So while I'm here, this is also how I'm doing my slides my slide screen is
07:26
Sharing the whole desktop But with my face in the corner if I come back here, you can see one of the nice things about the enlightenment desktop is it lets me
07:44
change Windows wherever I want. I think I might have accidentally killed the slide Just bear with me while I restart this slide show. This is the joys of live demos. So
08:22
Yeah, you can see another one of the layouts I'm using in this layout I've Got a bigger border. So I've cropped it left and right I Often have a messy desk. And so if I'm in a call I Want to hide lots of it and that's the easy way of doing that. I
08:43
Still have a messy desk because I didn't get time to clean up then here's another one You can notice in this one. There's this red border That means I'm not using the full camera and again, I've selected The bit I wanted so I'm going to talk quickly about creating it the overlays
09:07
They're basically just fancy images So over here to GIMP and see this one. I just copied my title slide out of
09:22
LibreOffice impress. I made it full screen. I printed the screen And there wasn't too much to that one This one I think I took that title slide and made it into a border This middle area is transparent so that if I put this border on top of the camera
09:40
It'll crop off the edges and you can also add fun things. So I regularly have talks Or meetings with people from fedora and they like to talk about fedora a lot So if they're talking about fedora a lot, I can put my fedora on Which I'll show you in a second. Here we go. Now I've got a fedora on
10:11
you can do much more useful things like this and this like putting in thumbs up or Useful raising your hand symbols so people can see what you want to say something without talking
10:26
But you can also have fun. I
10:41
Was having issues with The version of ABS In tumbleweed that wasn't rendering properly So here is a list of instructions that you don't need to read about how you can compile it and then run it I'll mostly put this here so people can read it later. So
11:10
now We're coming on to the second part of the talk which is configuring Jack using cadence Jack has
11:21
quite a reputation for being Hard to configure and hard to use but really powerful if you know what you're doing Cadence which is developed by one of the Linux distributions that focuses on live audio makes that much easier and
11:41
I thought that open sousa should be as good at live audio as Any other distro so I've packaged it So we're gonna have a look at that but first there is a couple of things You need to do this. Well The first one is an audio interface
12:00
An audio interface is basically a fancy sound card My sound cards are designed for Playing your movies back in surround sound Whereas an audio interface is a sound card that's designed for doing real-time audio quickly
12:22
If I swap cameras this crazy box with a headphone stuck to it Is the audio interface I'm using Steinberg something It kind of works mostly works in Linux because it has class compatible mode, but it doesn't fully I
12:45
Didn't buy it to work in Linux, but it does Before you buy something check the wiki for hardware support Because That's important the next thing is as you can see I have a fancy is my fanciest ish microphone
13:02
The best thing you can do to get better quality sound If you're doing calls often is to get a nice microphone which you need to get a USB one or many of them will need a audio interface and on the type of microphone
13:21
Over here. I Have this cheap. I Think this was 20 euros on Amazon with this mic stand The mic stand is readable reasonable. The mic is rubbish If you buy a not all cheap mics are good
13:41
The type of microphone is also important. So this microphone here is a very nice condenser microphone In my opinion, it sounds better than the microphone I'm using but because of its design it picks up a large amount of background noise which isn't always ideal if you're not in a quiet environment and
14:06
So I Would recommend Getting my one of these microphones a dynamic mic Um, one of the joys of so many people doing podcasts these days is
14:22
There are so many microphones out there that are advertised for podcasters Any of them will work well for what you're trying to do now To use jack to its full abilities
14:41
one thing you have to do is configure real-time priority for Audio and so firstly you add yourself to the audio group and then secondly you want to create this file with these things in it and then
15:01
members of the audio group can run programs with real-time priority one day I'll create an open sousa package that just does that and That will help everyone the next step is pretty simple
15:22
install cadence and Jack mixer so the way Jack works is Vastly dim it different to the way You we think about audio it's more like if you have a Audio studio or something. So you might have a an effect like this or
15:48
As one application or you might have a mixing desk as another application and basically, or you could have an instrument and
16:00
basically jack is allowing you to control how you connect all those applications so If we come and have a look at cadence quickly
16:21
Here it is. So I'll get to this bit in a minute, but The first step is configuring Jack So by from that window and then I sent it away. I'll bring it back. Let's try that again
16:51
So gives you a bunch of settings The important ones are here in the driver so here you can see I've configured my
17:04
audio interface There's a bunch of other devices here you could just use a normal sound card Here you can specify if you go to duplex mode that you want a different input and output device
17:22
that might be interesting if you're using say a USB microphone you might use that as the input and Then some other cheap sound card USB sound card to connect your headphones to Sample rate is here There is a bunch
17:42
44 100 is what most people bother dealing with You can go above that. You probably won't notice the difference I've configured a pretty big buffer here because This is for a talk. I don't care about having
18:00
very small milliseconds of latency so The smaller you make that buffer less latency you have the more CPU you use that's important for Say if you're trying to record audio and you really need that
18:21
So those are the main settings Cadence makes configuring that easy The other thing it does well is it creates bridges so I've configured to auto start a bridge to pulse audio Which means that I can send audio?
