iLinc – Known Glitches/Bugs/Quirks

While iLinc is one of the most robust web conferencing applications around, like all technologies, it is still evolving and maturing, and occasionally we encounter some interesting glitches, depending on what people are trying to do. We report these glitches and bugs to iLinc’s technical support, and they try to resolve these as quickly as possible. Please check this page periodically to see if your particular glitch has been reported already, and if there is a solution, or to report a new one.

Poor/no audio

Poor audio occurs because iLinc’s audio wizardry does not automatically internally track the settings within your system preferences or control panel. These settings therefore may or may not match the settings to which iLinc defaults when it loads. You should run the Audio Wizard and make sure that the settings there match those of your system preferences. If you change devices while within an iLinc session, you may lose audio for the same reason, and you may have to log out and log in to the session again. See also iLinc for Mac users.

If you have plugged in a device but still have no audio, the connections may not be activated within the PC hardware. This is sometimes resolved by downloading or updating the audio driver for your system. It is also known that some Dell laptops (Inspiron notebooks like those rolled out to faculty) were shipped with the microphone jack inactive. This is corrected by editing your registry file as follows:

Half duplex/Full duplex

Duplex means that you are able to send and receive data (most often voice) from the same device. Half duplex devices let you send and receive, but only one way at a time. For those of you who remember a walkie-talkie, you had to push “talk” to send your message, but release the button in order to receive.

Many laptop computers operate in half duplex. This means that you must mute the mic to hear, and mute the speaker to talk. This is seen in the upper bar, where you have mic and headset icons. Half-duplex requires that one have a red line through it for the other to be active. If you’re computer operates in half duplex, you should practice this, and also remember to wait a split second after saying something, as the person on the other end may be doing the same to speak to you.

Full duplex means that you can send and receive data (including audio) both ways, at the same time. This means that you do not have to toggle the mic and headset settings to be able to talk and hear. While this seems the optimal solution, it comes with its own idiosyncrasies. This takes a lot of bandwidth, everyone can hear everyone else online in full duplex, and there can often be echoes, if some people are actually using external speakers rather than headsets. So, it is always a good idea to select “mute upon entry” for your participants, so you don’t hear a great deal of background noise.

We have observed a bug when participants involve full duplex Macs and half duplex PCs. The person using the half duplex computer will likely lose their audio when toggling from mic to speaker and not be able to hear. This is quickly resolved, but highly inconveniently, by relaunching the audio wizard and exiting. iLinc is working to fix this problem.

Interesting suggestions and quick fixes

Do you need to mix phone and VoIP but don’t have access to a conference bridge?

Have your presenter call your cell phone or speaker phone (or the other way around), and place the mic to your computer next to the phone speaker. Voila! Everyone on VoIP can hear them! (The Blackberry Smartphone series has a super speaker phone for this.)

What if the VoIP suddenly cuts out or the quality deteriorates?

1.    Try having everyone log out and log in to the session again.

2.    Utilize the chat box as much as reasonably possible.

3.    Record your presentation and upload it as content/distribute it.

Do you need to hide content, feedback or attendee lists from participants, or control chatting for a particular meeting?

Use the Advanced Session Configuration/Attendees option in your Command Center to adjust what they can see and can’t see. You can disallow chatting, or limit it to public and/or private chatting by selecting these options in the Command Center.

If you have an interesting glitch, bug, quirk, or creative solution to report, please submit it to Katherine Kantardjieff, Faculty Coordinator for Academic Technology, kkantardjieff@fullerton.edu. There will soon be a wiki for campus iLinc users.