[Freedombox-discuss] Ho "Toggle Tile View" button in Element.desktop/jitsi (matrix client).

[A. F. Cano]

One of my video conferencers is getting really frustrated.  Apparently no
matter what he tries, he doesn't see the "Toggle Tile View" button in the
jitsi part of Element.desktop, and thus can't switch views from the 3 small
windows to one large window that switches depending on who's speaking.  Also
his "small windows", available only after restarting Element.desktop, are tiny
compared to what I see.  Mine are 2.5" x 1.75".  He also says that one of the
3 of us in the video conference call (presumably in the non-tiny window mode)
shows in a black screen, even though he can hear the other 2, so the connection
with the matrix server on the FreedomBox is established.  The other two are
running Windows.  To get back to the tiny window mode and get rid of the black
screen for the one user, he needs to restart Element.

>From what I see in my own Element.desktop (Debian Linux), the tile view button
only appears when there are other people in the chat room, but for him it never
shows.  I have also not encountered the black screen issue.  The other user
in the same "chat room" sees the same buttons I see and apparently Element/
jitsi works as I see it here.

Does anyone have some idea what could be causing this behavior?  The
resolutions we all see are comparable and adjust dynamically, probably to
the bandwidth available.

The only difference that I know about for this one user is that he uses bit
defender, but I can't see how that would cause these problems.  There was an
issue with giving permission to the camera at one point but it was fixed with
an update to bit defender.

Could this be caused by bandwidth issues?  It would seem not, unless his
bandwidth gets so degraded that Element (and/or jitsi) decides there is only
bandwidth enough for audio from that user.  I hsve seen reduced resolution and/
or frame rates at different times, but not a black screen, and then of course I
have never seen the lack of the "Toggle Tile View" button while other people
were in the chat room.

All 3 of us are running the latest version of Element, me on Debian stable,
the other 2 on windows.  I'm running the matrix server on the FreedomBox, so
my connection is local (wired) to the FreedomBox.  My camera is 720p and I'm
surprised that jitsi only shows myself at 480 resolution (SD circle on the
picture).  Another frustration on my part is that I can't make the small
video windows in jitsi bigger, even though I'm running Element on a 24" 1080p
screen, but that's probably a design issue with Element/jitsi.  Increasing the
size or maximizing the Element window only makes the non-jitsi parts bigger.

Any suggestions to track this down will be greatly appreciated.  Has anyone
seen these problems?  I have searched but detailed documentation on Element/
jitsi is not available.  Can someone suggest a specific click sequence/setup
that guarantees that the "Toggle Tile View" button appears?  In my experience,
it shows automatically once there is another person in the chat room, but maybe
he is in a different mode, or maybe he just hit a bug in jitsi or element.  I
have noticed that the button represented by a little square with an arrow
going out of it, is gone.  When clicked this button used to bring up a browser
that wanted to go to some "riot.im/..." link.  Since I'm running my own matrix
server, I didn't understand why or wanted to go there.

In any case, thank you for reading this far.  Like I said, I'd be grateful for
any possible solution to these issues.  I really really don't want to go to
zoom.

Thanks.

Augustine