How many webcams can I share in a meeting?

 

BigBlueButton is not designed as a purely video conferencing application, but rather it focuses on engagement with students (breakout rooms, shared notes, multi-user whiteboard, etc.).

 

For most Premium Tier accounts, you can share webcams in BigBlueButton and students can see each other by unlocking the See other viewers webcams (in the lock settings). 

 

 

However, we recommend keeping the overall number of streams under 200 for best performance.

 

Good examples:

  - 100 users with 1 webcam (1 * 100 = 100 streams)

  - 12 users all sharing webcam (12 * 12 = 144 streams)

 

Not good examples:

  - 25 users with 25 webcams (25 * 25 = 625 streams)

  - 75 users with 75 webcams = 5,625 streams) 

 

Right now, there are no hard-coded limits in the webcam sharing, but the above guidelines will ensure you and your students have a good experience.

 

If a student is on low bandwidth, they elect to can turn off webcams for their client via the Options menu.

  

Update (2020-06-06) - We are working on making BigBlueButton more intelligent so it will automatically optimize the number of webcam streams based on the size of the session.  For example, if in a session of 25 users all start share their webcams, BigBlueButton will ensure the moderator sees all 25, but the users will see the 6-8 webcams.  We are also working on making it so the 6-8 webcams are the last active users, such as the last 6-8 users who spoke.