Automate VX 6.4: A Revolution in Multi-Camera Speaker Tracking
The latest software update to our multi-camera speaker tracking solution adds key features to the system
March 18
Automate VX 6.4: A Revolution in Multi-Camera Speaker Tracking

The working world of 2025 is one in which hybrid meetings are the norm. Take the United States, for example: A Gallup® poll taken in May of last year revealed that 53% of U.S. employees work in a hybrid environment while 27% are exclusively remote. That means that it’s incredibly likely that your next collaborative session, presentation, or lecture will include a blend of remote and in-person attendees.

As expected, the number of “exclusively remote” workers dropped and leveled off as the effects of the pandemic were mitigated. As more people returned to the office, they found that the technology that drove their hybrid meetings needed a fresh look — especially in “high-impact” spaces.

The High-Impact Space

We’ve spoken about how the right technology can enhance the meeting experience for those spaces  — as well as defining the term “high impact” — in a recent post on a system we’ve deployed at our Crestron offices in Cypress, California:

It’s excellent as a training or presentation space, in which meeting attendees are seated in a traditional classroom arrangement, but it can also be quickly — and very easily — converted into one of five other seating configurations to suit the needs of the meeting or demonstration within the space.

All these configurations, from training/presenting to collaboration/board meetings, are examples of “high-impact” or “high-value” spaces. These are rooms where critical information is shared, and decisions of utmost importance are made — in short, spaces vital to any enterprise, government institution, or university.

The technology in that space includes an Automate VX solution with 1 Beyond cameras. This solution can composite multiple live cameras, images, or text together to create a broadcast-quality view of the meeting for remote attendees. It’s a feature-rich solution augmented by Visual AI for auto-framing — now with an update that’s made it even better.

Learn more about the Automate VX multi-camera speaker tracking solution here.

Introducing the Latest Update: Automate VX 6.4

One of the features of the latest update to the solution — Automate VX 6.4 — is Visual AI direction-based camera selection and switching. Meeting attendees aren’t static — there are natural movements that people make when they’re collaborating. For example, people speaking in a hybrid meeting don’t always face the same direction; they may switch between talking to different people in the room and remote participants on a monitor.

That’s where this update shines: the Automate VX solution uses Visual AI direction to select the best camera based on where someone is looking and continues to switch cameras if they change direction while speaking. If someone turns their head while they’re talking, the system automatically switches to offer a head-on view of that speaker — not a profile. That means participants can interact naturally in the room during hybrid meetings without worrying if the remote participants have the best view.

Without Visual AI direction
With Visual AI direction

The system works by detecting faces and angles of facial features — while not recognizing or identifying specific people. (Crestron devices do not identify people, locally or otherwise.)

This software upgrade is supported on all Crestron Automate VX systems and operates seamlessly with all current or previous generations of Crestron’s 1 Beyond cameras. It’s the only solution of its kind — with multiple optical zoom cameras and third-party microphones — offering automatic switching based on face direction.

This update includes new features to our Intelligent Video Room Designer solution, too.

The Intelligent Video Room Designer: The Basics

For those unfamiliar with the room designer, it allows you to configure rooms ahead of time — even before purchasing any hardware. It’s simple to put cameras and microphones in a virtual room with a simple drag-and-drop function — and the program alerts you when mics are too close together or too far apart for the best results. It’s a quick and easy way to determine what your various shots will look like and adjust the design as necessary — and since absolutely no coding is involved, anyone can use the program without specialized knowledge.

Once you have the room configured to your liking, you can take that data and provide it to the key stakeholders and decision-makers for that room before you buy any hardware at all. In fact, Crestron encourages you to share that design file with our team so they can ensure you’re purchasing the right gear for the room. Between our in-person and online support and a completely intuitive Room Designer utility, you’ll have the perfect intelligent video system ready to go in no time.

Just Add Furniture

With this latest update, you can now add furniture directly within the Intelligent Video Room Designer. It’s simple to create tables and chairs that you can scale and move around the floorplan. You can save time by auto-populating seats and virtual microphone locations and easily account for extra furniture arrangements when you don't have a floor plan ready. We know that rooms and their functions can change, or plans aren’t finalized before the gear arrives — especially in larger deployments across campuses or enterprises — and the room designer now enables you to mock up different rooms very quickly.

Once you’re set, recalling a room design is easy, as we explained previously on the Crestron blog:

“For furniture placement in each configuration, the user can call up a ‘scenario,” says Cara Shannon, Crestron’s senior manager of product marketing. “A scenario pulls up an image that shows where the furniture should be placed,” she says. “What we recommend is that the installer or tech pro take a screenshot of the room set up the right way and make that image somewhat transparent so that then you can see the actual video underneath. It'll go to the same preset that you took that picture, and then you just match the furniture up with where it is. When you press that scenario on your touch panel, you'll be able to see the output with the camera in the same spot the picture was taken, and you can just realign the furniture correctly.”

The furniture feature is available on the online version of the room designer and the deployed system.

“Breadcrumbs” For Perfect Microphone Placement

Crestron Director of Technical Sales Matt Olsen added this to the aforementioned blog post: “If you want to take it a step further with enhanced visualization or on-screen instructions, the tools are there. When it comes to reconfiguring the room, simply line up the furniture to the onscreen trace in real-time to ensure perfect precision every time without messy marks on the floor, tape measures, or counting ceiling tiles.”

One issue, however, is that a furniture layout doesn't always tell the full story of how people use a room — they may end up shifting the seats or standing somewhere that’s not quite represented by the room design. Understanding where microphones detect that people speak the most in the room helps with room design accuracy. That’s why this iteration of the Automate VX package includes something we call “Breadcrumbs.” This feature visually shows up to 100 past “audio pickup” locations from a room’s microphones, providing vital positional data for the room’s design. (This is in addition to the Autoswitch preview feature, which shows the microphone information live while someone is talking but doesn't provide any historical record over time.)

When a user can clearly visualize past microphone pickup locations, they’ll create a room that yields the best possible results for both clear audio and proper camera switching.

Ultimately, the combination of the updates to the Visual AI for direction-based switching in the Automate VX software and the Intelligent Video Room Designer work together to help you design great rooms for collaboration, presentations, lectures, and more — rooms where people can focus on doing great work in an environment where everyone, whether they’re in the room or joining remotely, can see and be seen and hear and be heard.

This Automate VX 6.4 update revolutionizes multi-camera speaker tracking with Visual AI for direction-based switching, all while simplifying room configuration and support. It’s another Crestron solution that allows people to focus on their work — and not the tech that’s making the meeting possible.

featured products

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Automate VX

Automate VX employs multiple optical zoom cameras and voice-activated switching to ensure remote participants enjoy a clear, crisp view of everyone in the room and in-person participants never have to think about where to look to follow the conversation.

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New 1 Beyond Cameras - Clearly capture everyone in the room.

Crestron is introducing a new line of 1 Beyond™ cameras, each designed to perfectly capture every participant in the room — even those up to 60 feet away from the lens.

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