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Is camera always recorded in a session?
Russ Troester avatar
Written by Russ Troester
Updated over 5 months ago

A Lookback session typically captures the participant's screen, microphone, and camera feed. While screen sharing and microphone are always required (always captured) during a Lookback session, capturing the participant's camera is optional and can be configured as such on a Round-by-Round basis.

Applies to the following round types:

  • LiveShare (moderated)

  • Tasks (unmoderated)

  • SelfTest (unmoderated)

For Interview rounds, the participant camera is always optional and can be toggled off and on throughout the session

Camera recording options. The one who sets up a the round in a project can make camera recording either optional, required or disabled

  1. Optional. The participant can choose whether or not they want to enable the camera for their session. They will not be able to change it once the session has started.

  2. Required. A camera must be selected before starting the session.

  3. Disabled. The participant will not be given the option to use their camera

Communicate expectations. Make it clear in your pre-session communication with the participant what's expected, so they have the right expectation when they enter the set-up process to grant permissions accordingly

Participant side: it's not possible for a participant to turn off the camera in the middle of a session. So, if the researcher has set participant camera to optional in Round settings, the participant needs to set the camera to off before the session begins

With our extension-free beta on desktops, if the Participant camera is set to Required or Optional, the participant will be able to toggle it off during the session should they need to for any reason

Moderator side: the moderator has the choice not to enable camera before joining the session, and can also turn their camera on or off during the session.

Participants on iOS devices: Due to Apple's privacy restrictions, Lookback is only allowed to capture the participant's camera within our Participate app. As soon as the participant on an iOS device navigates to another app while leaving Participate open in the background, the camera recording is automatically paused. As soon as the participant returns to the Participate app, the camera recording resumes. This does not impact screen or microphone capture.

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