The vast majority of users never even have the issues I have noted here and their camera and microphone just work, but security and privacy are becoming increasingly important to organizations and individuals, and as a result it is possible that Connect needs permission to access your devices. I have tried to outline some of the possible solutions here. Ideally you fix your issue towards the top of this Blog Post as it gets more technical the farther down we go.
Most of the focus below is on the camera in Connect, but it is fair to say that these same issues will manifest themselves in the use of a microphone in Connect as well so consider the same process for managing microphone permissions and issues.
The camera issue can manifest itself in a few ways, but typically the symptom is that you see a black image where you would normally expect to see the video from your camera (Figure 1).
The microphone issue will manifest itself if nobody can hear you or if you cannot successfully complete the Connect in-meeting ‘Audio Setup Wizard’.
Figure 1
I have seen this more of late with Connect and it seems to have more to do with the changes in default browser security behaviour than it does with Connect itself. In this post I thought I would walk through the things that I find might stop you seeing your camera image in Connect and maybe one of these will help you solve your issue, or at least narrow it down a little.
So in no particular order other than the order I would follow, here are some troubleshooting tips.
Oh it’s OK, I fixed it!
We have to get this one out of the way. Check that your camera or microphone is plugged in and that you have not left the laptop lid down or the lens cap on, or that you are talking to the wrong microphone…I know that nobody will ever admit to it, but I guarantee that a few people will solve the issue right here!
Of course if your camera is not even plugged in then this will typically manifest itself in the camera not even being available in your Connect Meeting Room list so you may not get as far as a black screen, similarly with the microphone you may not even have the option to choose a microphone.
Initial Tests
Before going deeply into the troubleshooting, it is worth taking a few minutes to run some tests to see if this can be diagnosed easily.
Run the Connect Meeting Test and ensure that you have the connection speed, correct version of Flash Player and ideally see if you can install the Connect Meeting Add-in:
http://na3cps.adobeconnect.com/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm
If you fail any of the tests then it would be good to fix that first. If you do not have the Connect Meeting Add-in installed you can do it from here and that will bypass some of the security settings in your browser so worth considering.
There are also some nice tests that you can run on your camera and microphone outside of Connect, purely testing the Flash Player side. I like this one:
http://mailvu.com/testCamera/TestYourWebCam.html
Open the link and you will first be asked to ‘Allow’ your camera in Flash Player, then if you see yourself you can click ‘Record’ and create a very short video, include audio from your microphone as well and if it plays back you are on your way (Figure 2). You can click on the camera or microphone icons and choose the right devices from there, a very simple way to test the basic functionality. If this simple app does not work there is not a lot of point in moving on to Connect. Get your camera to work here first. Thanks and kudos to Mailvu for creating this test tool.
Figure 2
USB Hub
Remember that if you use a USB Hub, these can sometimes need to be restarted if they get a little upset, and remember that USB itself does not always play nicely when a device is plugged in and the application has already started, so consider re-entering your Meeting Room once the USB device has been connected or reconnected.
Finally in these cases, check that the camera/microphone is not being used by another application, it is possible that the camera is not being ‘released’ by the other application.
Do you actually have a ‘Webcam’?
If Connect is still not recognizing your camera, you may find that your device is not designed to behave as a ‘webcam’. Not all higher quality cameras are designed to behave as a webcam and just output the live camera image.
One way to check this is to use an intermediary program such as ‘ManyCam’ (http://manycam.com/). This type of program is capable of recognizing pretty much any camera connected to a PC or Mac so if this cannot see your camera you are probably out of luck. If the program sees your camera and Connect does not, you can set ManyCam (or another program) to behave as a ‘Virtual WebCam’ and Connect should be able to see this and display the original camera ‘through’ the intermediary tool.
Important – Please note that you should ensure all of your virus protection and internet security software is up to date before installing any software. Although GetConnect has used the software solutions below without issue, we cannot guarantee that the software solutions are free of malicious programs or that they will work flawlessly in your infrastructure
Please perform due diligence on any software you download or use and follow your own company guidelines
Flash Player does to have permission to use the camera or microphone
It is possible that at some time you decided to *not* allow Flash Player to use your devices, I have certainly done this myself in the past.
Using the ‘Audio Setup Wizard’ under the ‘Meeting’ menu is the appropriate way to test your microphone and have this configured, but there are also some settings in Flash Player to consider.
In the Meeting Room, right-click anywhere and then click ’Settings’. Click the 2nd tab in from the left at the bottom of the next window and ensure you have checked the radio button ‘Allow’ and the check box for ‘Remember’ (Figure 3). You should now be able to see the video feed and not the black screen in the ‘Camera and Voice Pod’.
Figure 3
Connect is not ‘seeing’ the Correct Camera
On occasion you may see a camera, but it is not the correct camera, and in some cases you may even see an additional ‘ghost camera’, even though you only have one actual camera connected (Mac seems to do this reasonably regularly). You need to select the right camera and you have a couple of options.
In the Meeting Room, right-click anywhere and then click ’Settings’. Click the far right tab at the bottom of the next window and select the correct camera or at least a different camera from the pull-down menu (Figure 4).
Figure 4
To confirm that the camera is working and to see the feed, click on the blue camera picture to see a preview (Figure 5). Note that you can also pick the camera from the pull-down menu to the right of the camera icon in the menu bar of the Meeting Room.
Figure 5
You can check the microphone in the same manner by clicking on the microphone tab and then you will be able to select your microphone and see if it working using the level meter (Figure 6).
