Zoom, Skype Technical Q&A here:

[luisenriquereyes]

JW Media Meeting Fetcher is a great alternative to JW Library / VLC.   

JW Meeting Media Fetcher, or JWMMF for short, is an app for Windows, macOS and Linux, that automatically downloads pictures and videos that will be considered during congregation meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses, in any language found on JW.org.

It features recurring and custom media management, an optional sync feature for members of the same congregation, as well as support for multiple congregations and/or groups.

JWMMF also allows you to share and present all meeting media easily, using either its integrated media presentation mode for hybrid or in-person congregation meetings, or the inbuilt MP4 conversion feature, which enables you to share media during fully remote congregation Zoom meetings using Zoom's native MP4 sharing feature.

More information in this post:  

 

[Tortuga]

We had a strange glitch at the meeting this morning. 

The Zoom account was set up by the COBE so we use his email address and password to logon to Zoom and start the meetings. It hasn't presented any problem until today. The A/V brothers opened his Zoom account and started the Zoom meeting, I was the Zoom Attendant so they made me the Host and I made them the co-host, I renamed them to Kingdom Hall. Everything worked fine until the COBE logged into the Zoom meeting. Our WT conductor gave the Special talk this morning so the COBE conducted the WT, during the song he tried to logon to Zoom so he could see the Zoom participants, but Zoom didn't give him an option to join the meeting, he only had the option to start the meeting, but the meeting was in progress. Apparently he tried to start the meeting again from his device and it made his device a co-host, renamed the Kingdom Hall back to his name. I had to remove the co-host privileges from his device, mute him and shut off his video and rename the A/V back to Kingdom Hall. It was kind of an odd sequence of events...

[onBoard17]

On 4/8/2022 at 6:38 PM, Floyd said:

We used it this week with our CO visit. He had 15 pictures and 2 videos. It worked flawlessly. After each picture was done we simply clicked the year text in jwlibrary in the taskbar. We didn't click stop for the picture. Just clicked the year text. When time for the next picture just double-click it in the playlist and it covers the year text. I mean it can't get much simpler. OnlyM is great too.

 

Same here. We also have no problems using VLC...although it's only used now when the Public Speaker has images. Since most C/O images / videos are now in JW Library that works great also (even sharing on Zoom from the hall).

[More4me2do]

Set up VLC according to the instructions and used it on the past midweek meeting. The CBS had about 5 pictures from all over the book and rather then navigating the Pure Worship book used the 5 images needed and imported them into VLC.

 

However when it displays them directly on the second screen it does not display it properly a portion of the image is missing even though it is set for full-screen and I tried 1080 & 720 resolutions. Had to stop the displaying of images and started them again and then dragged the VLC window now to the second screen then hit the full-screen button on VLC and now it displayed the image correctly.

 

However after that the JW Library lost the focus and the concluding song would not display properly, had to shut down JW Library and restart it. According to the OnlyM creator this is a problem when JW Library interacts with 3rd party apps. Downloaded his app to correct this problem and will test it on Sunday again.

 

Seriously considering ditching VLC and running OnlyM as only images are allowed by public speakers and the CO always had a jwpub file for his parts that could import everything into JW Library.

[Floyd]

7 hours ago, More4me2do said:

However when it displays them directly on the second screen it does not display it properly a portion of the image is missing even though it is set for full-screen and I tried 1080 & 720 resolutions.

This usually happens when the resolution of the monitor on the desk does not match the resolution of the stage TVs. Click the full screen button off and then on fixes that. I have the same problem at home. I have a 1080p monitor connected to my laptop and my laptop screen is 768. 

[Floyd]

7 hours ago, More4me2do said:

However after that the JW Library lost the focus and the concluding song would not display properly, had to shut down JW Library and restart it.

Clicking the jwlibrary icon with the year text in the taskbar fixes that.

7 hours ago, More4me2do said:

the CO always had a jwpub file for his parts that could import everything into JW Library.

