Depending on your screen layout and what the focus of the room is, the video might not be relevant at all, or might just be an audio stream (e.g. from soundcloud). It would be nice if I could swap the location of the cameras and the video in that case. This is particularly important in the new mobile UI, which doesn’t let you see the video at all while chatting or using the playlist.
Thanks for your feedback! I understand your idea, however, most video platforms allow the embed only if it’s visible on the page with a certain minimum size.
How is visibility determined? Could we put the video behind the text the way the webcams now are? Or even rendered with an offset to put it partially offscreen? I have no trouble playing an embedded video on a scrollable page, for example. If I could scroll the page down such that the video is mostly offscreen that would be good enough.
Yes, a scroll would be acceptable. You are right, that could be a way to create more space on mobile devices… Let me think about that for a moment…