Why are my speaker's webcam and microphone not working?
Everyone who's ever organized several webinars will perfectly know the situation: the speaker connects to the webinar platform and simply nothing happens. No video shows and no sound is there. And this is even though the speaker confirms that no hardware or software issues exist and that of course, the webcam works perfectly in Zoom or other applications.
We have seen this often enough and the solution was usually stunningly simple.
Solution #1: Bowser permission to access the camera and microphone
The first solution is to check the webinar settings. If a webinar is hosted online, it should be configured to allow webcams and audio.
Modern browsers are playing safe when it comes to accessing cameras or microphones and there prompt the user to explicitly allow access whenever a new website wants to access cameras or microphones. So in case, a speaker connects for the first time on Boothted, the browser will show a pop-up to allow Boothted (or any other webinar solution) to access the camera and audio.
Often enough users are quick to deny access and find themselves then in a situation where no camera or microphone is working.
This can be remedied either by simply refreshing the browser and then again correctly giving the permission or otherwise changing the permissions in the browser preferences.
Here are where to find these settings in the main browsers:
Google Chrome (other chromium browsers are similar):
- open "Preferences"
- then "Privacy and Security"
- then "Site Settings"
- Usually, the webinar site shows under "Recent activity", but you may as well click on "View permissions and data stored across sites" and find the webinar site (i.e. Boothted) in the list
Apple Safari:
- open "Settings"
- then "Websites"
- click on "Camera / Microphone" and adjust the settings for the website accordingly
Firefox:
- open "Preferences"
- click on "Privacy & Security"
- scroll down to "Permissions" and click on "Camera / Microphone"-Settings to adjust the settings
Microsoft Edge:
- open "Preferences"
- click "Cookies and Site Permissions"
- scroll down to "Camera / Microphone" permissions, and adjust the permissions accordingly
Solution #2: Another software is using the webcam
Surprisingly Microsoft Windows seems to limit access to a webcam to one single application at a time while MacOS doesn't impose these limits. We already had a situation where a speaker tried to connect and while the audio worked well and all permissions where given, no video showed. The solution was quite simple: the speaker had another application open that used the webcam (in this case Zoom). This prevented the browser from accessing the webcam and the speaker was literally left in the dark. As soon as Zoom shut down the image instantly appeared.
Solution #3: MacOs Privacy & Security settings
Once we faced the situation that the webcam wasn't showing in Chrome on a Mac even though all permissions in Chrome were correctly set. Restarting the browser or even the Mac didn't change anything. After some investigations, it showed that the speaker had never used before Chrome and that as well other app-based apps couldn't access the webcam at all.
This led us to the solution: the speaker had refused to give necessary permission on the OS level to the browser to access the camera. This is done on MacOs by opening the "System Settings", and navigating to "Privacy & Security". Here permission for each app can be given to access the camera or the microphone.
Make your pre-flight checks!
In case webcams and audio devices are not visible or accessible during webinars, webinar hosts should check webinar settings, make sure webinar applications have access to webcams and audio devices, and configure browser software correctly or even the MacOs. This way webinars can continue without any issues with regard to the camera or sound of a webinar speaker.