SettingUpTeamtalk

Teamtalk set up an configuration guide for tt.cucat.org

This guide will help you configure teamtalk on your pc and join the cucat Teamtalk server. This server is where we have most socials, host CaviCasts, and is where the audio editing classes are held.

This guide will primarily focus on Windows usage because TeamTalk's mac accessibility is worse than on windows. If you have a Mac, we suggest that you consider running a virtual machine with Windows, or you should consider contacting a knowledgeable friend for assistance. Newer Teamtalk with newer OSX versions can be made to work with a bit of fiddling.

If you are familiar with Teamtalk use the quick start section below. If you are new to Teamtalk, please use your h key to move by headings to jump to the detailed instructions section.

All users on this teamtalk are expected to be over 18. If you are under 18 please do not connect to this server. Constant keying is not aloud on this server unless you organize for a special exemption from an admin.

If running Jaws please install the Jaws install scripts to silence progress bars when in voice activated mode. You can also disable progress bars in the display tab of settings.

Quick start For Advanced Users

For advanced users or those who have used teamtalk before, here are brief instructions to connect to our server.

• Install teamtalk v5.2 or later. This is available from the teamtalk home site
• Highly recommended : install your screenreader's support for TeamTalk. there are Jaws scripts from Doug Lee's Teamtalk site or the NVDA add-in or the Windoweyes app.
• While installing, select classic client or classic client with server. This is extremely important as it makes the interface accessible to screen readers.
• configure your client for push to talk. Voice activation is acceptable only if you set the sensitivity threshold high enough that you don't transmit when not talking.
• connect to tt.cucat.org with default ports (10333) and no user name or password, of any kind.
• Please take a moment to check your audio configuration by selecting your name and pressing CTRL 4. Press control4 again to unsubscribe from your audio.
• Press F4 and click audio settings. From here, please turn off Echo cancelation, and Ambient noise reduction, as they are on by default.

For New Users: !Step by step teamtalk configuration guide for the pc:

Please install the Jaws scripts from http://www.dlee.org/teamtalk/ if running Jaws. This silences progress bars.

There is also an nvda add-on and Windoweyes scripts if you need them.!!!obtaining Teamtalk Teamtalk is a program that allows people to converse in text, audio or video via a server. The home page for Teamtalk is http://www.bearware.dk Your first step is to obtain Teamtalk 5.2 or later from the home site Download the installer an save it in a folder where you can find it again. We recommend you save the installer somewhere safe in case reinstallation is necessary in the future. This will save you having to download the program again. Your browser will save the file in your downloads folder by default which can be accessed by hitting control j inside Firefox or Internet explorer or chrome.

Find the Teamtalk executable file and press enter on it to run it. If prompted whether or not to run the program select run.

Note that if running windows 10 you must run the installer as administrator to allow teamtalk to create its profile directory to store preferences.

The installer will open.

Installing TeamTalk

Page 1

The first window will ask you if you wish to install teamtalk onto your computer. Select Next to continue or Cancel to exit the installer.

Page 2

You will be focused on the license agreement which you can read with your continuous read command or the arrow keys. Tab across to the set of radio buttons and select "I accept the Agreement" when ready to do so. You can also select this with alt-a.

Page 3

After hitting next you will be asked for the default install location. There is no need to change anything here unless you desire to do so. Now hit Next.

Page 4

You will be focused on a combo box of components you can install. Use your arrow keys to navigate to the "Teamtalk Classic client for accessibility" or "Teamtalk Classic client with accessibility and server" choice and tab to Next. Press enter.

Page 5

The next window asks which start menu folder you wish to install Teamtalk in, no need to change this unless you have specific requirements to do so, tab to Next and activate the button.

Page 6

You are now able to select whether or not to create a desktop icon or quikc launch icon. Select the desired options by selecting the checkboxes and activate the next button.

Page 7

You are now focused on the Install button so either hit space to begin the install or navigate the dialog to review your settings so far. Activate the install button when done.

Finishing up

After a short time you will be told that the install is complete. Either leave the launch teamtalk checkbox selected to have Teamtalk launch when the installer exits or uncheck it to bypass this step. Select the finish button to close the installer.

