[unsolvable] disable passwords for Zoom Basic meetings (Arch, Android)

If one's about to install Zoom on any device, first open a browser and create an account at the Zoom website. Other than the "hands-free" note further down, I would limit myself to changing any Zoom settings only from this website account, rather from a device. If done from the website account, settings will waterfall into whichever downstream device(s) one uses with a Zoom client.

I like to disable the Zoom Personal ID ("PID") . The PID is similar to a personal phone number. I have never given mine out, and I disabled PID meetings via the web account (shown below). The effect on my phone is neither PID meetings nor the PID itself appear. De-clutter.

largest problems

The largest problems on Zoom are the hidden ones, probably obscured at the order of some marketing hack?

• no way to disable passwords for scheduled meetings in the basic account. If you'd like to meet with grandpa joe without a password to make it easier on him, be prepared to pay $15 per month; basic users have no ability to disable the password requirement. Send him the entire link with the embedded password, or devise a simple password scheme, say the letter "j", for all meetings.
• opaque appropriation of email domains. There's a screen warning, but I failed to get a screenshot of it before it disappeared. Say one has an email address at their employer, Acme:
  chump@acme.com
  Chump goes to the Zoom website, creates a basic account, and is Zooming to their job. Maybe he even pays $15 for extra features. But now Acme decides as a corporation to purchase an enterprise Zoom account. Without informing Acme or Chump, Zoom restricts control over any Zoom logins with emails ending in "acme.com". The next time Chump logs in for a Zoom work meeting, a pop-up warns Chump he cannot login and misleads him with a choice between accepting all the Acme settings or simply change his account email address. Chump updates with another email address. Unknown to Chump, or likely to Chump's boss, when Chump changed his email to keep his settings, his Zoom login lost acceptance into Acme-hosted Zooms. Through no fault of his own, Chump can't log-in, and he can't figure out why, since Zoom didn't provide that information (at this writing). This means Chump also lacks an explanation for his boss, who likely feels Chump is a liar, lazy or incompetent for the missed meeting(s). Chump madly rifles through the hundreds of his Zoom account settings, and still, all login attempts are rejected. The only solution is apparently for Chump to make a new account, as Cornell eventually learned.
• 

  Numerous, sometimes overlapping settings. COVID will long be over by the time we figure-out these combinatorics: 4 levels, 3 roles, and 40 or 50 settings. Some settings only apply to a certain level, others apply to all, and it's pretty much trial and error. The Four levels are, meeting, user, group, account. Now add the 3 roles, user, admin, owner. The entire 16 minutes of video in the link below only deals with the blue-selected "Settings" button in the menu seen to the left. Notice that there is an entire "Admin" menu area, and that this is expandable with many other menu setting areas available. All these settings may be necessary or beneficial to some users, but it's also time-consuming, complex, and therefore error-prone, for all

  Advanced Zoom settings - Basic and Pro (16:50) Lifelong Learning at VTS, 2020. Pedantic, side by side run-down of settings for Basic and Pro features.

• Features locked by default require identity verifcation to unlock. Verification is accomplished via a credit card or PayPal, including a home address. Now they have your zip code

Android - phone

Go to the Google Play Store, and download and install Zoom. Zoom has step-by-step instructions for getting started, but there's nothing weird except one thing: disable the hands free option in settings or it's a serious nagware problem every time the app is opened.

When opening the application a "sign-in" and "sign up" prompt appear. "Signing up" is the one-time event I recommend doing at the Zoom website. The website has far more settings than on the phone app. I ignore the "sign-up" prompt no matter the device b/c I already accomplished it on the website. "Signing-in" I do each time I use the application.

If one has already created a web account, one can simply "sign-in" to the current device and have all the settings which one configured at the website. Create the account at the website, install the app, sign-in to the app.

creating and joining meetings

I create all meetings on the Zoom website. I do not create meetings through the phone application, I just attend or host them through it. If one intends to use Zoom, it's helpful to try a practice meeting with a friend before going live to a conference and so forth.

Arch - desktop

No one wants to install this 256Mb lead weight because it brings in PulseAudio, which is effectively a virus. Some apps, eg, recordmydesktop), will fail to be able to directly access the soundcard. If you need to screen-capture during a Zoom a person can either turn on recording for the Zoom itself, or use ffmmpeg

THere are the (7.45Mb)dependencies noted during the (AUR) Zoom installation, via...

$ yay zoom

... (of course, remove with # pacman -Rns zoom)

• alsa-plugins
• pulseaudio
• pulseaudio-alsa
• rtkit
• web-rtc-audio-processing

ffmpeg :: screen and sound capture

One should know their screensize, eg 1366x768, and cut off the bottom 30pixels or however many consistitute a toolbar. This allows switching between windows via the toolbar offscreen. Syntax: These three flags should come first and in this order

-video_size 1366x738 -f x11grab -i :0

...else you'll probably get only a small left corner picture or errors. Then come all your typical bitrate and framerate commands

$ ffmpeg -video_size 1366x738 -f x11grab -i :0 -r 30 output.mp4

I've never been able to set a bitrate in a screencast without fatal errors (eg, b:v 1M) b:a 192k. And then to add the sound...well you're stuck with PulseAudio if you installed Zoom, so just add -f pulse -ac 2 -i default...

$ ffmpeg -video_size 1366x738 -f x11grab -i :0 -r 30 -f pulse -ac 2 -i default output.mp4

There are also ways to get it to record a specific app only, using the name of the window, not covered here.