18:42
in and out of Pulse if I need to in a call, that's what I would normally do if we Come back to wherever I left the slides and have a look at the next slide So the next part of cadence that is really useful
19:04
is this tool which Lets you connect all your different applications together so Hardware here is my audio interface For reasons I have my microphone plugged into input 2
19:23
Ignore this bit for now. We'll come back to it. But then I have these two mixes The top one is basically called controlling whatever volume I want to send To my call or my stream or whatever and so
19:41
the moment it's just a microphone but If I'm bored and being dumb, I could send a drum kit or a Guitar, we'll play with that later I Also have pulse here, but it's muted so I could send audio from pulse. I
20:00
then have this second mixer here and this second mixer Is controlling what I hear? So you'll notice I have pulse muted in the top one Because if you're talking to me in a call, I don't want to send your voice back to you That's really annoying. So generally
20:22
From pulse audio. I'm taking the call audio and sending it directly to my headphones Along with my microphone so I can hear it's working and So that's how I control the balance of those two things For today, we have a slightly different setup
20:48
so I have As well a extra record out and that's going to OBS studio
21:01
so that the Video team can grab that and send that to you and that's how you're hearing your audio Normally you would hear it up here through pulse then I've got my headphones connected to one and two and I Could drag things around and if I wanted whatever I have plugged into mic for
21:27
To go straight through back to output for Just drag a line then I can Disconnect it when I don't want it anymore
21:42
The other thing that Jack can take care of is MIDI which we will play with Perhaps a bit later or we would have if my MIDI keyboard had showed up Not sure what's going on there, but MIDI allows you to send control signals between programs. So
22:10
So now this tool also lets you Add new applications run custom applications and
22:24
You can have different studios. So For example, I've got one for this talk Then I had the one I showed you before for normal conference calls The add new application. I'll show you it. It's not properly integrated with open SUSE
22:44
on my vision of Cadence today. It's completely broken. It was kind of working But you can theoretically automatically add your applications here some instruments This is things I'll
23:01
Get to making sure they work later For now I've been you can see I've got three applications here I've run custom commands which If we were to come to the next slide
23:23
The slide we're already at so I'm watching two instances of jack mixer with different configuration files and calf with its own set of saved set and
23:40
When cadence is working correctly you can press the go button and it will launch everything and configure everything directly and Then when you press the stop button It will stop it all one of the reasons that held me back from using jack and a proper microphone in calls was
24:01
the amount of time it took to set up and to connect all these things together every time It was just painful and annoying so I didn't do it often. I don't like leaving my audio interface on 24-7 with Jack running so Normally now that this saves my session state
24:23
I'll start my I'll turn on my interface start my session. I'll do my call. I'll close it down Then I'll turn off my interface again until I need it. So Now we're going to talk about some plugins so
24:41
Here you saw this big mess Basically, this is a bunch of effects and we can use these effects to make our call sound better Run you through a couple of the more important ones Bigger I can't make it bigger. So the first thing we're going to cover is a noise gate
25:15
The gate and compressor in here I don't think of the best but
25:21
If we open them we can have a look at cool visuals and that makes it Easy for me to explain so basically a noise gate will Cut all the audio if it's under a certain level so if you have a bit of a noisy mic Or something like that When people aren't talking
25:42
You Won't hear the noise when you're not talking people won't hear your noise so you can see that as I talk this Ball comes up based off loudness the important setting here is the threshold so That controls when it kicks in if you turn it up too high my voice is gonna cut out all the time
26:06
Like this you can see that some words were triggering it not all of them um If I bypass it I
26:21
Can hear a tiny bit of noise, but not too much this microphones pretty good, but If I come to the compressor for a second and I'll boost the input here Sorry that got really loud, but I went I
26:43
Won't talk. I'll just let you hear the noise So you can then configure a noise gate to get rid of all that background hiss and noise
27:01
can be quite effective if I Click away from my microphone you can't hear it See once I get past the fit a certain distance back
