Newtek NDI camera: No video; has audio

Report · Apr 12, 2020

In Character, I am unable to get the NDI camera to work. Audio is streaming OK, but for the video input all it says is "Waiting for camera". When I open the hamburger box, Newtek NDI Video is checked.

The Newtek Studio Monitor shows the stream from my phone without problem.

Any ideas how to get it to start working?

Win10

Adobe CC

Report · Apr 13, 2020

Character uses NDI only for output (it sends the contents of the scene panel — video only, no audio).

On the input side it will say "Waiting for camera" if another app is already using the camera. What data-flow are you trying to achieve?

Report · Apr 13, 2020

Although I've been using Character for some time now I haven't needed or wanted to stream until now. I would like to stream live characters to Zoom. There is a recent youtube video by Nice Nelly that seems to fit the bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGU4X_-MAo4&t=503s

I have followed the video settings accurately using Mercury media, and NDI tools. Character is set up in streaming mode I seem to have understood all that. Zoom is set up to recieve Newtch NDI video so according to the the Nice Nelly Video all should work.

Thanks Dave

Report · Apr 14, 2020

We've found that the problem lies in the latest Zoom update where the program no longer recognizes any virtual camera input that it used to in previous versions. Our experience is specifically with MacOS but I believe this is the issue for everyone. Not sure if or when they are going to fix this and their support team hasn't been responsive at all.

Report · Apr 13, 2020

hi Dave.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the Newtek products, but i was planning on using my iphone as my webcam using the NDI|HX Camera for iPhone. I installed the NDI tools with the adobe plugin. I'm running the NDI input app to select the stream from my iphone to work as my input device for other apps to be able to see it.

As I previously mentioned, the camera panel shows Newtek NDI Video is checked...although I just noticed that I can't uncheck it.

I'll go snoop around the Newtek forums a bit more, but I didn't see anything that was related to my problem.

Cheers

Stew

Report · Apr 13, 2020

I tried to reply last night, but recently the forums sometimes the POST button does not work.

What OS are you on? (WIndows/Mac)

For Windows, I had the same problem that confused me for a while. I ran "Virtual Input" but the camera still did not work. For me the problem was in the system tray there is a Virtual Camera icon. I had not set the NDI Source for the virtual camera to listen to. Once I did that (right click on the icon in the system tray and selected the input NDI source), everything started working for me.

Report · Apr 14, 2020

My problem is that I seem to have all the relevent settings checked,. the mercury transmit preference in Charactor Animator, the NDI app in the system tray for adobe charactor animator and the zoom camera preference for the New Tec NDI Video input.

PS windows 10.

Report · Apr 13, 2020

I'm not sure what happened, but for some mystery of the Windows Gods, it suddenly started to work. I have no idea what finally made the magic happen.

Report · Apr 14, 2020

Virtual cameras can be kind of flaky. I have found that restarting my machine can sometimes allow a camera to show up in an application that previously wasn't working.

Report · Apr 14, 2020

Now I have nothing. Been working on this for 3 hours today with no results. Last night I was able to use the NDI Virtual Input for the camera in Adobe Character. I was even able to use NDI Scan Converter to be used as a camera. Everything seemed to be working just fine as expected...but then it all died today.

what i have discovered is when Ch is "waiting for camera" i can go into Win10 settings and turn off camera access. At that point, Ch doesn't show the NDI camera as an option. When I restore camera access in Win10 settings, the camera option shows in Ch, but still says "waiting for camera".

I've disabled every app on my PC from accessing the camera with the exception of Ch in hopes of freeing up whatever might be trying to access the NDI signal. This hasn't seemed to work either.

Next step will be to uninstall the NDI Tools and start again.

Report · Apr 14, 2020

Are you able to access the NDI virtual camera from the Windows camera app? What about when it stops working in Ch?

Usually "waiting for camera" means that Ch has sent a request to the camera for it to start streaming, but that camera hasn't responded.

You might also try stopping and then restarting the camera in Ch. This will send another request to Windows to start the camera stream.

Report · Apr 14, 2020

Doesn't show in any app. Last night, and for a brief while this evening, it all suddenly worked again. No idea why.

But once I closed Ch I haven't been able to get anything to work ... again. Several reboots and trying different orders of operations for starting the apps. Ch seems to randomly see when the virtual camera is available, which doesn't help to pinpoint if the problem is Ch or NDI.

As for the windows Camera app, it doesn't see it either. It also didn't see it when NDI was working correctly with Ch.

Trying to reforce a connection with the start/stop icon hasn't worked.

Report · Apr 16, 2020

I decided to uninstall Skype and then install the version from the Skype.com website. I can now verify that at least one other app is able to see the NDI feed as it works fine in Skype now.

I'm not sure what is happening with Ch. It is very buggy with reliability to see the NDI Virtual input. Its will randomly decide when it want to even recognize the NDI video feed as an actual input, and when it finally does, it will work without having any intervention from my part (i was away from keyboard for 30 minutes and it was working when i returned). When it works, it works great...but once the signal is lost i fell like it will never come back.

Any thoughts? Is there another virtual camera input app that i should try?

Report · Apr 18, 2020

Nobody from Adobe has any input or thoughts about what's happening, or should I say "Not happening", with this issue?

Not getting a lot of support for the $60/month I'm paying for Adobe CC.

Report · Apr 18, 2020

I tried on Windows and could not get it to work as well. You could try contacting Adobe Support (this is the community forums, not official support), but from another thread I think there was the report that only webcams are supported. NDI Virtual Input is not a webcam, it is a "fake" camera. As such, not "officially" supported. CH claims to support NDI output streaming.

It would be useful to support at times for sure though. I got CamTwist going on my Mac as a camera input (there is no NDI Virtual Input app on the Mac), but only by using the 2VUY signal (not the default which I assume is RGB). I wonder if its something like NDI Virtual Input only supports one video format and CH needs a different format (where webcam drivers normally support both). Does not solve the problem, but its not clear where the problem lies in this case.

There is also an area where feature requests can be submitted. Share it here if you do create a feature request to get more upvotes!

Report · Apr 19, 2020

I eventually surrendered the effort to get it to work for now. In order to get moving on the project, I had to purchase ManyCam and use that as a camera feed into Ch. It's not a big deal, just means more moving parts to fail and more cpu/ram loss.The Ch camera saw ManyCam instantly and is working well.

It is my workaround until a resolution is found.

Report · Apr 18, 2020

HI DiscoStew. I'm sorry you're running into issues here. I've actually worked on this quite a bit, but haven't been able to find a good free workaround.

I have tried to get my iPhone working as a webcam input working and I'm also having issues with NDI Virtual Input. I'm able to get the iPhone's NDI signal into my machine without issue, but using that signal with NDI Virtual Input has been that it's pretty hit or miss, and I'm not talking about just with Character Animator.

As for NDI *output* CH absolutely supports that and it's been used for very high profile broadcasts. That has been essentially flawless from my experience.

I will contact NewTek/VizRT about NDI Virtual Input to see if there's something we can do to make it a more reliable input.

Dan R.
CH QA Engineer

Report · Apr 19, 2020

Hi Daniel. Thank you for looking into this. If there is any more information that I could provide, don't hesitate to ask.

Report · May 01, 2020

I'm running into the same issue and found this thread. I'd be interested to hear if there's any updates. I can see my iPhone as in source in the NDI Studio Monitor so I know that video is getting to my PC. Thanks for looking into it.

-Jeremy