Video disappears when I attempt to use custom server for audio/video (the default server was glitchy for us)

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I recently moved to the Forge because I was very excited about having a working integrated audio/video solution for Foundry. I had previously set up a custom jitsi server using digitalocean while I was hosting Foundry off of my local computer…but we suffered from glitches whereby there was always 1 or more players who couldn’t see and hear each other (and the players who couldn’t see each other would rotate). So after multiple attempts at troubleshooting, we decided to migrate to the Forge. I was excited.

This last Friday, we did our first session using the Forge, and attempted to use the built in video/audio. It sort of worked…but we had weird glitches in combat. Any time a player would click “end turn,” the game would suddenly became temporarily laggy, and all of our audio/video to each other would cut out for 2-3 seconds. And when I (the DM) marked a monster as dead, again the game would became very laggy, and all of our audio/video would cut out for 10-15 seconds. We played like this for probably half an hour before deciding it was unplayable, so I disabled the audio/video in Forge and we all used Discord instead. (Note: as soon as I turned off audio/video in Forge, there was no more lag)

Tonight I figured I would try remaking my previous custom jitsi server, and connecting that to the Forge to see if this could solve our weird lag issues. So I did that…but as soon as I go into audio/video settings, select that I want to use a custom server, and put all the info in and hit save - the video chat windows completely disappear. I can’t see myself or other people. And having other people log on doesn’t change this.

I tried enabling and then disabling the Jitsi WebRTC module, didn’t make any difference.
I tried re-entering all the custom server credentials to make sure I had entered them right, didn’t make any difference.
I manually went to my server domain - and yes, jitsi is working if I go directly to the domain, I was able to use the website to directly video conference with a friend.

The only way I can get the video chat windows to reappear is by turning off my custom server and going back to the default server…but that still has the issue of being laggy, and cutting out during combats (I did test it again).

I really love Foundry, and I’m excited to use the Forge, but I’m feeling very discouraged. Any insight? Either how to help me fix my lag/cutting out issue so I can use the default servers, or into how to make it so my custom server actually works?

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Sadly I’m not experienced enough with the video part to help there, but the 2-3 second lag you describe could be explained by some heavy process consuming a lot of resources for a bit, which has usually been caused by some module that is doing much more than it should.

I would urge you to attempt to use the audio/video system without any modules active to see a difference and you’ll probably find it to be much better. Then all that’s left is to find the culprit.

I’m not sure about what might be wrong with the custom server part, perhaps it’s again caused by a module, which is almost always the case with everything else. You’d benefit from checking the console log from the developer tools, which you can open by hitting F12 on the keyboard while the tab is active. There could be some indications there about what might be going wrong.

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As Alarich said, that lagging has to be some module doing extensive work and freezing up the window, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the actual Audio/Video itself, but the window freezing will have an impact on the audio/video since it can’t encode/decode the audio or video content anymore until the other processing is done.

I would look at your combat related modules first as the potential culprits. As for the custom server, that would only work with the jitsirtc module enabled since it’s a custom Jitsi server you’re using, and if that doesn’t work, I would recommend checking for errors in the console and contacting the jitsirtc developers directly to see what might cause it to not work anymore with custom servers (it could be a mismatch between your server version and what the module expects for example).

I hope that helps.

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That was very helpful, I went through and disabled all my modules, and then experimented by turning them back on. It appears the lagging/cutting out issue is now gone.

Unfortunately, even with all my other modules turned off - still, the instant I enable the Jitsi WebRTC module, my video chat windows completely disappear. And they don’t come back unless I disable the module again. I don’t know why that is, and it’s frustrating. I’ll maybe go to the general Foundry supports to see if someone has some insight about that.