Breeze Article

Best Practices for Screen Sharing in Breeze Meeting

Strategy 1: Use alternatives to screen sharing

Because Breeze is built on the Flash platform, other Adobe products are integrated for use in Breeze Meetings. In fact, many of those products that create Flash-based content can be used instead of screen sharing. One of the primary uses for screen sharing is to share Microsoft PowerPoint slides. Breeze Meeting allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations and automatically converts them into Flash.

Presentation conversions can be initiated in two ways. To initiate a conversion while in a meeting, upload a PowerPoint presentation using the Share pod. Alternatively, you can use Breeze Presenter, a plug-in to PowerPoint, to publish and store presentations on the server’s content library for reuse across multiple meetings. After the content is converted to Flash and displayed in the Share pod, navigation through the presentation by a meeting host or presenter is automatically synchronized across all meeting attendees. This method is also better than screen sharing because it lets you monitor the meeting while you are sharing slides so if a user send a chat message or changes their status, you can respond. Furthermore, the bandwidth requirements are drastically reduced compared to screen sharing, as the Breeze PowerPoint-to-Flash conversion engine greatly compresses file size.

A second scenario for screen sharing in Breeze Meeting is sharing documents. Macromedia FlashPaper allows anyone to convert printable files into Flash documents with one click. Like the Breeze Meeting integration with PowerPoint content, navigation through a FlashPaper document by a meeting host or presenter is automatically kept in sync with what meeting participants are seeing. While FlashPaper documents are not editable, for many scenarios (especially those when you may be dealing with users who are attending the meeting on low-bandwidth connections) this limitation is actually preferable. For example, if you are a sales person and sharing a data sheet or quote with a customer, having a static, high-fidelity, non-editable copy of the document is ideal. If you are using Breeze Meeting as a virtual classroom, guiding users through a manual or other procedural document, this format would also likely be ideal. Converting the documents to FlashPaper also enables you to then reuse the same content as a non-editable handout or meeting takeaway for meeting attendees, ensuring the integrity of the document. This can be done easily by making the document available in a File Share pod. Every Breeze user who is a member of the Authors and Meeting Administrators groups are entitled to install a free copy of FlashPaper as part of their license.

Another common scenario for screen sharing is to conduct scripted demonstrations of software applications or scenario-based training or information sharing. Macromedia Captivate is an industry-leading product that enables non-technical users to produce pre-recorded software demonstrations. In Breeze 5, the revolutionary integration with Captivate allows you to bring prerecorded, pixel-perfect demonstrations into a Meeting and automatically synchronize that demonstration across all attendees. Think about the last time you conducted a web seminar that involved a product demo, and all of the stress that was involved in getting a computer set up, authoring a script, and practicing the demo over and over before the big day. And then add to that stress the fact that you had to run through the same web seminar multiple times and that members of your field organization had to learn the same script, get beyond-the-firewall access to a demo server, and all of the other headaches that accompany that. Captivate allows presenters to author a demonstration once and reuse that same demonstration across an organization, resulting in an impressive ROI, not to mention dramatic time savings.

Using these techniques allows you to make optimal use of the bandwidth available to each attendee and avoid many of the challenges and uncertainty associated with screen sharing. This point is critical. Breeze is constantly monitoring your screen for changes and sending out updates to everyone in the meeting immediately after it detects a change. Basically, Breeze stands by idly until a change happens and then reacts quickly when a screen update occurs, compressing the information and sending it to meeting attendees.

However, when you use these methods Breeze Meeting already knows what content is coming and intelligently streams content ahead of time as bandwidth is made available. When the presenter pauses for a moment, Breeze takes advantage of that idle time to stream as many slides, screens, or pages as it can to meeting attendees. Then when the meeting presenter advances, the only information Breeze has to send out to attendee computers is to advance one slide, screen, or page since the slides have already been progressively downloaded in the background. The effect on performance of using this progressive download technique is significant, because the bandwidth that would have been used to send screen information to attendees can be dedicated to other features such as voice over IP or live video.

In addition to using the methods described above to reduce bandwidth use, Breeze Meeting can also consume other types of content and use the same mechanisms to reduce bandwidth. If you are sharing images, you can upload JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) or PNG (Portable Network Graphics) files directly into the Share pod. Each user receives their own copy of the image downloaded locally and displayed in their meeting instance. This means that the images will be crystal clear and will only require the initial bandwidth required to get a copy of the image to their local computer.

Similarly, Breeze Meeting can also render Flash Video (FLV) natively inside the Share pod. Flash video use has increased dramatically over the past year or so, and chances are you’ve experienced Flash video before. You probably already know that trying to screen share video is nearly impossible. You are almost guaranteed that meeting participants will have a poor experience if you try to do this. However, if you upload an FLV file to the meeting, the Breeze server automatically streams that video to meeting participants, ensuring a great playback experience. Furthermore, the presenter has full control over the playback of that video, with the ability to play or pause the video for all meeting attendees using the integrated controls. Explore the following resources to find out how to create Flash Video and more.

Another advantage to uploading your PowerPoint presentations, FlashPaper documents, Flash Video files, etc. is the ability to use the Breeze Meeting native tools like the Pointer tool to point out a specific area of the content or even use the whiteboard tool to write over the image.

Figure 1. When you upload content to the Share pod, you can use the whiteboard and pointer tools in conjunction with the content.

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Breeze Article

Best Practices for Screen Sharing in Breeze Meeting

Table of Contents

Strategy 1: Use alternatives to screen sharing