Join a meeting
You can attend the meeting via
- via the dedicated zoom application (Windows, OSX, Linux, iOs, Andoid), or
- the Chrome/Chromium web-browser (other browsers are not supported; even with Chrome, functionality is somewhat limited)
- important remark: For security reasons, Zoom now requires that you have a Zoom account
- the account is free
- but it takes some time to create the account
- so make the account well before the course/meeting starts
The web-app
- To join, open the following link in Chrome/Chromium:
You can also go to 'https://zoom.us', click on 'join a meeting', fill in the code (2696428329)
- at this moment, zoom will try very hard to have you install their app, but just keep on cancelling, and you will end up with the browser-app eventually
- remarks:
- only works on Chrome/Chromium
- the web-app has limited functionality
- you cannot control the video panel — it will automatically siwthc to the current speaker, even if his/her video is turned off
- you cannot select any of the more advanced options such as optimizing the screen sharing for video (fast updating + synchronous sound)
Making optimal use of zoom
- keep the noise and feedback minimal by muting your microphone (unless you want to say something)
- suggestion: use the chat function to ask simple questions
- on the zoom desktop app, I prefer the following settings:
- click on the 'View Options' (top bar) and select side-by-side modei: the presentation goes to the left, the camera view goes to the right
- click on 'Gallery View/Speaker View' until you have the camera view want, and then pin that video (right click on the video and then click 'Pin Video')
note: the 'Pin Video' option is only available if there is more than one video feed
Known issues
- web-app: you cannot control the camera wiew in the web-app — just hope that the person you want to see speaks enough so that the automatic camera view picks him/her out
- audio: is OK for speech, but rather poor for non-speech sounds (zoom either uses a speech only codec, or an agressive echo cancelling, or a combination of the two)
- screen sharing: due to limited bandwidth, one can either opt for
- high quality image streaming (show frame updates) with asynchronous audio (e.g. slides), or
- fast updating but low(er) quality movies (text tends to be unreadable), with synchronous audio (and you can even select high-quality audio; this is currently broken on Linux)
note: the camera view is always of the second type (a fast updating but low(er) quality movie)
- the whiteboard function: in my opinion, drawing on a computer screen is too clumsy (or maybe I am too clumsy)
Using a physical whiteboard and putting the camera on it works better for me (limited quality, so don't make very complex figures)