Duo team up to offer immersive video conferencing experience

Announced last week at Zoomtopia, Zoom’s user conference, the Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching is an added feature to Zoom Rooms, a solution that equips every sized conference room with all of the tools needed to run or join video meetings with just the tap of a button.

The telepresence feature takes the existing Zoom Room capabilities one step further to deliver a conferencing experience that is even closer to in-person meetings. The new service and its hardware components, including the Jabra PanaCast camera, provide a natural and immersive collaboration experience, improving participant engagement even when colleagues are thousands of miles away.

Jabra PanaCast is certified for Zoom Rooms and was selected as being the first camera that could deliver three individual video streams in a single product. The three different camera angles will work in tandem with the Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching along with three microphones that detect which side is speaking. Then Zoom Rooms logic will switch to the proper camera angle based on the microphone activity.

If no one is speaking, the service automatically applies the full preset mode so that all participants are clearly captured and displayed in their actual size. Furthermore, the Jabra PanaCast’s small form factor allows the device to be placed at eye level, facilitating an eye-to-eye contact experience that removes barriers between colleagues and enables them to communicate as though they’re in the same room.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Jabra in delivering the next iteration of the Zoom Room to customers,” said Nick Yu, Head of Global Services. “With Jabra’s leading camera technology, we have developed a unique offering that delights users and IT departments by delivering a plug-and-play solution that takes the unnecessary complexity, cost and maintenance out of creating an immersive conferencing system.”

Jabra PanaCast is the world's first intelligent panoramic video collaboration device with three 13-megapixel cameras that work together as one via core technology embedded in the built-in Jabra PanaCast Vision Processor.

The multi-camera array solution offers a full 180° panoramic field of view, creating zero wasted space and eliminating the two out of five participants that are typically cut from a traditional camera’s view. The panoramic video and industry-first Intelligent Zoom autonomously and continuously optimise the field of view to include everyone in the conversation.

“At Jabra, we have long been focused on building advanced sound and video solutions to make the huddle room the optimal collaboration space,” said Nigel Dunn, Managing Director, Jabra EMEA North region.

“With the evolving nature of work, it is paramount that employees have a space to communicate and collaborate with each other, remote employees and colleagues around the globe. We are thrilled to work together with Zoom and be at the forefront in delivering a completely immersive conferencing platform using the best-in-class software, sound and video technology. We are confident the Jabra PanaCast will bring an unparalleled video experience to Zoom Rooms.”