Adobe Connect Update

September 26th, 2008 by sridgway in Adobe Connect

Those of you who use Adobe Connect are well aware of the numerous issues affecting it’s use and performance since the upgrade to version 7 in Early August this year.
Not least of which has been the recording function which has and still continues to be failing.
We have received an update from TAFE eLearning Systems today concerning the progress so far on resolving the issues. Some good news and suggestions on improving room performance but no resolution at this stage. Lets hope it’s sorted by the end of the semester break.

Dear Adobe Connect User

 Issue’s Progression

Last week we had a meeting with the Adobe people in the US

This week we had a meeting with all the people involved with our installation of Adobe Connect

Through both of these meetings we worked on breaking down the many problems that have been experienced since the upgrade

Recording Issues

The major issue is with recordings, which appear to have been affected by several different issues

• The first part has been acknowledged and taken up by the Adobe Product Development Team in the US, it now has their highest priority
• The second part of the issue appears to relate to the Symantec anti virus. The TAFE people that host the Adobe server have agreed to exclude the Adobe folder from the Symantec programs, and this will reduce the number of different problems
• The third part of this issue relates to ‘Tunnelling’ which is related to ports. There is more testing happening today in relation to this (if you are available @ 2pm today and want to join us, please call me)
• And lastly, recordings are being affected by bandwidth issues

Other Issues

It is thought that most other issues are directly related to bandwidth

Anyone having problems with Adobe needs to take a serious look at the bandwidth environment of their meetings

Bandwidth & Environment

The problem with finding a fix for the bandwidth problem is trying to narrow down the cause, as there are so many contributing factors to an issue such as this

Cris at Strathfield and Stewart at Webqem are doing their best to help us, but the fact is, only you can duplicate your meeting environment, so we need your help to manipulate your environment to improve performance

While the US is working on a fix, we hope to provide you with the information you need to improve your meeting environment

This email is one step in this process

Monitor Environment

Most users are aware that the environment settings within a meeting can greatly affect the streaming of the meeting

To check out some of the things that effect bandwidth you can, (from within a meeting room,) click Help, Adobe Connect Pro, Search, Bandwidth

There is some interesting things in there, and it may be that you identify your problem from the information contained in there

Things that can greatly effect your meeting environment and hence your bandwidth include:

• Not optimizing the connection settings
• having too many (video) cameras operating, (you should freeze an image)
• having too many people in the room (15+)
• congesting the whiteboard

Monitor Bandwidth

Here is a link that may help explain bandwidth issues

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Connect/6.0/Enterprise/help.html?content=WS89C03BD6-5315-480c-8331-9CACA243A605.html

NOTE:   The meeting host can enable a feature that will highlight any bandwidth issues, by alerting you to the problem;

The Host should click on the bottom right corner of the attendee POD, and ‘click to tick’ the option “Show Connection status”

If the system thinks things are bad (on a per person basis) it will show a stack of yellow or red bars  – nothing is shown if things are good

You can go to the link below, scroll and select the ‘Monitor Connection Status’ option, this will explain what the coloured bars actually indicate

Optimise your meeting

Here is a link to an Adobe page;

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Connect/6.0/AcrobatConnect/help.html?content=WSE5003767-D8EC-4168-B040-D82B018020F1.html

The first page explains how to optimise your meeting, and we strongly recommend that you read it,

NOTE:   If you’re not sure what your settings should be, just click (from within your meeting room) Help and then Troubleshoot, wait for the Test Page to tell you what your connection is

(NOTE: only select email results if requested to by the Administrator) – If you scroll down the Test Page, there is some really good troubleshooting information that you may need one day, or even today

Templates

We will soon be receiving more information on using Templates to control the environment of the meeting (which we will share when available)

Templates can be used to create a standard bandwidth friendly environment

 More Information

There is lots of information around, that you may or may not be aware of, thru the Adobe Share point Site, there are also user guides that have been created thru different institutes and colleges that you may also find helpful

We may, at a later date, request more information from you for example we may ask you to run the Test Page and email the results, along with other details of the connectivity of your site

 Forums

There are some really helpful hints to be found in Forums, here is an example of one from the ‘Connect Users Forum’

“We’re running a licensed version of Connect 7. In a meeting with multiple participants using VOIP (all on a known-good high bandwidth network), audio will become choppy from certain participants to certain other participants. So A and B will hear C fine, but D is getting poor audio from C. Meanwhile, C and D hear A fine, but B is getting choppy audio from A. Who gets clear/bad audio from whom seems to change on a whim. It doesn’t seem to be an audio transmission problem on the speaker’s computer because some participants hear just fine.

With a little testing we determined that the problem seems to start when participants join the VOIP conversation by way of turning on their camera first (which turn on their mic too). If they instead lock the talk button on at the bottom, then turn on their camera, their audio is fine.”

End Note

If you are no longer having Adobe issues, please let me know

If you know why you’re no longer having Adobe issues, please also let me know