What to Check When a Subject Joins a Room

When a Subject joins the Session room, there are several things you’ll want to verify before doing a Test Record, prior to beginning your shoot.

Check Internet Speed

When a participant enters a room for the first time, OpenReel runs an internet speed test. This speed test will be monitored and re-checked for webcams throughout the duration of the session; for Mobile devices, the speed test reflects the initial speed of the device's connection upon entry into the Session.

Both the Director’s & Subject’s upload speed and download speed should be greater than 3Mb/s for best performance.

You can check our own internet speeds by clicking the little i icon at the top of your browser page.

You can check the Subject’s speeds in one of two ways:

1. Click the little i icon next to their name above the preview window

   

   

2. Navigate to the Adjustments panel, and open the Device information tab.
   
   

Check Battery Levels

Note the Subject’s battery level in the upper right-hand corner of the Subject viewing screen. A Subject’s device should be as close to 100% charged as possible, as you do not want the Subject charging and recording at the same time. Both charging and recording utilize a lot of processing power, and doing both at the same time could risk overheating the phone.

Check Device Storage

Verify that the Subject has at least 5 GB of storage available on their device. You can confirm the Subject’s available Storage in the lower right-hand corner of the Subject viewing screen. Remember you will not be able to see the storage for any webcam participants.

Check Device Performance

Navigate to the Adjustments tab and expand the Device Information tab.

What should you look for?

Network Quality: On a scale of 1-5, similar to the “bars” you see on a mobile device indicating network strength. The higher the better. 

CPUs: This shows the number of Computer Processing Units a computer has. You will not see this for mobile devices. We recommend filming on computers with at least 6 CPUs. If your recording subject is operating on fewer than 6 CPUs, we recommend they close out and force quit any apps running on the computer. Check out our Webcam Subject Prep sheet to help!

Performance: This describes the overall performance of the browser. You want this to say at least “Good” but ideally “Excellent” before you start recording.