[ARCHIVED] Canvas Conferences Freezing

[cheney]

Is anyone else experiencing difficulty with microphone and webcam functionality with the Conferences tool? We are seeing it freeze Chrome browser to the point of needing to restart the computer.  It is probably related to BBB but I can't find anything on their issues page or documentation showing that others are having problems. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there,  @cheney ...

I am not sure if an answer for you, but I wanted to let you know that I am going to tag  @ffdixon ‌ in my reply in hopes that he might be able to help answer your question.  Good luck!  Stay safe, and be well.

[ffdixon]

Hi Stephanie,

I am the product manager for BigBlueButton.  I work at Blindside Networks, the company that provides hosting for Canvas Conferences to Instructure, and while can't speak on behalf of Instructure, I can respond to your question.

> We are seeing it freeze Chrome browser to the point of needing to restart the computer.

Hmm ... Chrome has usually been pretty solid.

Can you tell us the version of Chrome and OS you are running.  Are you able to reproduce this consistently?  When doing screen sharing, are you choosing full screen, browser tab, or application?

Regards,... Fred

[cheney]

Hi Fred,

We are using MacBook Air machines. OS Mojave, version 10.14.6 and Chrome: Version 81.0.4044.129 

Unfortunately, we are able to recreate it with some consistency. It is a more widespread issue than I'd realized with our faculty. I've received messages like this:

- I was in a conference yesterday when my computer overheated and shut off. That was the first time it actually caused my computer to crash; normally it would just freeze my computer, necessitating a restart.

- So my computer is really struggling when I’m using Canvas Conferences these days. Everything slows down, my camera isn’t working, it’s the program is killing my computer. Any ideas? (I have turned it off/on ). 

We have put off updates to Catalina because folks would lose access to applications that aren't 64-bit. I'll continue to gather info from my folks but if you have any ideas/things to try, we'd be grateful.

Stephanie.

[cheney]

Here are more use cases all with the same Mac OS/Chrome version: 

- It has frozen one on one with me and it has frozen when I have 13 on the call.  I tried to add a presentation (and some of my students experienced this also) where when I hit confirm upload, I was kicked out of my own conference and had to rejoin all these kindly waiting students.  I chalked it up to me being inexperienced, but it was happening to students who were trying to upload their presentation too. We ended up just listening to the report outs and endured the freezes.

- Every time I'm on during the math meeting I only make it about 20 minutes and my video gives out even though my cam is on.  Then if I used it a lot in one day I've lost sound at the end of the day and I had to call in with my phone.  Last week after both the faculty meeting then math department meeting I lost the webcam, then my computer just stopped working and completely shut off. I picked up and it was hot.  I came back to it after a couple of hours and it came back.

[cheney]

Hi Fred,

Just circling back on this. I have about 12 faculty members all experiencing some version of this issue with varying severity. Everything from the camera not working to audio dropping off to the computer totally overheating and shutting down. The common variable is the Conferences tool via Canvas. Have you heard of this happening with other folks? Most faculty are Mac OS 10.14.6 but a few have upgraded to Catalina and are still having trouble. We want to have interviews with students as part of our year-end closure and are feeling nervous that the platform is unstable. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Stephanie.