Our CO always has extra images so we have to use another player.

[Tortuga]

8 hours ago, More4me2do said:

images are allowed by public speakers and the CO always had a jwpub file for his parts that could import everything into JW Library.

I noticed yesterday after the special talk that the A/V brothers were using a USB drive for the special talk images and video, I don't think they were aware that there was a JWLibrary media playlist available. I'll ask them about it today, but your comment is a good reminder to ensure the A/V brothers have the media playlists.   

[Qapla]

Just curious - in the hybrid meeting setup, are you using the "Original Sound On" option in Zoom?

 

 

[More4me2do]

The Hybrid meetings really bring to the fore some ironic happenings. Since we share the PC with 4 congregations, I never know what settings were changed or tweaked, what programs were installed and what else changed.

 

Since we follow the Spanish congregation, the first thing to do is to change the OS language back to English and the JW Library language back to English, remove from the favorites the Spanish songs, then I can pay attention to what is needed for our meeting. Not very ideal but I guess it comes out even as the Spanish brothers have to do the reverse.

 

Today something really weird happened and it points the finger to another variable in the whole hybrid setup. When playing the media on the Zoom client the share screen ONLY shows the JW Library screen but NOT the 2nd Screen. Had to share the JW Library screen and then maximize (Full Screen), which means I see nothing of the PC desktop. A total pain.

 

Trouble shot this idiosyncrasy and come to find out it is the branch Zoom account that causes this, don't know if these are settings that can be changed by the individual license holder or if the branch only can change that. Logged into my personal paid account and it was flawless as expected. When sharing there was the JW Library screen and the 2nd screen.

 

Hopefully all these tweaks and niggles will be ironed out soon. Have a week to get it fixed since no midweek meeting and memorial at a different venue.

[More4me2do]

6 hours ago, Floyd said:

Clicking the jwlibrary icon with the year text in the taskbar fixes that.

Thanks for helping which I appreciate and some of this may only be resolved by different navigation and clicks. This behavior by JW Library is unexpected and causes confusion since there are different operators that rotate and I find myself constantly being asked to help out with some weird behavior. Bring up the JW Library settings and click on 2nd screen to turn it off and then click again to turn it on is one of the many tweaks. Not unexpected as the problem most likely resides somewhere deep  in the bowls of the source code.

6 hours ago, Floyd said:

This usually happens when the resolution of the monitor on the desk does not match the resolution of the stage TVs. Click the full screen button off and then on fixes that.

Tried that but it didn't work I ONLY got VLC to play correctly by dragging it into the 2nd screen. However with the discovery today of the branch Zoom account not showing any 2nd screen to share in Zoom I am wondering if this is an additional variable to consider.

[Jonathan Martins]

As we are in sign language with a lot of video (for the songs, for all the verses and also for the images) with in addition the highlighting of the cameras of the participants in Zoom we use the virtual camera of OBS which allows you to centralize everything in a much more fluid way directly in Zoom.

Then just change the highlight in Zoom between the speaker on the podium and the virtual camera in OBS to show all the videos and images.

The advantage of this system is that you can also use another computer in addition which only takes care of launching the videos or images. You can also delegate this task to another person to lighten the work of highlighting in Zoom.

[howudodat]

7 hours ago, More4me2do said:

The Hybrid meetings really bring to the fore some ironic happenings. Since we share the PC with 4 congregations, I never know what settings were changed or tweaked, what programs were installed and what else changed.

 

Since we follow the Spanish congregation, the first thing to do is to change the OS language back to English and the JW Library language back to English, remove from the favorites the Spanish songs, then I can pay attention to what is needed for our meeting. Not very ideal but I guess it comes out even as the Spanish brothers have to do the reverse.

 

Today something really weird happened and it points the finger to another variable in the whole hybrid setup. When playing the media on the Zoom client the share screen ONLY shows the JW Library screen but NOT the 2nd Screen. Had to share the JW Library screen and then maximize (Full Screen), which means I see nothing of the PC desktop. A total pain.

