This cat zoom filter is almost impossible to find. here’s why

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“Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter enabled in the video settings,” the judge said.

The tearful-looking kitten opened its mouth, but said nothing, as its eyes rocked back and forth across the screen.

“Can you hear me, judge?” Ponton asked, appearing as the desperate feline.

“I’m here, live, I’m not a cat,” he said seconds later.

The exchange, which lasted less than a minute until the filter was deactivated and Ponton returned to human form, ricocheted around the internet on Tuesday after being posted on the court’s YouTube channel. Beyond the bursts of laughter he invariably elicited in viewers, he asked questions that even Ponton couldn’t answer: How did it go? And where else can other people get this adorable cat filter?

Reached by phone Wednesday, Ponton – who told CNN Business he currently doesn’t look like a cat – was able to provide more details on what had happened. He said he had no idea how the cat filter layered over his face and while waiting for the meeting to start his face looked normal, as he could see on his own computer screen.

“Somehow, when I was called to court, I miraculously turned into a cat,” he said.

It lasted about 42 seconds until it sort of turned off. This time, he said, “seemed like an eternity.”

As for the chat filter, it’s not the one that’s built into Zoom, and it’s not the one you can find by searching for Snap Camera, which is a commonly used app with Zoom that can add filters (Snap them called “lenses”) around or at the top of your face during a video chat. This is a much older technology: some research on the Internet leads to many suggestions that the accidentally used Pontoon filter appears to come from a tool known as Live! Camera avatar used with older Dell webcam software called Dell Webcam Manager. Even a Twitter user posted that a similar cat-astrophe happened to them in a job interview via Skype years ago.
You can see an image of the chat in this 2007 Dell Product Guide for a Computer Monitor with an Integrated Webcam, which is hosted on the Dell website. “With the Live! Cam avatar, the user can dress up as a movie star, four-legged friend or any other personalized animated character during the video chat,” the guide boasts, adding that he uses the ” smart face tracking “to track user’s head movements” and instantly sync whatever is said. ”A 2010 YouTube video gives a good idea of ​​how this works in courtroom settings not virtual.

This makes sense as the source of the filter for Ponton, considering that the equipment he was using on that fateful Zoom call was, he remembers, about 10 years old. He said he hosted the meeting on his secretary’s old Dell desktop computer in an office in Presidio, Texas (rather than his main office, which is in Marfa), as well as a Dell monitor. with an integrated webcam. (His laptop, he said, was being used elsewhere at the time, for another meeting.)

His secretary, he said, is embarrassed by the whole cat filter situation. “She wants to go and hide under a bed,” he says with a chuckle, citing classic cat behavior.

Dell webcam software is hard to find these days. But CNN Business got to see it in action during a Zoom call with Thomas Smith, CEO of IA photography firm Gado Images and a tech reporter (and briefly, in this case, a chat). When Smith learned that the feline filter appeared to be from older Dell webcam software, he rummaged through a bin of gadgets at his home in Lafayette, Calif., And found a Dell laptop dating from around 2009. ‘plugged it in, booted it up with the Windows 7. operating system, and found the Dell webcam software he was looking for – with “the sad kitten” as he called it.

Thomas Smith demonstrates the kitten filter in an interview with CNN Business.
Smith, who wrote on the filter for the Debugger technology website, noted that curious filter fans can find the software online and download it to their PCs (sorry, Mac users). But the software doesn’t seem to allow you to use an avatar like the kitten on your face to live stream via a webcam in the same way Ponton accidentally did, Smith said. On the contrary, you can either record your own video of the kitten filter appearing on your face, or use the filter on a video call by sharing your screen with other viewers (it did on our call).

As for Ponton, he hasn’t been able to find the chat filter on the computer since. He tried to search for the webcam software on the old Dell computer in an interview with CNN Business, but the machine had not completed its search at the time of the interview. If he finds it, he says, he plans to use it again.



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