City of Venice technology staff spent the meeting troubleshooting audio and remote-participation problems that were delaying or muting remote participants on the city’s Granicus livestream and Zoom feeds.

Staff members repeatedly tested microphone, monitor and source settings to match the Zoom client to the system capture device, and to equalize levels between the room audio, the recorder and the public stream. A staff member described the intended remote-participation setup: “we show remote party video on a laptop that’s in front of one of the chairs with a monitor, and we pin their video,” adding that the city typically does not share remote video through the main Crestron theater feed.

The city's technical team traced several causes for the interruptions. They said using Zoom’s web client sometimes created a roughly 30‑second delay and prevented the meeting room from receiving the remote participant’s audio; installing or updating the Zoom desktop client resolved that for some logins. Staff also noted that the wrong monitor/source selection or an unconfigured USB capture device could prevent remote video or audio from appearing where expected. One staff member said a monitor had been renamed to “Crestron” in the operating system so video routed correctly, but that the name did not persist across logins for non‑administrator accounts.

Technicians tested multiple fixes during the session: switching Zoom to use the same system audio device, selecting the HDMI USB capture as the camera source, renaming and reassigning monitors for consistent routing, and changing recorder/stream routing so program audio and microphone levels aligned across outputs. They also adjusted microphone gain and encouraged using a boom mic or lapel closer to speakers so remote listeners could hear clearly. On stream and recorder routing, staff discussed treating the Granicus recorder and the live stream as the same output for level adjustments and agreed to “program to the recorder” to normalize levels.

Staff repeatedly emphasized the need to pin or “float” a remote participant’s video during testimony or when a chair joins remotely. The technique — sometimes called a floating head — places the remote participant’s image on a small monitor at the dais so in‑room participants can see them without sending that feed through the main theater output. The group identified a short list of users (Kelly, Mercedes and Amanda) whose profiles should be updated so the correct monitor and audio settings persist across logins. They also flagged that Zoom updates often reset monitor/source selections and that someone with administrative access will need to reapply settings after updates.

Speakers tested volume across multiple outputs, noting that a mic could sound louder in the Zoom client than on the Granicus stream and that balancing the control‑panel gain was necessary to avoid feedback when multiple mics were unmuted. The team agreed to try adding a boom mic closer to typical speaker positions and to standardize which output is used for the program audio so audience monitors receive consistent sound without affecting the live stream.

No formal vote or policy decision was recorded during these tests. Staff characterized the session as a technical troubleshooting and configuration exercise; next steps discussed included updating user profiles, documenting which monitor/source settings to use, and standardizing procedures after Zoom updates so remote participants remain audible and visible.

A few presenters used the test period to note their agenda items — one speaker said they planned to present a request for an aviation simulator and mentioned an estimated $3,000,000 cost, and another speaker joked about a public swimming pool — but staff kept the focus on resolving AV and remote‑access issues during the meeting.