MP4 video audio not heard by some attendees

Hi LElliott_RAND, welcome to the community.

That is really more of an individual attendee computer issue. When an attendee connects a headset to their computer either by USB or a traditional 1/8 jack, their computer should automatically switch to using that audio output.

For example, on my personal Windows 10 PC, I was an attendee in a webinar and dialed into the audio using my telephone. The organizer played a YouTube video using the video share feature and the audio played through my PC speakers. When I connected my USB headset the video audio switched to the headset and the GoToWebinar software gave me the option of switching from telephone to computer audio for the webinar. When I disconnected the USB headset the video audio went back to my PC speakers until I plugged in my regular headphones with a 1/8 jack, at which point the audio was then playing through those headphones.

When you upload a MP4 video and play it (everyone's computer automatically plays it through the computer speakers. So if you're in an open office everyone will hear the webcast. If you plug-in your headset you can no longer hear the sound of the video because you have to manually change how you hear it. We don't want to tell 300 people on a line how they can hear the video.

We think it should just play no matter what people are listening through. Can this ever be resolved? 

Hi Preact_Warren 

If the issue was with the recordings I think it would affect all of the attendees, not just some of them. The audio for shared videos is played through the attendees computer using its default audio settings. It is possible that these specific attendees default audio out device was muted or unavailable. 

Thanks Chris Droessler. In some instances, attendees have connected using the phone but not all.  Do you have any recommendations for how the MP4 is produced which might avoid this issue? We use Camtasia so there are various options for encoding but I'm not sure if these would address this issue? Many thanks. 

The people who can not hear the audio part of the video are probably people who are using the telephone for the audio part of the webinar.  The videos you play back during a webinar always use the computer speakers, if there are any.

The other issue could be a non-standard mp4 video format.  Since this video does not play back the same way as regular webinar audio, you might find that some computers/devices do not decode the mp4 as well as others.  We have had lots of discussions here about converting your mp4 videos to a standard format that will play back on most platforms.