 

Trouble shot this idiosyncrasy and come to find out it is the branch Zoom account that causes this, don't know if these are settings that can be changed by the individual license holder or if the branch only can change that. Logged into my personal paid account and it was flawless as expected. When sharing there was the JW Library screen and the 2nd screen.

 

Hopefully all these tweaks and niggles will be ironed out soon. Have a week to get it fixed since no midweek meeting and memorial at a different venue.

I would recommend that you create multiple users for windows.  Each user can be set with it's own language.  In our hall we have English, Spanish, French, Swahili and we used to have Italian.  JW Library and the OS can all be set to the prefered language.  Simple to sign out and sign in as the right language

[-Chris-]

On 4/9/2022 at 1:29 PM, Tortuga said:

We had a strange glitch at the meeting this morning. ...Zoom weirdness snipped...

I saw some Zoom oddities with both our sister congregation and ours. Our A/V computer was logged in to the congregation account, the last minute assignment changed Zoom attendant was also logged in to that account. Generally that hasn't been an issue but it seemed to act a little like you describe, making the Zoom window that was originally logged in disappear and making me think he had somehow ended our meeting. It was all fine in the end but it seems like something with Zoom logins changed or it is behaving differently when we all do it from the same network connection.

 

7 hours ago, More4me2do said:

Since we follow the Spanish congregation, the first thing to do is to change the OS language back to English and the JW Library language back to English, remove from the favorites the Spanish songs, then I can pay attention to what is needed for our meeting. Not very ideal but I guess it comes out even as the Spanish brothers have to do the reverse.

 

...

 

Trouble shot this idiosyncrasy and come to find out it is the branch Zoom account that causes this, don't know if these are settings that can be changed by the individual license holder or if the branch only can change that. Logged into my personal paid account and it was flawless as expected. When sharing there was the JW Library screen and the 2nd screen.

The Branch instructions suggest two different accounts in two different languages but we all share the English account and go through the same rotation each meeting as well. I like to see the Spanish, I'd rotate through all of the languages on the yeartext if it were up to me.

 

That must be a setting because we're on the Branch Zoom account and aren't having issues sharing screens.

 

Too many settings...

[More4me2do]

23 minutes ago, -Chris- said:

That must be a setting because we're on the Branch Zoom account and aren't having issues sharing screens.

Too many settings...

Thanks for replying and may I modify your last line to WAY too many settings.

Followed all the different S-Form instructions about setting up the Hybrid meeting, but slowly but steady get the feeling if you want to run the meeting without a hitch use the tools that allow you to do this.

 

One other idea that I have is perhaps what device is used to be the Zoom host. The host at today's meeting was the Video conference Attendant who was on a different device, everyone else involved in the running of the meeting was co-host. Last Tuesday the KH PC was the Zoom host and we didn't notice any problems with sharing the 2nd screen.

 

Just trying to get everything functioning smoothy and next time will use the KH PC as Zoom host and if that doesn't correct the 2nd screen sharing, than over to the branch Zoom settings.

Edited April 11, 2022 by More4me2do

[jwhess]

Zoom just updated my Iphone to version 5.10.2 but not my Windows 10 computer yet.

 

My Kindle Fire and my Android phone are 5.10.2

Edited April 12, 2022 by jwhess

[Seabriar]

Zoom Help;

Trying to figure out how to merge two zoom meetings:

Open as host to my own zoom meeting with multiple participants and then open the Generic Zoom memorial address from jw.org, share my "screen" to my participants.  What happens is that the 2nd address which is a http/ jw zoom mtg prompts to close my own zoom meeting to join the http/jw zoom.  

Is there a workaround?  to allow essentially two "zooms" to operate at once, one as streaming video, the jw generic zoom memorial and my own zoom meetins which features viewing the jw zoom.

 

 

[More4me2do]

Thought of this myself and just came up with the idea just use two PCs and two different cameras but one audio feed.

