Playing desktop audio over Connect

The best answer is to use a tool that loads directly into the Connect room. Less bandwidth, better viewing experience and audio!

Screen sharing does just that, shares the image of your screen. I have heard of people just turning up their speakers or linking the audio out to the audio in jack on their computer to re-broadcast the audio from their presentation or video. That said, it is a broken experience, not only because the audio is seen as a separate piece from the visual, but if we are talking in video terms, screen sharing runs at about 3-5 Frames Per Second (FPS). Standard video runs between 15 and 30 FPS, so you are guaranteed to have a bad visual experience via screen sharing. On top of that many video playback tools (Windows Media Player, for one) have built in anti-piracy stuff that prevents you from capturing the video through a screen capture device. So there will be times that all your participants see is a black box.

So if you want to share video in a meeting room, convert the video to an FLV video. There are some free tools out there (http://www.media-convert.com) or for a little money you can get either the Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash ($45) or the AVS Video converter 6 ($105-55 depending on the sale price). Either way you bring video into the Connect room.

As to the presentation side, I would recommend you use something like Adobe Presenter or Captivate, as that will allow you to convert your presentations to SWF (Flash) and import them into the Connect room.

Jorma