Things that go wrong on a video signing are rarely dramatic. A guest's picture freezes and nobody knows why. A phone on the kitchen table auto-locks halfway through. A guest taps their link early and tries to sign before the host has walked them through the document. Each of these can undermine the one thing a live signing is for: evidence that everyone was present and understood what they signed.
Here's how the Video Signing Room handles each one.
See every guest's connection at a glance
Every two seconds the host's room measures each guest's connection: packet loss, bitrate, frame rate, resolution and round-trip delay.
- Each guest tile gets a Good, Unstable or Poor chip with signal bars. Hover it for the figures — for example 720p · 30 fps · 1.4 Mbps · 0.2% loss · 48 ms delay.
- The room header shows one pill that names the worst connection (Poor connection: Sam, with +1 when several share it), or All connections good. It shows the worst guest rather than an average, because an average hides the one person who is struggling.
| Level | What it means |
|---|---|
| Good | Below the Unstable thresholds |
| Unstable | 3% packet loss or more, 400 ms delay or more, or under 5 frames per second |
| Poor | 8% packet loss or more, 800 ms delay or more, or no audio and no video arriving |
A camera that's simply switched off still sends audio, so it isn't counted as a stall. The level shown is the worse of the last two readings, so the chip doesn't flicker.
Guests see a pill only when it matters — Your connection is unstable or Your connection is poor, with a tip to move closer to their Wi-Fi.
Connection problems go on the record
If a guest's connection stays poor for about six seconds, their browser writes it to the session's audit trail, with their IP address, device and time zone. When it recovers for about ten seconds, the recovery is written too, with how long it lasted and the worst figures. Entries read like:
- Poor connection: 12.4% packet loss, 640 ms delay, 7 fps
- Connection recovered after 1 min 14 s (worst: 18% loss, 900 ms delay)
They appear in Audit Logs, in the Audit Report and on the Certificate of Signing, capped at 30 entries per guest per session. If anyone later asks whether a signer could really see and hear the session, the record answers.
Phones: the screen stays awake
- No auto-lock during a call. The room keeps the screen awake for guests from the moment they connect, and for the host once they join with camera or mic.
- Repair on wake. If a phone is locked anyway and the system stops the camera or microphone, they're picked up again when the guest comes back — on the same call, and a muted mic stays muted. If the call itself dropped while the phone was asleep, the guest rejoins automatically.
- The host is told. While a guest's screen is off, their tile reads Screen off · audio only instead of showing a frozen picture, then Live again when they return.
- A little patience. A guest whose connection briefly drops gets 30 seconds to recover before they're removed from the room. Pressing Leave still removes them straight away.
One platform note for hosts: Android Chrome keeps a call's audio running with the screen off, but iPhone Safari pauses the camera and microphone while the phone is locked. Keeping the screen awake is what keeps an iPhone guest's microphone going, so ask iPhone guests to keep the call in front.
If the host's page reloads
Reloading the browser in the middle of a live session no longer strands your guests. When you reopen the document, the room checks the session is still live and reconnects properly — your tile comes back, and guests who are waiting to connect are picked up.
The Let's Sign gate: nobody signs early
- Let's Sign appears once a guest joins, under Send Room Invites in the Signers panel. Until someone is in the room there's nothing to open.
- It stays disabled until every signer and witness is on camera. Observers never hold it up. If the boxes on the page belong to people who haven't been invited to this session yet, the panel tells you to send the room invites first.
- Guests can't sign until the host opens signing — and that's enforced on the server, not just on the screen. A guest who tries early is told the host hasn't opened signing yet, and a guest who reconnects or reloads still knows whether signing is open.
- Sign While Waiting. If you must go ahead without someone, use Sign While Waiting under the button and give a reason. The reason is written to the session's audit trail.
If a live session isn't going to happen, Switch to E-Signature ends the room and the same document goes out as an ordinary emailed request.
Run live signings you can stand behind
Connection quality on screen and on the record, phones that stay connected, and a signing gate enforced by the server. Part of Pro Signing.
Try the Video Signing Room →Tips for hosts
- Ask guests to join on Wi-Fi, and to plug in a phone for a long session.
- Glance at the header pill before pressing Let's Sign. If it says Poor, pause for a moment — a recovery is recorded when the connection comes back.
- Use Copy Invite to text a guest their link again if they drop out and can't find the email.
- Record the session and keep the Audit Report with the sealed PDF.
The short version
The Video Signing Room shows each guest's connection as Good, Unstable or Poor, names the worst one in the header, and records poor spells and recoveries in the audit trail. Phones stay awake during a call and recover when they wake; the host sees Screen off · audio only in the meantime. And Let's Sign appears once a guest joins, stays closed until every signer and witness is on camera, and the server refuses any guest signature before the host opens signing.