Video Conference Testing

[WatchMkr]

I'd like to understand how well video conferencing is working on COSMIC so we can develop a plan to fix gaps.

I've seen reports of Zoom via Firefox opening full screen behind other apps and switching output to speakers instead of a headset and screen sharing not working in Jitsi, Slack or others. A testing plan would be better than trying to collect the spread out reports.

Popular services to test:

Zoom
Microsoft Teams
Google Meet
Cisco Web (they say Wayland screen sharing support is coming soon)
Slack Huddles
Discord
Jitsi Meet

Browser and Client (if they're available). We'll need a testing plan before we start so we can checkoff working features.

[sven-junga]

Good one. When sharing my screen with Teams, my cursor is invisible to others. Tested on Firefox and Chromium.

[ids1024]

A client should be able to request capture with or without the cursor. Though support for capturing the cursor separately from the rest of the capture is still not implemented in our portal (#175). I wouldn't expect screen sharing to require that though. (Probably more relevant for remote desktop?)

For any software that has issues, it would be good to compare against Gnome Wayland. If Gnome has the same issue, it's probably not fixable on our end. But if it doesn't we should be able to fix it in our portal.

[leviport]

Here's a preliminary checklist that should cover most functionality for video conferencing. This will be evaluated on each platform of interest.

• Calling out
• Receiving calls
• Mic audio via different sources:
  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic
• Webcam:
  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • USB webcam
• Screen sharing:
  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
  • Screen annotating tools if applicable
• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)
  • Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)
• File transfers (both sending and receiving)
• Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place)

If I'm missing anything, let me know and it can be added.

[leviport]

I took a look at Webex since I've never used it before, and I noticed a couple issues:

1. When creating a password for my account, the password security prompt pops up in front of the text box, stealing focus every time I enter a character. I was still able to set up a password by dismissing the dialog between every character, but that was quite annoying. Here is a video clip:

webex-password-helper-stealing-focus.mp4

2. Once I got an account set up, the app launched, but it was just a blank black window. I assume this is due to the lack of Wayland compatibility. I took a screenshot of the window, and it turned the bottom left and bottom right corners transparent, but on my screen, the whole window was black:

I can get into settings by right clicking the system tray icon, but the main window being broken pretty much prevents me from running through the checklist on it.

[ids1024]

I'm a bit confused on the cursor behavior in Slack; it seems to sometimes show up as expected, but not always...

It looks like Slack isn't requesting any explicit cursor mode (so the portal defaults to Hidden, as defined by the portal spec). But if the portal advertises support for metadata cursors, it uses that. So I think adding metadata cursor support should fix this.

[ids1024]

Mic audio via different sources

Webcam

File transfers (both sending and receiving)

For reference:

It's probably good to do a bit of testing for all of these things, but note:

• File transfer in itself shouldn't have anything to do with COSMIC (other than drag and drop)
• Webcams are probably still handled directly though v4l2 (rather than Pipewire), which I think we also don't have anything to do with
• Audio isn't related to the compositor or portal, but may be affected by how we integrate Pipewire in COSMIC/Pop!_OS

[leviport]

Discord:

• Copy/pasting my password from my password manager didn't work normally.

Checklist:

• Calling out
• Receiving calls
• Mic audio via different sources:
  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic
• Webcam:
  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • [can't find one to test with atm] USB webcam
• Screen sharing:
  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
  • [N/A] Screen annotating tools if applicable
• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)
  • [Doesn't work] Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)
• File transfers (both sending and receiving)
• Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place

[leviport]

Zoom:

• Remote control option does not work. Looks like a Wayland compatibility thing.

• Whiteboard tanked my frame rate to ~1fps when I opened it. Closing the whiteboard didn't fix it. I had to leave and re-join the meeting.

• Calling out

• Receiving calls

• Mic audio via different sources:

  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic

• Webcam:

  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • [don't have one to test with] USB webcam

• Screen sharing:

  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
  • Screen annotating tools if applicable

• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)

  • [doesn't work] Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)

• Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place)
  ---> Works, but there are quite a few dialogs. It's a bit annoying.

[leviport]

Jitsi:

• Mouse cursor is not visible in screen sharing

• Floating video preview is very obnoxious with autotiling

• Calling out

• Receiving calls

• Mic audio via different sources:

  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic

• Webcam:

  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • [don't have one to test with] USB webcam

• Screen sharing:

  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
    ---> broken!
  • [N/A] Screen annotating tools if applicable

• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)

  • [doesn't work] Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)

• [~] Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place)
  ---> There is a floating video preview that spawns whenever the main window is not focused. This works fine on floating workspaces, but changing to a tiled workspace tiles that little video preview in a highly obnoxious and unhelpful way.

[leviport]

Slack:

• Screen share XDG pop-up shows up twice before it actually starts sharing?

• Also Garrett didn't see the XDG pop-up for selecting outputs to share, and his screen share was just a black screen.

• Calling out

• Receiving calls

• Mic audio via different sources:

  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic

• Webcam:

  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • [don't have one to test with] USB webcam

• Screen sharing:

  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
    ---> broken!
  • [N/A] Screen annotating tools if applicable

• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)

  • Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)

• File transfers (both sending and receiving)

• Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place)

[leviport]

Google Meet:

• I couldn't find a standalone application for this, so I just used Firefox.

• Calling out

• Receiving calls

• Mic audio via different sources:

  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic

• Webcam:

  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • [Don't have one to test with] USB webcam

• Screen sharing:

  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
    ---> broken!
  • [N/A?] Screen annotating tools if applicable

• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)

  • Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)
    ---> broken!

• [N/A?] File transfers (both sending and receiving)

• Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place)

[leviport]

MS Teams:

• Used the "Teams for Linux" package from cosmic-store. I believe it's unofficial, but it seemed to work just fine. Also tested Firefox on the other machine I was testing with (also fine).

• Calling out

• Receiving calls

• Mic audio via different sources:

  • Built-in laptop mic
  • Plug-in headset mic
  • Bluetooth headset mic

• Webcam:

  • Built-in laptop webcam
  • [Don't have one to test with] USB webcam

• Screen sharing:

  • Entire screen
  • Single window sharing (if supported)
  • Mouse cursor visible?
    ---> broken!
  • [N/A?] Screen annotating tools if applicable

• Hotkeys (mute, disable cam, etc.)

  • Test with call window unfocused (might need global hotkey settings enabled in Settings > Applications > X11 applications compatibility)
    ---> broken!

• File transfers (both sending and receiving)

• Tiling (especially with ones like Zoom that spawn tons of weird little windows all over the place)