Does video only show when talking?

[jwmcclung]

With so few participants videos showing at a time, I am curious if my client is actually sending the video when I am muted and not being shown to other participants. More specifically, some in our company want to turn off video on large conferences to save bandwidth and have a better performing experience overall. My gut tells me that video isn't actually sent to the cloud unless your video is visible to everyone.

[#2]

Hi,

Say it is you you and 10 other attendees in the meeting and all of you have turned on video. If you don't say anything your video stream will probably not be shown for anyone else as long as there is four others speaking. Then your client won't send any video stream (since there is nobody watching). But it might only be two other active speakers and then your video might be shown on someone's computer anyway, even if you are not active in the conversation.

You could also have the scenario where someone want to look some extra at you so they pin your video, then you will send your video stream from your computer.

If you want to save bandwidth it is probably better to turn off your video after the introduction and then maybe start it again when you are speaking or involved in the discussion. You can also turn off all incoming video.

If all the other 10 participants in the meeting turn off incoming video your client will stop sending video stream until someone starts their incoming video again.

[#3]

Initially yes.  But later we want it to be more interactive when we go live - when we can have a Q&A portion for the attendees.