This is a relatively quick post to let you ensure you are doing everything you can to get the most out of your Connect room.  Specifically this deals with bandwidth, latency, performance when using cameras, voice, PowerPoint, videos (MP4) and screen-sharing.

1 – Hard Wire your ethernet/internet connection wherever possible:

I have run many meetings using wireless connections without issue, but it is simply a fact that wired connections have more capacity and they are less subject to outside ‘influences’.  I realize that it may not be practical to have a hard-wired connection to your router, but it is always better if you can.

If your teenager starts streaming a video or a game and somebody else is downloading a large file the wireless is more likely to be compromised in quality and reliability than a hard-wired connection.

Note on teenagers – I banned my kids from using the internet when I had big, important meetings, had them read a book for a while (not a bad idea irrespective of my meetings).  If I sensed issues in a session I would often text my son in his room upstairs and invariably he would apologize that he was downloading a huge file.

Just a thought.

2 – Check and monitor what bandwidth is being used:

“You cannot improve what you don’t measure”

Click on the green bars to the top-right of your meeting room and you will see a persistent notification of the bandwidth in your room averaged over the last 10 seconds or so.  As you make the changes below, note the changes in the ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ readings.  ‘Up’ is what you are sending, ‘Down’ is what you are receiving.  Turn on your camera and the ‘Up’ will get higher, somebody else turns on their camera and your ‘Down’ will get higher.

The numbers are in kbit/s (kilobit per second) and represent transfer rate.  If you see something like 1.25 mbit/s then you are seeing 1,250 kbit/s so a lot of data.  Higher numbers require more bandwidth and vice-versa.

I cannot tell you what bandwidth you can handle on your connection, but if you see latency (delay) or performance issues, consider the items below.

3 – Ensure you have installed the Connect Desktop App:

You can just use Flash Player with Connect, but the Connect Desktop App. improves performance and reliability.  If your meeting is running in a tab in your browser then you are using Flash Player, if your meeting is running in a window of its own then you are using the Desktop App.  You can also check this from inside of your room by clicking on the ‘Help’ menu and if it says ‘Install Connect Desktop Application’ then go ahead.  It should take 4-8 seconds to install and it will not require administrator rights on your PC.

4 – Check the quality settings for your camera/video:

Go to the ‘Meeting’ menu and ‘Preferences’.  Click on ‘Video’ and you can move the slider to the left to lower resolution and frame rate.  When you click ‘Done’ the settings will be applied and you will see the bandwidth change.  Note that the second highest setting uses a disproportionately large amount of bandwidth in my experience, I typically leave the slider two notch down from the highest setting.

Note – The highest setting is for HD (720p) and this will only kick-in if your camera window is larger than 720p and it will only be used for the first camera.

5 – Check the quality of your microphone/voice:

Go to the ‘Meeting’ menu and ‘Preferences’.  Click on ‘Microphone’ and you will see some options there.  These are not very obvious settings to most people so let’s keep it simple.  By default, check the box ‘Use Enhanced Audio’ and set the first pull-down menu to ‘Full-Duplex’, this means we can talk over-one another).  ‘Half-Duplex’ means that one person talking cuts off the other person (like you would have experienced with the older conference phones for the people as old as me out there!).  ‘Headphones’ is the setting to use of everyone has headphones and echo cancellation is not so important.

The ‘Audio Quality’ drop-down menu is something you should set to ‘Fast’ (less bandwidth, lower fidelity) or ‘Best’ (more bandwidth, higher fidelity).  Think or higher fidelity being FM Radio and lower fidelity being AM Radio (again, for those of you as old as me!).

The other option is to use the ‘Speex Codec’ for the room audio.  This can be more complex, but there are a couple of thoughts on when you might use this option.

First of all, try it.  If it is no better or the bandwidth does not need to change, why bother to use it.

Otherwise, the Speex Codec is generally lower bandwidth and more efficient.  It does do a better job of voice activity detection allowing it to be more efficient with bandwidth as well.  However, it does a lesser job of noise cancellation so if you have fans or other constant background noises it is not as good.

The settings for ‘Audio Quality are measured in a similar manner to the ‘Enhanced Audio’ option above.

Note on the Speex Codec – Details of all audio settings and bandwidth can be seen at the Blog Post here.

Note on preparation – I walk through the ‘Audio Setup Wizard’ on the ‘Meetings’ menu in my room every tome I use VoIP.  This is not strictly necessary, but I assume that a change may have been made to my default microphone since my last session.  This has served me well in ensuring my sessions go as smoothly as possible.

6 – Check your Screen-Share settings:

Go to the ‘Meeting’ menu and ‘Preferences’.  Click on ‘Screen Share’ and you will see a slider that allows you to change the quality of the screen0-sharing experience.  Higher quality (to the right) means more bandwidth and vice-versa to the left.  Test this with a representative screen-share of a browser or whatever you share in your sessions and monitor the bandwidth.  Set this where you believe you get the best balance.

I leave my setting one down form the highest at ‘Standard’ unless I am doing something that requires a high fidelity and refresh-rate.

Note on Compliance and Control – If you find you cannot change the settings above, it is possible that your Administrator has locked them down for all meeting rooms across the account so you would need to speak to them.  Point them to the ‘Administration’ tab, ‘Compliance and Control>’Share Settings’>’Room Bandwidth Settings’.

7 – Compress your PowerPoint files:

The images/pictures in PowerPoint (PPT) can be unnecessarily large.  A 1920p image on a PPT slide will be converted into the Connect room at 1920p…even though a far smaller resolution would seem identical.  You can often see this if you have an image on a PPT slide that takes a second or so to appear in the room.

The simple trick (a good habit irrespective or Connect) is to compress the pictures in the PPT file.  Select one of the images in PPT and then use the ‘Format Picture’ ribbon and ‘Compress’.  There are a few options for compression, but selecting one for viewing on a screen or for email should make a huge difference to the file and look the same.  Be sure to select options that will apply the changes to all pictures in the presentation.

8 – Load PowerPoint/PDF files into your room (avoid Screen-Sharing)

When you load a PPT or PDF file into your room it will load into the cache of the individual browsers in the background.  In this scenario, when you are changing slides or pages as a presenter/host, you are essentially manipulating a ‘local’ copy of the file for each participant and this take nearly zero bandwidth.

9 – Ensure your MP4/video files are not taking too much bandwidth

Just as wth a PowerPoint file, Connect will attempt to play an MP4 video irrespective of the quality or bandwidth taken.  Unfortunately, not all end-user connection have the capability to play larger bandwidth files.

You can see a detailed explanation on converting video for your Connect room here.  Below are the key points to remember if you are playing video and want to respect the bandwidth and experience of your participants:

• Format – MP4
• Output File Size – no more than 100 MB
• Overall Bitrate (Data Rate) – no more than 500-700 kbps total (total of video *and* audio)
• Video Bitrate – no more than 400-600 kbps
• Audio Bitrate – no more than 64 kbps
• Resolution/Frame Size – no more than 640p (whatever the aspect ratio might be).  480p is often perfectly adequate.
• Video Framerate – 12 or 15 Frames Per Second (fps)