jitsi-meet: Can't turn off camera until after one connects

We have implemented a “pre-join” screen which will let users choose the devices they want or mute them before angering the room.

It’s already on master but needs a couple more fixes before it can be rolled out.

There are a couple of things to consider here: first, Jitsi Meet is a conferencing system, so why would one be surprised that the camera is opened? Then there is stuff the user can do to prevent it:

• deny camera permission
• join the room with #config.startWithVideoMuted=true, as in https://meet.jit.si/whatever#config.startWithVideoMuted=true

Adding an extra screen to choose the devices with which to join has been discussed in the past, with no clear way forward, so it was never implemented.

Jitsi Meet is a conferencing system, so why would one be surprised that the camera is opened?

This statement is problematic. As you’re a developer, maybe this will help:

When you wake up in the morning, your state, let’s call it state_a, is likely to involve concepts such as:

state_a  = {
    'undressed', 
    'unshowered',
    'uncombed', 
    'unshaven', 
    'unmakeuped', 
    'untoothbrushed',
}

When you’re at work, your state, let’s call it state_b, is likely to involve concepts more in terms such as:

state_b = { s[2:] for s in state_a }

Notably:

assert state_a != state_b

Also, it turns out that:

assert people != robots

And so people, usually when they’re joining a conference from home, may not always feel like it’s necessary to move entirely to state_b in order to join a teleconference call.

However, as they still wish to be polite and professional, they will generally want to apply logic similar to this:

camera_on = current_state == state_b

In particular, they want to avoid logic such as:

camera_on = True
sleep(random(10))
camera_on = False

And that’s essentially why your comment got frownyfaces and thumbs pointing in the wrong direction 😃

We do have these settings on mobile, maybe it makes sense to bring them to web? Specially now that we have access to the settings on the welcome page.

Even Microsoft Teams lets you choose an option before ‘joining the call’ just to re-assess whether you have everything setup and working ‘right’ before you join.

You get to choose if you want your camera on/off by default. If you want your microphone muted or not by default. If you want your background blurred on/off by default.

Because there are occasions you may want to join to show your face first, but not be heard because noise, but you can join via text.

There’re times when you might just have selected the wrong audio recording, and so you’re pushing the stereo mix instead of your microphone.

There’re occasions where you may want to join being heard, but not be seen for various reasons (small people, you’re topless, it’s too bright)

And there’re occasions where there may be content in the background you don’t want to show by default, but in the foreground you do.

Then it’s a usability matter, try finding anyone that can remember an arbitrary text string to add to an URL to get something to work, and I can probably count that on one hand, then how many people can remember how that’s typed, and/or hasn’t lost the bookmark, piece of paper or notepad document that had it written in, and that’s even less.

It’s such a shame this wasn’t in already, but it’s great that this’s been re-opened.

@saghul Can you please consider reopening this?

Hangouts, Meet, Zoom, all have the option of muting your mic and/or camera before joining the room.

Even if you don’t want to make the user choose every time, we could just remember and honor his settings. So he joins any temp room, clicks on [x] Always joins with microphone muted and [x] Always joins with camera muted.

Uncommenting these options in .jitsi-meet-cfg/config.js mutes the camera upon entry by default.

// Start the conference in audio only mode (no video is being received nor sent).
startAudioOnly: true,
// Every participant after the Nth will start video muted.
startVideoMuted: 0,
// Start calls with video muted. Unlike the option above, this one is only applied locally.
startWithVideoMuted: true,