Drops (Participant Seats)

dropsseatsparticipantsvideoeditor

Drops are where participants sit. When someone joins your Ripple and occupies a Drop, their circular video feed appears inside it. Think of Drops as seats in a virtual room.

Adding Drops

To add a Drop to your canvas:

  1. Click the Drop tool in the toolbox (left panel) to place a Drop in the centre of your view, or drag it from the toolbox onto the canvas
  2. Repeat to add more Drops

Each Drop is assigned an order number automatically. When participants join, they fill available Drops in order.

Positioning and Resizing

  • Drag a Drop to move it anywhere on the canvas
  • Resize using the handles — Drops maintain their circular shape
  • The radius controls how large the Drop appears (minimum 20px, maximum 300px)

Drops are always circular. The default radius is 70 pixels, which works well for most layouts.

Drop Properties

When you select a Drop, the toolbox shows its properties:

  • Position (X, Y) — exact coordinates on the canvas
  • Radius — size of the Drop
  • Fill colour — the background colour shown when the seat is empty
  • Fill opacity — transparency of the fill colour
  • Opacity — overall transparency of the entire Drop
  • Fill image — an image displayed in the empty seat (from your fill assets library). The image is automatically scaled to cover the Drop area.
  • Hover effect — animation when participants hover over the Drop (scale, glow, pulse, bounce, and more)

Seat Access Control

You can restrict who can sit in a Drop using the Seat access setting:

  • Everyone — any participant can take this seat (default)
  • Speaker+ — only speakers, moderators, and editors can use this seat
  • Moderators — only moderators and editors can use this seat

This is useful for reserving front-row or stage seats for presenters whilst keeping audience seats open to everyone.

How Drops Work at Runtime

When a participant joins your Ripple:

  1. They are assigned to the first available Drop (based on order and access level)
  2. Their circular video feed appears inside the Drop
  3. If all Drops are full, participants join the gallery (if enabled in your Ripple settings)

Participants can click on empty Drops to switch seats. The video feed is always displayed as a circle, regardless of the original camera dimensions.

Drops and Scenes

Drops can belong to specific scenes or be global (visible across all scenes). To make a Drop appear only in certain scenes, assign it to those scenes in its properties.

Drops and Zones

You can place Drops inside breakout zones for audio isolation — participants in the same zone hear only each other. See Zones for details.

Tips

  • Arrange Drops to match your use case — in a circle for discussions, in rows for classrooms, scattered around tables for social spaces
  • Use smaller Drops for large groups and larger Drops for intimate settings
  • Use fill images to give empty seats a themed look (e.g., chair icons, numbered badges)
  • Combine seat access with Snapshots to create different seating arrangements for different moments