[Laurel Thomsen]

I’m on a 2021 MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.2 with an ethernet connection that consistently gets around 900 download/40 upload and a wifi connection that’s definitely turned off. In the situation I experienced with two students today, in separate sessions, both were on Windows computers, and on ethernet. I don’t know the exact details for them, but we’ve never had a connection issue previously using other video calling apps. While their audio sounded fine and their video became only slightly pixelated here and there, they reported that my video ranged from slightly to extremely pixelated (and mostly the latter), with pink and green lines sometimes washing over my video. They said the sound would also get distorted when my video was getting more distorted, to the point where they couldn’t really make out what I was saying or playing.

I messed with video preferences and audio buffer settings during the sessions, and none of it seemed to make a difference for them. We weren’t really playing at the same time, but if it’s helpful for troubleshooting, latency with one was around 45 and with the other was around 60 (they were both using built-in mics, so that might be a lot of that). My local latency is around 2, and call latency is around 5 when I’ve tested with my husband between the teaching studio and the house.

I’d recorded one of these lessons, and the audio and video on the recording, for both myself and my student, are crystal clear.

Any ideas? Any suggestions for what I or they should set our settings to for decent video and hopefully great audio? Or maybe it’s some connection issue between people running Mac to Windows? It seems especially hard to figure out when we’re both having such different experiences. Thanks!

[David Liao]

Dear Laurel,

Thank you for the details.

Please ask the students to check that their Ethernet cable connects their computer to the router that receives the internet signal where it first enters the home (avoid wireless repeater/extender routers and Ethernet-over-power adapters). Remind them to turn Wi-Fi off. Also ask them to turn VPN off, if used. If a student’s using 5G cellular internet, ask if they can try a fiber or cable (landline) internet connection.

(Connecting between Mac and Windows doesn’t cause problems 👍).

I started first with suggestions relating to the student’s computers’ internet connections because extreme video distortion that shows up just during the session (and not in the recording) suggests an unstable connection.

Thank you,
David Liao

• This reply was modified 2 days, 4 hours ago by David Liao.
• This reply was modified 2 days, 4 hours ago by David Liao.
• This reply was modified 2 days, 4 hours ago by David Liao.