Marshall Electronics is showing its new point of view (POV) cameras and seamless switchers at InfoComm2015.
Devan Cress, Director of Sales, Broadcast AV Division of Marshall Electronics, says the company is debuting these products in order to target the videoconferencing market.
He says Marshall Electronics’ booth is displaying a conference room setting to demonstrate how the POV cameras and seamless switchers will work.
“These are small, miniature HDSI cameras,” Cress says. “Traditionally, in a conference room setting, you might have one camera set up on the T.V. Being in the video world, Marshall wants to step up and give various points of view [to end users.]”
The booth setup features the VSW-2200 four channel switcher, which works in tandem with four POV cameras placed around the setup.
“Everyone is looking for different ways to get multiple cameras in a conference room these days,” says Perry Goldstein, Director Of Sales & Marketing at Marshall Electronics/MXL. “The idea of having a webcam sitting on top of a T.V. covering the whole room is becoming dated and unacceptable. We’ve got a switcher that can take four cameras in, and since it’s an SDI, these cameras can be up to 300 feet from where that switcher is located.”
Goldstein also says the seamless switcher is key in this type of conference setting because it prevents the detection of glitches created when the cameras cut.
“That’s important because there’s no glitch as you switch from one camera to the other,” he says. “The point of that is: this switcher has an output that will go to the USB into the computer. If they’re switching cameras and there’s a glitch in between cuts, sometimes that codec will recognize it as a break in the conference, and may reset settings. By having a seamless switch, the softer programs will recognize this device as one camera. You’re switching cameras, but it doesn’t recognize the switch because it’s a continuous clean feed.”
Cress says these cameras and switchers can be integrated with all videoconferencing and switching solutions. He also says the technology features a USB 3.0 converter, which grants users five gigs to work with; he says this is ten times the amount of gigs allotted by the old 2.0 converter.
“This means you can get higher quality videos into your systems,” Cress says.
Cress also says the POV cameras will serve higher education end users well, and can be integrated into any campus setting.
“These cameras were built for the point of view market,” he says. “In the higher education field, this might be in a distance learning classroom, or could stretch all the way to a goal post, or penalty box hockey cam.”
Goldstein says these cameras are attractive to colleges because of their small size and high quality footage.
“We have one the size of a lipstick case, and one the size of a sugar cube,” he says “You can hide them places, they’re not taking up a lot of space, and they’re not intimidating people. They’re small but high quality.” 
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