[Seabriar]

i like how you are thinking.

The issue here from past experience is my zoom people will be seeing my second computer screen featuring the memorial....is video/audio quality... tends to go south.  how would i fix the audio?

 

[More4me2do]

All depends on your audio feed and your ports. We can split our audio feed and use one for the KH PC and one for another device. The video quality depends on several factors. 1st if you are connected hard wired it is best. If you are connected using WiFi it depends on how far away you are from the router and how many are connected to the router. We had to create a guest network and limit the bandwidth for that and give full throttle to the Admin network. Finally what is your connection to the Hall? We have Fiber to the Hall so no issue there as Zoom will handle the distribution once they receive your signal.

 

Most of this advise is probably too late as you only have hours to go before the memorial.

[Floyd]

We are not experiencing any issues at all. Everybody was supposed to migrate their branch account to the new discounted license through ATT. Since doing that we can still share the second screen. Really the Kingdom Hall is no different than running Zoom at home with 2 screens which most of our brothers had. Once our brothers got that into their heads everything has been fine.

 

We have no issues with VLC once I went through it again and checked all the settings. Click share screen, double click the image in the playlist, click the year text in the taskbar when done, click stop sharing. You just have to think ahead a little.

[Qapla]

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Qapla

[Qapla]

That new feature is pretty cool ... the raise hand takes a few seconds to put up and it looks like you have to click to lower the hand - the thumbs up turns itself off  

 

 

[Jonathan Martins]

On 15/04/2022 at 20:20, Seabriar said:

Aide Zoom ;

Essayer de comprendre comment fusionner deux réunions zoom :

Ouvrir en tant qu'hôte de ma propre réunion Zoom avec plusieurs participants, puis ouvrir l'adresse commémorative Zoom générique de jw.org, partager mon "écran" avec mes participants. Ce qui se passe, c'est que la 2ème adresse qui est un mtg zoom http/jw invite à fermer ma propre réunion zoom pour rejoindre le zoom http/jw.  

Y at-il un travail autour? pour permettre essentiellement à deux "zooms" de fonctionner à la fois, l'un en tant que vidéo en streaming, le mémorial de zoom générique jw et mes propres réunions de zoom qui permettent de visualiser le zoom jw.

 

 

Hello Sister Jeanne,
in reality the problem is that it is not possible to open two Zoom sessions on the same computer unless you have a Business or Education account. If you want to be able to share a Zoom session in another Zoom, you will need to use another computer connected to a Zoom. An idea that seems to work to share everything on another Zoom is to use applications that allow remote control such as TeamViewer for example. From there you can share the audio from the main computer connected to Zoom. But it will be necessary that this computer is not located in the same room in order to avoid a Larsen effect.

[Jonathan Martins]

On 16/04/2022 at 00:24, Floyd said:

Nous ne rencontrons aucun problème. Tout le monde était censé migrer son compte de succursale vers la nouvelle licence à prix réduit via ATT. Depuis que nous avons fait cela, nous pouvons toujours partager le deuxième écran. Vraiment, la Salle du Royaume n'est pas différente de l'utilisation de Zoom à la maison avec 2 écrans que la plupart de nos frères avaient. Une fois que nos frères ont compris cela dans leur tête, tout s'est bien passé.

 

Nous n'avons eu aucun problème avec VLC une fois que je l'ai revu et vérifié tous les paramètres. Cliquez sur partager l'écran, double-cliquez sur l'image dans la liste de lecture, cliquez sur le texte de l'année dans la barre des tâches lorsque vous avez terminé, cliquez sur arrêter le partage. Il faut juste réfléchir un peu à l'avance.

Yes You can also, if you have trouble sharing a screen from a jw account, use the OBS Studio program which allows you to use a virtual camera to display images and video without going through the sharing option integrated in Zoom.

[jwhess]

Does the combining a Congregation zoom meeting with a private zoom meeting violate any of our security measures?  Only those approved by the Zoom host or attendant can allow you into our "room".