Figure 6
Browser Security is not permitting Connect to use the Camera and Microphone
In this case, the browser does not allow Connect to use the microphone and Camera (a user/corporate determined security setting). Some browsers require you to specifically allow Connect (and other tools) to access cameras and microphones and screen-sharing. You may also need to allow some browsers the permission to run the Connect Meeting Add-in as well.
Note – I cannot test everything here and I cannot guarantee that these notes reflect the security in your organization or that you are allowed as a use to change these things. I am tying to give you as much ammunition as possible if you need to try this or to speak with your IT folks.
Internet Explorer
With Internet Explorer 11 I was able to have the black camera view appear if I changed the Flash Player ‘Global Settings’. I was able to fix this by changing the settings back as outlined below.
From within a Meeting Room, right-click and select ‘Global Settings’ (Figure 7). Now you will see the ‘Flash Player Settings Manager’. You may already see that the ‘Block all sites from using camera and microphone’ option checked and that is a clue that your camera is being blocked (Figure 8).
Figure 7
Figure 8
You can click on the button ‘Camera and Microphone Settings by site…’ to see the specific settings for all of your sites (Figure 9). If your name.adobeconnect.com site is blocked then you will need to fix that. Select the site from the list, then select how you want permissions to work from the status menu at the bottom of the dialogue box (Figure 10).
Figure 9
Figure 10
Now close everything down and you should be fine to start your camera. It is very possible that you will need to either re-enter the Meeting Room or even restart your browser…but the settings should be remembered for next time.
Chrome
Slightly different process with Chrome, I tested with Chrome 38 and there seem to be 2 areas where you might need to allow things. It is entirely possible that the same 2 issues are also present in IE, but I was not able to reproduce them in my initial tests.
Give permission for the Connect Meeting Add-in to run
If you try to start the Connect Meeting Room using the Connect Meeting Add-in then you may be asked to ‘Allow’ the Add-in to run. If you do not click allow (or you have not done this in the past) then the Meeting Room will run in a browser instead and that changes the way the camera/microphone behaves.
You will see this if you believe you have the Add-in installed but the Meeting Room still always opens in a browser window and the text ‘?launcher=false’ will be appended to the meeting URL. This means of course that you cannot share your desktop and then if you try to reinstall the Add-in (as you will be prompted to do so) you may see an error ‘Couldn’t write the application to the hard disk. Please verify the hard disk is available and try again’.
To change this permission, go to the Chrome ‘Settings’ pane using the three horizontal bars to the top-right of your browser, then select ‘Settings’ and on this page at the bottom you will need to click on ‘Show advanced settings…’ (Figure 11).
Figure 11
Click on ‘Content Settings’ button and in the next window scroll down to ‘Unsandboxed plug-in access’. If the option ‘Do not allow any sites to use a plug-in to access your computer’ is checked then that is pretty self-explanatory as to why the Connect Add-in is not working. The most likely setting is the middle one which will ask you when a site wants to access your computer. If you were asked this in the past and said no to the request, you have disabled the Connect Meeting Add-in. To change this, click on ‘Manage exceptions…’ (Figure 12) and in the next window, ensure that your adobe domain instances in the list (name.adobeconnect.com) are set to ‘Allow’ (Figure 13).
Figure 12
Figure 13
Now if you exit and re-enter the Meeting Room it should load in the Meeting Add-in window instead of the browser window. The use of the Connect Meeting Add-in seems to appropriately override the camera and microphone permission settings in the browser so even if that is set to ‘Deny’ the Add-in already has the permissions it needs.
Note – I was able to reproduce this disallowing of the Add-in on my Windows 8 PC consistently, but my Mac Chrome browser seems to ignore this setting and irrespective of the ‘unsandboxed plug-in…’ setting the Connect Meting will run using the Add-in. I have not delved deeply into why that might be yet but it it not a bad thing from the Connect perspective anyway.
So what if you need to run in the browser and you do not want the Connect Meeting Add-in installed, but your camera is still not working? You need to change the camera and microphone settings to allow Connect to use them. In the same ‘Content Settings’ window, scroll to ‘Media’ (Figure 14). Again, if it shows that ‘Do not allow sites to access your camera and microphone’ is checked, you probably know your problem. The appropriate setting is ‘Ask when a site requires access your camera and microphone’.
Figure 14
If the ‘Ask when a site requires access your camera and microphone’ option is checked already and your camera is not working, it is likely that you were asked if you wanted to allow access at some time and you clicked ‘Deny’. You can check this by going to the ‘Manage Exceptions’ button and you should see your connect domain listed there (Figure 15). Select the name and then the ‘x’ to remove it from the blocked list. Now in your Meeting Room when you start your camera, you will again have the option to ‘Allow’ or ‘Deny’ camera access, click ‘Allow’ this time. Your camera should now work.
You will possibly get a Flash Player permission request as well, agree to that one as well.
Figure 15
Figure 16
If you pay attention to your browser itself you can avoid a lot of the work above, you can see an indication that the camera has been disallowed. There is a small picture of a camera in the right-side of the address bar and the camera has a little red cross (Figure 17).
Figure 17
If you click on this icon you will be taken straight to the ‘Settings’ for the camera and microphone permissions, select the option to ‘Always allow…’ you connect domain to access your camera and microphone and you should be able to start your camera and microphone successfully (Figure 18).
Figure 18
I hope this helps you to find your way through the browser security settings that might affect Connect. Please give me some feedback if this is successful and I will update this Blog Post.