27:22
It's not turning on the mic. You're not hearing that noise That's a pretty useful feature in calls Next thing I'm going to talk about That's an important tool is a compressor so basically what a compressor does is it limits your really loud points and
27:48
Makes your quieter points Louder so you can see If this was the normal level audio level you can see that all my volume under a certain amount
28:03
Is Boosted slightly, but then once you get Really loud I can even change that a bit. It's gonna start Squashing my signal so if I get really loud into the microphone then you're not gonna hear shouting and so if you're a gamer who gets excited or
28:24
Something like that a compressor can be a really useful feature for you The next thing I have that I don't have turned on at the moment Is an equalizer The other mic I was using has a lot of low-end, so I was getting rid of it and
28:44
There was some other random weirdness here It's worth noting Equalizers can't add things that aren't there But if your microphone is not perfect And make some weird sounds then You can fix some things
29:02
So if I turn it on then it sounds a bit like this and I've got a bit of a thinner voice The next thing I have Which I didn't even properly set up for this microphone, so it's probably not working is a de-esser so
29:22
So if I turn it off some people have a lot of sound in their noise in as they speak and Some microphones pick that up and it can be pretty bad Mine's doing it a little bit if I Turn it off if I turn it back on that fixes it a bit. It's another useful tool to have so
29:48
Finally I had a reverb I was messing around with it. I Don't normally use one that much for talking. I don't particularly like the sound of this one for much talking but
30:00
We can turn it on And I can make the room bigger and Now I have an echo so if we come back to Here's my two mixes you can kind of see my volumes This orange thing up here means that at some point. I was too loud
30:24
so I'm just gonna clear that and then All those different effects is what you see up here, so you can see I mainly use my microphone in mono So for everything that has two I'm only using the first one
30:42
But the microphone goes into the gate then into the compressor then into the equalizer then the de-esser I could Drag these around so I could send the second reverb Into the second gate if I wanted for some reason and stuff like that and that's how you set that up so
31:07
Again, this is where cadence is a really helpful tool if we come back to my slides
31:21
I think now we get to the fun time which I'm gonna keep a bit shorter because As I said, I had some issues this afternoon, and it's not quite organized so But on my desk I have a MIDI keyboard
31:43
It was working all day. It's now not So we're not even gonna bother playing with that but What we can do is This is the mixer that controls what you guys hear We're gonna create a new input channel I'm gonna set its initial value to being off
32:06
It's gonna be in stereo We don't want direct out and we're gonna call this drums and so now we have another channel If we come back up here You can see we have drums we can play with
32:24
So now if I run hydrogen, which is a drum machine I can
32:41
Add a kick drum there crush
33:02
There's a simple drum loop and so That is actually playing Don't know how that's playing. Oh
33:22
So I Can hear that you can't because it's connected it directly to It connected that directly to my playback. So sorry I could hear that you guys couldn't We need to take the drum out and hook it up to the mixer And now if I hit play and now if we have a look at it
33:48
I can bring up the following the drums might be fun For you to if you're a guitarist or something and you want to jam with something. There's some basic drums
34:03
That can be some fun Now we're gonna add Another channel to our mixer. We're gonna call it good guitar this time
34:21
We're gonna launch Guitar x which is a virtual guitar amp in my unpreparedness. I have barely touched this. I Am also not a guitarist. I Am a bass player, but I
34:42
Can try and show you something so we get the idea so our guitars spawned up here This is where things can get really messy. I want to connect my guitar to the guitar channel then I
35:03
Want to get a guitar lead that I forgot sorry everyone back in a sec So I now have my guitar lead. I'm gonna plug that into channel one of the interface
35:26
I can then grab a guitar
35:41
And plug that Just plug that in So now I want to take my channel one signal and send it into the guitar amp we have a mixer if I bring up
36:02
It's our level. We have some noise Then we can come and play around in guitar X echo effects
36:35
There's a bunch of stuff you can do here
36:46
It's not the best sounding guitar amp in the world, but you can see it's quite noisy This is where a noise gate would be useful. That's enough playing with that for now. You didn't know I was there
37:20
Now you do I think that pretty much concludes
37:28
Everything I'm going to talk about for today