*Note – Updated to reflect Connect 9.3 bandwidth and quality controls*
Connect performance is typically related to four areas, but it should be understood that ultimately, Connect might not be the right solution for the client if expectations of performance and the ultimate experience are too far apart. Some infrastructures and use-cases are just not suited to Connect. It is also not really appropriate to make a comparison to Skype and some other solutions as Connect is doing a lot more as a tool and as Connect does not download a big client at the end-user side to do the processing (such as Skype and WebEx for example). There can be a compromise in performance that comes with the ability to connect to a session immediately and without any plugins other than the ubiquitous Flash Player
The above said, in many cases it is as much a reflection of the way Connect is used vs. the product itself, so here are some guidelines from my perspective on managing the experience in your Connect Meeting Rooms
The four areas that can affect performance are as follows:
- Connectivity – raw speed and port availability
- Room bandwidth settings
- Follow Connect Best Practices
- Consider your computer performance
Connectivity
The first thing to check is the speed of the connection itself. This is very different for a wired vs. a wireless connection in both their basic infrastructure (wireless is inherently lower performance) and in that wireless is subject to other using the same connection and compromising performance
Tip – Use a wired connection wherever possible, particularly as a Presenter or Host
Also ensure that you have given Connect the best opportunity to succeed. Connect uses Port 1935 for voice and video communications, if this port is unavailable then Connect will switch to tunnelling through Port 443. This will work, but there is the possibility of an inherent overhead. Similarly, if you use a VPN connection, then the Connect signals are being ‘squeezed’ through the VPN connection and the subsequent Port so that can totally compromise performance
To check what ports are available from your location, you can use the Port Test here (you are hoping for ’Success’ messages)
You can also test your port from within the Meeting Room itself, from a Connect Meeting, click on the ‘Help’ menu, then hold down the ‘Shift’ key and click on ‘About Adobe Connect’ from the ‘Help’ menu. You will see a string of text and on the first line the first numbers will be either ‘1935’ or ‘443’. This represents the port you are using for RTMP communications (video, audio, screen sharing etc.)
Tip – Check Port 1935 is open and avoid VPN during Connect sessions
It is also a good idea to have the Connect Meeting Add-in installed wherever possible. This is not necessarily a ‘performance’ issue, but if a participant needs to install it during the session then it takes time and support. There is a better experience for VoIP with the Meeting Add-in installed so this is a reasonable idea either way. This is absolutely something that should be installed for all potential Presenter and Hosts
For more details on the infrastructure and tests for Connect please see here
It is also a good idea to have the Connect Meeting Add-in installed wherever possible. This is not necessarily a ‘performance’ issue, but if a participant needs to install it during the session then it takes time and support. There is a better experience for VoIP with the Meeting Add-in installed so this is a reasonable idea either way. This is absolutely something that should be installed for all potential Presenter and Hosts
For more details on the infrastructure and tests for Connect please see here
Room Bandwidth Settings
There are a number of settings within the Connect room that can significantly affect the bandwidth consumed by a Meeting Room
Note – To see the bandwidth actually being used in your Meeting Room at any time, click on the vertical green button to the top-right of your Meeting Room, to the right of the ‘Help’ menu. This will show a 10 second or so average of the bandwidth up and down in kilobits per second (kbps)
There are three main areas where you can constrain and manage the bandwidth taken by this session. All of these are modified from the ‘Meeting’ menu in your Meeting Room and under the ‘Preferences’ option.
Note – As of Connect 9.3 it is possible for the Connect Administrator to set and control the Video (camera) and Screen Sharing bandwidth across the whole account, in this case you will not have the option to change these settings form within your Meeting Room.
Note – As of Connect 9.3 it is possible for the Connect Administrator to set and control the Video (camera) and Screen Sharing bandwidth across the whole account, in this case you will not have the option to change these settings form within your Meeting Room.
- Video (Camera) – Move the slider to the right for higher quality and higher bandwidth. As you move the slider you will be able to see the affect on resolution and frame-rate.
- Screen Share – Move the slider to the right for higher quality but of course higher bandwidth as well.
- Microphone – From the ‘Audio Quality’ menus you can alter the quality of the VoIP in Connect. ‘Fast’ will lower the fidelity and the bandwidth (so also the lag will be less), ‘Best’ will be higher fidelity, but also higher bandwidth and potentially more lag.