Setting Up TeamTalk

When ready, launch TeamTalk. If this is your first time using the program, the TeamTalk first-time setup wizard will open. You can re-run this wizard from the help menu of the main application. These settings are also found in the preferences dialog.

Page 1

The first page asks you to select your native language. Do so, and hit next.

Page 2

You will now be asked to provide your name, as well as the method you will use to transmit, otherwise known as "key up." Push to talk is recommended, however if you don't mind a little trial and error, feel free to use voice activation. Do not check both. If you check neither option, you will not transmit audio, and no one will hear you. If you choose push to talk, you will then be asked to set up the key combination you wish to use. Do so simply by pressing this combination on the keyboard. We suggest you use modifier keys such as control shift or alt as Teamtalk does not discard spurious other keys when held down. Pick a combination of modifier keys such as control and shift or control alt and shift and use these as your PTT key. Do not use any non modifier keys. Setting shift as the key-up key is not recommended as you may inadvertantly be prompted to enable sticky keys unless you disable the shortcut for this in accessibility preferences in windows. Voice Activation is also fine, however you will need to modify an additional setting after the wizard is complete to ensure you do not send audio to the channel when you are not speaking. Away status is irrelevant.

Note that voice activation is not allowed during class as it disrupts other students.

Page 3

The next page has you set up your audio inputs and outputs, as well as the sound system you wish to use. For a handful of technical and not terribly important reasons, you want to use Direct Sound. However if it fails, Windows Audio is fine. On some USB headsets, you will need to use Windows Audio to send audio to stereo channels. If it's available, using Windows Session will preclude you from using 3d positioning, however it will lower your latency, allowing for more natural conversing. Be sure to use the test selected button to make sure that you have chosen the correct input and output devices, then move on. Note that if you add/remove audio devices on your computer teamtalk might need to be reminded as to which devices it should be using. Teamtalk also occasionally forgets which device it should be using for no good reason and needs to be reminded. Please turn off Echo cancelation, and Ambient noise as they are on by default.

Page 4

On the final page, launch the quick start guide if you feel it's necessary; otherwise, click finish. You should now be in the main TeamTalk window.

Connecting to CUCAT and joining lecture

Connecting

Push F2, or go to the file menu and select connect. A dialog opens asking you to enter a server to connect to; enter tt.cucat.org and press enter, click okay, etc. At this point, you should be connected to the server; if not, make sure that both of your ports are set to 10333 and that all user name or password fields are empty. Don't worry about port forwarding as taem talk is designed to forward audio and video through the server without this being necessary. If you are experiencing problems, contact someone for assistance.

entering class

Tab until you find a tree view. This is the list of channels. Take a moment to test your audio by highlighting your name and hitting control 4. Hit control 4 again to stop listening to yourself. You can join a channel by highlighting it in the tree view and Then press control-j to join the channel. You can also do this by accessing the channel menu and selecting join channel, or by accessing the context menu with the applications key. If everything is fine, arrow down to the lecture channel and join it. If you are prompted for a password, enter the provided password given to you by your instructor.

Classroom mode:

Classroom mode is a mode in which only people who have permission to speak are allowed to key up. When you first join a classroom channel you will not be permitted to speak regardless if you are a normal user or operator. Operators can toggle the ability for any users to speak or not by highlighting them and pressing control-alt-q. text to speech will announce the status change.

If an op can not toggle these statuses close and reopen teamtalk and this should resolve the issue.

If a user is wanting to speak, they can alert people on channel to this fact in the following way:

Press f6 to change your status. Change the radio button to question and type a few words to summarize what you desire in the question field then press ok. Once your question has been resolved press f6 and return the radio button to online and clear the edit field.

Issues and Tips

If you are having issues, here are a few common problems and their solutions, as well as a few tips that may make your experience better.

Common Problems

Constant Key

If you are always transmitting audio, or transmitting too much audio, you have voice activation on with too low an activation level. If you do not mean to use voice activation, disable it with control+shift+a, or by accessing the me menu. If you do wish to use voice activation, tab through the main window until you are at the third slider. This slider only appears when voice activation is... activated. If you are running the scripts/ap/addon, it will be labeled "microphone activation level." If not, you will know it is the right one by the fact that it moves in incriments of 5% with each press of the arrow key. Bring it up from 0 until your audio stops when you are not speaking. As a general rule, you can set this threshhold quite high without it being a problem; common values are over 50%. You can check if you are sending audio by looking at your status line at the bottom of the screen.

