Spotlight

[bsj]

We use zoom to share our church services.

Why does spotlight only work with three or more participants?

If we have three participants and spotlight main screen, if one participant logs off we lose the spotlight and start seeing participants.

What is the reason for this and can it be changed?

Best wishes

Brian

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @bsj.

This "limitation" has been around for as long as I've been using Zoom, and I doubt it will be changed.  I'm guessing, but I think the idea is that if there are only two participants, each person can pick the Speaker view to see who is currently speaking.

So the inability to spotlight only affects your meeting if there are only 2 or less participants.  I'm assuming your church's login is 1, and if there is only one other, then that person can only see either the church camera or their own.

When you say "one participant logs off we lose the spotlight and start seeing participants"... with only one person remaining on, there should only be their own video to see.  Do you mean that there are many participants, and this happens when the Host drops from the meeting?  The Spotlight should be persistent after being enabled, and only stopping when the number of participants drops to 1 or 2.

[bsj]

Yes, we actually project the spotlit screen in the church so we don't want participants showing there.

[Ray_Harwood]

I see now. What I’ve done in the past is make sure there are always 3 people attending by logging in on a separate account (or two, if needed).  It’s a bit of a work around, but easy to do.

But it sounds like a good use case for recommending the 3-person limit be removed. 

[bsj]

Thanks Ray. How do we make that request?

Brian

[Ray_Harwood]

Here’s the official answer to that:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0068808 

i also have some internal contacts I’ll poke at … that always helps. 👍

[bsj]

Hi Ray

If I became a developer could I change the 3 person restriction?

Brian

[Ray_Harwood]

Hey, @bsj.

I don’t know the SDK, but I think the code that decides that is probably built in to the run-time library. You could always wander over to the Developers Forum at

https://devforum.zoom.us/

and find out.