When these settings are applied you will see a considerable change in the bandwidth consumed by the room, but this is at the expense of lower quality. It is worth noting that the lower quality might not even be noticed by anyone, meaning that lower quality should be the norm for your meeting in some cases, rather than unnecessarily high quality. For example, a camera set to a higher resolution in Connect is pointless if the Video Pod is only the size of a few postage stamps
Try setting your Video, Screen Sharing and Microphone to the highest levels, start a camera and share your screen, also broadcast voice and then monitor the average bandwidth, now lower the settings and look at the bandwidth again, then lower again and see the bandwidth. Understanding and respecting the changes to quality and how they affect bandwidth will help you manage performance and experience in your sessions. Look at this yourself, play with the individual tool settings in the ‘Preferences Pane’. Listen to the voice, look at the quality, monitor the bandwidth and use the lowest possible settings that you can to respect the connections of your participants
Tip – Set the camera, screen sharing and voice quality/bandwidth to respect your use-case and the connections of your attendees
It is also worth noting that as a best practice, I actually change my camera settings (quality and frame-rate) during my sessions and on-the-fly. If my camera is large when I am in discussions, I raise the quality, when it is small as I present other content I lower the quality, nobody ever notices the quality, they do notice the bandwidth benefit though
Tip – Set the quality of Cameras, Screen Sharing and Voice consciously, don’t just leave it as the default for every session or use-case
Rule of thumb and in the absence of any other information, set the sliders to 1 ‘notch’ down from the highest quality.
In summary, this results in lower quality, but increased or maintained integrity of the data, and the ‘lower quality’ may not even be noticed if it was unnecessarily high in the first instance
Connect Best Practices
The main consideration here is to understand that although Connect is very efficient with bandwidth and data, there are some inherent practices that are more bandwidth intensive
If you are sharing a PPT with your participants, always try to load it into a Share Pod and avoid sharing it from your desktop. Desktop Sharing is a stream of essentially constant data, once a PPT has been loaded into a Share Pod it is converted into Flash (already very small) and as the attendees view slide #1, the other slides load into the cache of the individual browsers in the background, almost immediately, slide and animation changes would not even register as bandwidth as they are just http calls to the content to ‘move to the next slide’ (note that this does not apply to viewing content on a mobile device in Connect at this time)
Similarly, if you can avoid sharing a Word document and instead load it as a PDF into a Share Pod you will gain the same benefits and more. SWF files, jpeg images, Captivate, Adobe Presenter, FLV video files and sound files in a Connect Meeting Room Share Pod are optimized to varying degrees, all of these however, are better than sharing your desktop from the bandwidth side
For more information on using PPT in a Connect Meeting please see here
For more information on using PPT in a Connect Meeting please see here
Tip – Wherever possible, load content into the Share Pod rather than Screen Sharing
If you are using only VoIP and you want to be respectful of bandwidth, be conscious that having 6 microphones open uses 6 x the voice bandwidth, even if the people are not talking, they are ‘sending silence’. Have people only un-mute their microphones when they need to speak. Also consider enforcing this using the option to ‘Enable Single Speaker Mode’ from the ‘Audio’ menu. In this mode, only one person can speak at a time and you can consider it as similar to ‘press-to-talk’ on walkie-talkies. While person 1 is speaking, person 2 sees the option to speak greyed-out and until person 1 releases the microphone. The Host can always override this of course and ‘snatch’ the microphone back!
In this mode, only 1 voice stream is ever sent and heard at a time. Not ideal for all use-cases of course, but worth considering in some use-cases
For information on using VoIP and other voice options in Connect see here
For information on using VoIP and other voice options in Connect see here
Tip – Try to avoid multiple microphones connected at once, use ‘Single Speaker Mode’ wherever practical
Pre-recorded video in Connect (FLV or MP4) can bring a meeting to it’s knees if it has been encoded at too high a rate. Just because you can view an FLV on your desktop at high quality, does not mean it will work on a remote connection. Pre-recorded FLV video plays in the room at the date-rate at which it was encoded. As a best practice, I tend to keep the whole rate (video and audio) to under 400kbps, 500kbps at the most. I can view higher rates of data, but in my experience, this respects the connections of most people at this time
For information on converting video for use in Connect see here
For information on converting video for use in Connect see here
Tip – Encode video at a reasonable rate that respects the connections of your participants
Computer Performance
This may seem a little irrelevant to Connect Performance, but it is worth considering that connect is an application just like any other application on your PC, and they all fight over memory and CPU cycles.
If you are running a CPU intensive task such as rendering in Photoshop then Connect is likely being denied CPU cycles and it will potentially be compromised. More RAM and a more powerful computer would of course help, as would managing the applications and their requirements, but be conscious that if you are sharing your screen and sending voice in Connect and then you carry out a CPU intensive task at the same time, it is entirely possible that your voice would cut out or be delayed…not by a failure in Connect per se, but because Connect is struggling to get CPU cycles from your PC
You can mitigate this if it is going to happen by using 2 computers, both logged into the Meeting Room. Use one to share the application and then another to send the voice, then if the application hogs the CPU cycles, your voice will not be compromised as it is coming from another ‘unhindered’ computer
Tip – Be conscious of the CPU and memory required to run your applications, close down unnecessary applications and try to ensure Connect has a fair shot at the CPU cycles