How do I broadcast from an external camera?

First, for the BidWrangler Broadcast to provide the option to use an external camera (like the screenshot below), your Google Chrome browser settings will need to allow for the device. iPad/mobile Chrome browsers do not provide the settings presented here.

Start by navigating to the Chrome browser settings, which can be accessed via the settings/menu button shown below or by entering "chrome://settings" into your search/URL field.

From the Chrome settings, we need to navigate to "Privacy and security" (chrome://settings/privacy) > "Site settings" (chrome://settings/content). The camera and microphones need permission to be accessed from your bidding platform.

The following steps will be for the camera (chrome://settings/content/camera), but can be used for the microphone (chrome://settings/content/microphone) as well:

After clicking on Camera from the Site Settings, click on the device dropdown at the top of the page. It may be set to the default/device camera, but you should see that the external camera is an option. If it is not appearing, there are various troubleshooting that would need to be done in attempts to get Google Chrome to recognize the device:

Troubleshooting that we would recommend to start with includes:
  • Make sure your Google Chrome browser is up-to-date
  • Completely close and reopen Chrome
  • Make sure your laptop is up-to-date
  • Restart your laptop
  • Unplug/plug in all hardware (do this multiple times throughout testing the above) to test connections
  • Try another browser such as Firefox

If the above fails, it could be a hardware issue and you may want to try another camera and/or laptop.

Select the device you need the bidding platform to recognize:

With the device selected, check for "Sites can ask to use..." and find your bidding platform address as shown below:

Click on your bidding platform address and make sure camera and microphone are set to "Allow"

Finally, you may check that the device is available when starting the broadcast in the BidWrangler clerking panel and "Start Publishing".