Help - cannot share screen on video conferencing apps

[272BHP]

Please help as this is starting to seriously affect my ability to do my job in a WFH situation.

Many times during the week I am required to demo what I have been working on but for some reason every time I share my screen my Macbook Pro seems to work at a cripplingly slow pace and I have had to abort the demo as websites timeout. This has been going on for months now and I cannot work out where the bottle neck is. Activity monitor doesn't appear to offer any insight.

MB Pro 16" in clamshell mode
2 x 4k screens
Logitech 930e webcam
Broadband is roughly 35mb

Anyone experience the same or have any ideas?

[xeny]

What software are you using? Zooms, Teams, Skype, WebEx....?

On the simplifying and see what happens front, have you tried with the MBP and no external screens? (Yes I know this would be a colossal PITA long term, but would give a bit more info.)

I'm presuming you are running the screens at "real" resolution and scaling in MacOS. Is it worth trying them at the resolution you're trying to see stuff at, say 2560 x 1440 (you don't say screen physical size) with no scaling, which will look ugly but give everything far fewer pixels to push about?

for screen sharing, upload is more critical than download, so check that.

Hopefully you've got a friend/partner/colleague who doesn't mind being on the end of an hour or so of testing.....

[272BHP]

xeny said:

What software are you using? Zooms, Teams, Skype, WebEx....?

On the simplifying and see what happens front, have you tried with the MBP and no external screens? (Yes I know this would be a colossal PITA long term, but would give a bit more info.)

I'm presuming you are running the screens at "real" resolution and scaling in MacOS. Is it worth trying them at the resolution you're trying to see stuff at, say 2560 x 1440 (you don't say screen physical size) with no scaling, which will look ugly but give everything far fewer pixels to push about?

for screen sharing, upload is more critical than download, so check that.

Hopefully you've got a friend/partner/colleague who doesn't mind being on the end of an hour or so of testing.....

I think I have tried with no external screens but that was awhile ago. I will give it another go. You are right that would give a lot more info although unplugging everything to screen share would be a pain for sure going forward.

Upload is 7Mbps

[xeny]

272BHP said:

I think I have tried with no external screens but that was awhile ago. I will give it another go. You are right that would give a lot more info although unplugging everything to screen share would be a pain for sure going forward.

I'd guess that if no external screens works sensibly, then mirroring would work, so you might be able to flip between mirrored and extending depending on if you're presenting or not.

[CorradoTDI]

The upload may well be the issue here - have you tried / tested working from another connection (or tethering onto 4G if you have a work phone?)

10Mb Down and Up is really absolute minimum for WFH and I tell people you really need 20Mb down (per person using it)

I spent a few years working off 4G at around 20MB average (it fluctuates) and it was fine but the upload was nearly the same.

Now got FTTC and a very consistent 80Mb down and 20 up and can have 2 of us WFH with kids streaming stuff etc no probs.

My mum has the 35Mb package from BT and it's generally fine for what she does but often has issues with Facetime cutting out.

Upgrade if you can!!

[Captain_Morgan]

Have you tried only sharing the app / browser in question to see if that changes anything?

What video conf app are you using and I trust you’ve given it the security clearance to access the desktop etc?

[xeny]

Activity monitor can show level of network traffic, so that would give an easy way to see if the connection is saturated, but most video call apps compress so much they should fit in 7 up.

Teams for example requires .25/.25 minimum for screen sharing, 2.5/2.5 recommended and 4/4 for best performance in screen sharing meetings (all figures in Mbit/sec), all from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/pr...

[CorradoTDI]

xeny said:

Activity monitor can show level of network traffic, so that would give an easy way to see if the connection is saturated, but most video call apps compress so much they should fit in 7 up.

Teams for example requires .25/.25 minimum for screen sharing, 2.5/2.5 recommended and 4/4 for best performance in screen sharing meetings (all figures in Mbit/sec), all from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/pr...

Interesting - thanks for posting that link although I suspect MS are being fairly frugal with the figures...

[CorradoTDI]

Also - has your router been power cycled recently and have you got ethernet on the Mac so you can run a cable to rule out the home WiFi being an issue

[TonyRPH]

CorradoTDI said:

xeny said:

Activity monitor can show level of network traffic, so that would give an easy way to see if the connection is saturated, but most video call apps compress so much they should fit in 7 up.

Teams for example requires .25/.25 minimum for screen sharing, 2.5/2.5 recommended and 4/4 for best performance in screen sharing meetings (all figures in Mbit/sec), all from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/pr...

Interesting - thanks for posting that link although I suspect MS are being fairly frugal with the figures...

I believe their figures to be reasonably accurate actually.

I'm a former IT bod and my O/H works from home - I typically monitor my internet connection, and even when she is conferencing with screen share etc. there is ample bandwidth available out of our 16m upload and 54m down.

[xeny]

TonyRPH said:

I believe their figures to be reasonably accurate actually.

That's my impression as well - I'm responsible for a wireless network which sees a lot of teams traffic at present, and bandwidth demand roughly corresponds to those figures. Teams is demanding of CPU, but not so much network.

[Captain_Morgan]

I’d agree those figures sound about right, hence asking about the screen vs app sharing and permissions.

Another thought is could work loan a laptop or Mac Book to use in testing and troubleshooting so you can see if it’s persistent across machines

If so I’d try testing with the screens and without them in case they are causing the issue

[TonyRPH]

My o/h had a teams call earlier - there were three of them in the call.

The graphs below show the bandwidth usage - which is pretty much in line with the recommendations from Microsoft.

EDIT: Oops my graphs are the wrong way around.

Inbound: Outbound: (~126 kbytes/s - 1 Mbit/s)



Outbound: Inbound: (~300 kbytes/s = 2.4 Mbit/s)

Edited by TonyRPH on Friday 3rd December 18:16