988508 - Retune vidyo audio to reduce keyboard noise in Star Trek MTV

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Infrastructure & Operations Graveyard :: Servicedesk, task)

Description

[Henry Langi [:hlangi]]

Pushing this over from ServiceNow.

Please re-tune vidyo audio in star trek. It is picking up keyboards as very loud.

Comment 1

[John Neff]

Hi guys,
Kind of at a loss as to how to handle this. The microphones are certainly more sensitive than users are used to, but I am not sure how to eliminate keyboard noise without also eliminating soft speakers. I could turn down the level of the microphones in general if you wish. Trying to do a frequency notch filter to just eliminate keyboard clicks does not seem practical, and would eliminate far too much of the frequency spectrum for spoken word and have a negative impact. Open to suggestions. Have multiple people complained, or is it possible there was a meeting with an exceptionally loud keyboard user?

Comment 2

[Eric Rescorla (:ekr)]

There's no typing detection of the kind that (say) Hangouts has?

Comment 3

[John Neff]

The "typing detection" on Google Hangouts is an auto mute feature that mutes between talking. This is accomplished in our hardware via setting up an audio Gate in the auto mixer settings of the audio hardware. I have gates setup already, and I can make them more aggressive if required. The drawback of this, is that when a soft speaker is participating in the meeting,  participants may either lose part of the audio they say from the beginning of their speech, or it may cause warbling audio from the room. We can make a visit to tighten this gating, but I believe it will make for a less natural sounding experience. Let me know how you wish to proceed.

Comment 4

[Eric Rescorla (:ekr)]

(In reply to John Neff from comment #3)
> The "typing detection" on Google Hangouts is an auto mute feature that mutes
> between talking. 

Hmm.. Are you sure about that?

That's not the impression I receive from:
https://plus.google.com/+TimHaloun/posts/jmRFiu7x7f8

This suggests that they are actually doing audio processing
to detect typing sounds specifically.






> This is accomplished in our hardware via setting up an
> audio Gate in the auto mixer settings of the audio hardware. I have gates
> setup already, and I can make them more aggressive if required. The drawback
> of this, is that when a soft speaker is participating in the meeting, 
> participants may either lose part of the audio they say from the beginning
> of their speech, or it may cause warbling audio from the room. We can make a
> visit to tighten this gating, but I believe it will make for a less natural
> sounding experience. Let me know how you wish to proceed.

Comment 5

[John Neff]

I do not pretend to know the processing behind Google Hangout and this feature. It definitely auto mutes, but I do not know if there is software to detect the specific sounds of typing or if this is done with a gating, by picking up only louder sounds, I just know it auto mutes. Most of the mentions made of it in my extremely limited online research suggests that many people are trying to discover how to turn the feature off as they are suffering adverse muting results while talking and typing. It is kind of a moot point since we are not using Google Hangout.

There are three potential ways to eliminate this given the feature set of the available hardware. Gating settings are the most obvious way, the second would be to try to isolate the frequencies of the keyboard clicks, and notch filter the microphones (this would likely have a very negative impact on the audio quality), or the obvious solution of asking participants to respect the fact they can be heard during a meeting if typing loud. Let me know how you wish to proceed.

Comment 6

[John Neff]

adding in Joel and Guillermo to let me know if I need to be dispatched on this issue

Comment 7

[Eric Rescorla (:ekr)]

(In reply to John Neff from comment #5)
> I do not pretend to know the processing behind Google Hangout and this
> feature. It definitely auto mutes, but I do not know if there is software to
> detect the specific sounds of typing or if this is done with a gating, by
> picking up only louder sounds, I just know it auto mutes. Most of the
> mentions made of it in my extremely limited online research suggests that
> many people are trying to discover how to turn the feature off as they are
> suffering adverse muting results while talking and typing. It is kind of a
> moot point since we are not using Google Hangout.
>
> There are three potential ways to eliminate this given the feature set of
> the available hardware. Gating settings are the most obvious way, the second
> would be to try to isolate the frequencies of the keyboard clicks, and notch
> filter the microphones (this would likely have a very negative impact on the
> audio quality), or the obvious solution of asking participants to respect
> the fact they can be heard during a meeting if typing loud. Let me know how
> you wish to proceed.


Well, my question was whether Vidyo offered or could be induced to offer a
similar feature based on DSP, rather than on simple hardware-based approaches
such as you suggest above.

Comment 8

[John Neff]

Eric,
Pardon my misunderstanding, as I was searching for a solution given the current hardware deployed (since the start of this Bugzilla told me to come re-tune a room). No, this feature is not offered by Vidyo. You can discuss with Guillermo internally if you would like to have it as a feature request to Vidyo. 

I am personally curious if this is accomplished in Hangouts just by electronically sensing the keyboard presses, as in many of the complaints I see regarding the feature, it sounds as if the auto-mute is activated no matter how quietly the keys are pressed.

Comment 9

[Guillermo Huerta [Disabled MoCo account]]

ekr,

Reading your link it seems like they are doing a full mute when there is typing detected.

"- If someone keeps typing in a Hangout, their mic will be muted until they stop"

This makes sense on a laptop as the typing is closer to the mic than the speaker.  Are you asking for this as a feature in VidyoDesktop or is typing being picked up locally in the Star Trek room?

Comment 10

[Eric Rescorla (:ekr)]

Well, I didn't file the original bug. All I was saying was that if Star Trek was picking up typing, it should in principle be possible for Vidyo to do something like hangouts does....

Comment 11

[Guillermo Huerta [Disabled MoCo account]]

Yeah, I think that would be a feature request on the Vidyo side.  My one concern would be we don't want a full mute in a room as people regularly speak over someone typing.  We could look at this from the dsp side as John was describing, but typing doesn't have the steady frequency that something like HVAC does.

Henry,

Do you know who filed the original bug?

Comment 12

[Henry Langi [:hlangi]]

Eric filed this in SN and I pushed it here.

Comment 13

[Eric Rescorla (:ekr)]

Ah, that explains why I didn't remember filing it. Let me do a call and see if it's still bad.

Comment 14

[Patrick Dang [:pdang]]

(In reply to Eric Rescorla (:ekr) from comment #13)
> Ah, that explains why I didn't remember filing it. Let me do a call and see
> if it's still bad.

Hello Eric, did you have a chance to test the room yet?

Comment 15

[Eric Rescorla (:ekr)]

It seems better now. No idea why. Let's close this.

Comment 16

[Henry Langi [:hlangi]]

Closing.