Note that some noisy microphones may require noise cancellation enabled in audio preferences if a threshold of 100% still has you sending audio. Note however that it is easy to clip the audio with noise cancellation enabled so you may have to reduce microphone levels to fix this.

Setting Levels

If your audio is too quiet or too loud, change it. It is better to do this by using the windows volume control. On Windows XP, access volume control, then enter the options menu and hit properties, then select the recording radio button. Alternatively, go to the run box (windows+r, or enter the start menu and select "run...") and type: sndvol32 /r

On windows Vista or above, enter the sound properties dialog, choose the recording tab, select your audio device and then push properties. The "levels" tab will contain your volume... levels. Disable your microphone boost if your audio is too loud. Enable it if it is too quiet AND your volume level is already at 100%.

If it is still too quiet, or if it is too loud when boosted but too quiet when not, disable boost. We will raise the volume in a less extreme way, in TeamTalk, navigate to the second, "input" slider, and raise it. It defaults to 50%; this is normal. The volume increase is logarithmic, so there should be no practical reason to raise this any higher than a few percent above 50 This works by amplifying your audio levels, which is why it is preferable to raise your input volume in the recording dialog first: your audio will be more likely to distort or have hiss otherwise. Users can set the volume they hear other users at, so it is better to be too quiet than too loud. A quiet person can be boosted without problems, whereas someone that is too loud will cause clipping, which sounds nasty, distracts and cannot be removed.

Noise/feedback

If your signal has a lot of noise on it, enter the preferences dialog, select the sound system page, and enable noise reduction. Similarly, if you are echoing back (more than once if you're in an echo channel), enable duplex mode and echo cancelation. (Duplex mode should be disabled when echo cancelation is off.)

Tips

Preferences

Nearly all of TeamTalk's settings, including several that are also in menus, can be accessed by entering the preferences dialogue. You can access it by hitting f4, or navigating to it in the file menu.

connection behavior

You will automatically join the root channel upon connection. If this behavior is not desired, change it in the client page of preferences.

Push-to-talk hotkey

You can change your push-to-talk key in the general page of preferences. TeamTalk will use the exact key you press; so if you for instance choose the right-control key, the left control key will not work.

Away Status

If you wish, a setting in preferences allows you to stop transmitting when you are set as away. However it is worth noting that the away timer operates on keypresses only; IE if you are only sitting at your PC talking it will think you are away when you're not. If you then set TT to mute your audio when set to away, this can result in TeamTalk cutting you off in the middle of a sentence without informing you.

3d Positioning

By default, and in most VOIP aplications, all participants are panned to the center. If you would prefer to have each person in the chat to be separated into different sections of the stereo field, enable 3d positioning in the sound system page of the preferences dialog. This only works in mono channels, with direct sound enabled and duplex mode disabled. If you are on Windows XP, some sound cards will even use EAX effects to simulate back and front effects when this is enabled, however this appears to be unavailable on Vista and above.

low ap volume level

On first run, TeamTalk defaults to half of its available volume. If TeamTalk is too quiet, navigate to the first slider in the tab order, labeled in the scripts/ap/addon as output volume. Make sure it is at 100%. Switching the sound system in preferences to Windows Session audio can further increase TeamTalk's volume, at the expense of 3d positioning and some CPU.

Windows Audio Session support

TeamTalk 5.0 and above supports the Windows Session audio framework, which allows for less over all latency. Windows Session is a lower level API than Direct Sound, so it processes sound more quickly and in a higher priority. This means that multiple people using it will have more natural conversation as there will be less delay between participants. How much depends greatly on the amount of ping they have to the server. Additionally, WASAPI operates on a different volume bus, so the volume may alter slightly. However, it makes the program use more CPU overhead and does not support more complex processing such as 3D positioning. If you want to use it, enable it in sound system. Windows Audio Session is of course only available on Windows vista and above. also note that windows Audio session is both a blessing and a curse. for some users it is the only way to get their audio device to work, for other users it causes crashes, instability and inability to hear audio. If it doesn't work for you turn it off.

Mac users

If you are running OS X 10.10.3, the accessibility has gotten better. We shall update this section soon.