How to draw with a stylus while screen-sharing in a Zoom call?

tanius

5/4/23, 10:01 PM

At least with my setup, drawing with a pressure-sensitive stylus in Mypaint does not work while screen-sharing in a Zoom call. It is so sluggish (in the sense of recording a new line position only every 50 pixels or so) that it is unusable. The problem may or may not happen with other screen sharing software as well. So I'm happy both for a solution for Zoom calls, and for any solution using an alternative tool.

The issue does not happen while screensharing is paused in Zoom, so it is not connected to the X server compositing done by Zoom on top of the Mypaint window (that is, the colored border around the screen and a small call window without decorations). Rather, it seems connected the CPU and / or GPU load of capturing and / or encoding the video stream.

Details about my setup: ThinkPad X201 Tablet, using the Wacom tablet integrated into its screen for pressure-sensitive drawing. Ubuntu 20.04, or rather Lubuntu 20.04 but it should not matter for the purpose of this question. Zoom for Linux in the version current as of 2021-06. Mypaint in the current version.

0 + 0

lubuntu

wacom

zoom-meeting

Score:1

Ubuntu

mgarort

10/26/23, 5:22 PM

The best solution I have found uses scrcpy, an easy-to-use tool to display an Android's device screen on a computer's screen.

To install, simply do sudo apt install scrcpy.

To display the Android device's screen on your computer's screen:

Connect the Android device to your computer through a cable (it must be a cable that allows data transfer, not a plain charging cable).
Start scrcpy by opening a terminal and executing scrcpy.
Allow data transfer in the popup window in the Android device.
To increase the size of the scrcpy window so that it fills the computer's screen with the Android screen, press $mod+g (this is a scrcpy-specific shortcut).

Finally, to draw on Zoom or similar applications like Teams, you can share the whole screen or just the scrcpy window.

+ 2

tanius

10/27/23, 7:48 PM

Interesting! So you use an Android drawing app on the Android device to do the actual drawing, and then this gets shared via `scrcpy` to the computer and via Zoom etc. screensharing to others. That indeed solves the sluggishness, as the drawing uses its very own CPU and GPU.

mgarort

10/27/23, 11:09 PM

Yes, exactly! This is the solution I have found for my Android tablet. I am sure there must be others for iPads.

Score:-1

Ubuntu

tanius

5/4/23, 10:01 PM

(not a full answer, just a workaround)

As a workaround, you can pause the screensharing in Zoom, then draw, and then restart the screensharing afterwards to show the updated canvas to the other participants. This way, participants will at least see the previous state of the canvas while screensharing is paused (as opposed to ending it). Of course, it's not a great fix, as participants will always only see static images, not the action of drawing.

0 + 0

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: How to draw with a stylus while screen-sharing in a Zoom call?

TH: How to draw with a stylus while screen-sharing in a Zoom call?

RO: How to draw with a stylus while screen-sharing in a Zoom call?

RU: How to draw with a stylus while screen-sharing in a Zoom call?

VI: How to draw with a stylus while screen-sharing in a Zoom call?

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