Help

Files — create, open, save, and print scheduling sessions.
Edit — undo/redo and clear session-form edits.
Share/Join Session — starts or joins a Share Applications session for this call. Once you are in a call, the toolbar above the Video pane hands a key to any of the four companion apps: PianoKeys, Rich Text Editor, WhiteboardMath and CalendarView.
Tools › Preferences — app settings; Save keeps this dialog open, Close dismisses it. “Shared Applications on Start-up” there launches any of those same four apps automatically when a call begins.
Video — schedule a session, email an invite, join or start a call, and end it. Video and audio travel peer to peer under WebRTC’s mandatory transport encryption (DTLS-SRTP); no media server sits in the middle, and no call is ever recorded.
Close Document (Alt+D) — closes the session you have open; VideoConnect itself keeps running.
Close VideoConnect (Alt+C) — stops the program, after offering to save the session you have open.

Press ALT + the underlined letter to open a menu; once a menu is open, use the arrow keys to move between menus.

VideoConnect costs $99 for a lifetime license or $39 for one year, and nothing is locked without one.

WHAT ZOOM CANNOT DO: A TUTORING ROOM

A video call shows a face. A tutoring room puts the work in both pairs of hands. With VideoConnect a tutor and a student meet face to face and then write on the same whiteboard, play the same keyboard or mark up the same page, each from their own computer, one click after the call begins. Nobody squints at a picture of somebody else’s screen, and nobody asks who has control: the lesson happens on the board itself, and both of you are holding the chalk.

It costs nothing to try and there is nothing to sign up for. Each of you needs the application being shared (WhiteboardMath, PianoKeys or Rich Text Editor) on your own computer; someone without it can still watch, because Tools › Preferences can also show the shared application in the Video pane.

Here is how it works, and why a conferencing service cannot do it. Zoom, and every conferencing service like it, can show the other person a picture of your screen. It cannot hand the other person the session itself. VideoConnect can. Once a call is up, one click on WhiteboardMath or PianoKeys in the toolbar above the Video pane hands that session across the call: the room key goes to everyone on the call, and each participant’s own copy of the application opens into the same whiteboard or the same keyboard. Both of you write on one board, or play one keyboard, from your own machines, while the video call carries on beside it. The Rich Text Editor is handed across the same way. CalendarView travels over the same key exchange but does not join on its own: it opens with the key filled in and waits for you to choose what to publish before anyone’s calendars merge.

The key travels over the encrypted key exchange the call already has. It is sealed with the call’s own end-to-end key before it leaves your machine, so the signaling server relays it sealed, without decrypting it, and only someone holding the key can open the room. Whoever receives it sees a banner offering to join; nothing opens on the receiving machine on its own. If two people share the same application at once, the tie is broken the same way on every machine, and whoever’s key loses is offered a one-click Join into the winning room rather than left in a second one.

That is what makes this a tutoring room: a tutor and a student, face to face on the call, working the same problem on the same board or the same passage on the same keyboard, with nothing recorded and nothing held on the signaling server. (A key you choose to remember is kept on your own machine, and only there.)

EASIER THAN ZOOM: THREE EXAMPLES

1. No Guest sign-in obstacles, ever. A Guest clicks the link in the invitation email and then clicks Join Video from Email. There is no account to create, no program to download, no meeting number and no passcode to type: the key travels inside the link. The browser asks once for the camera and microphone, and the only other wait is for the Host to click Admit, when the Host has chosen to approve each guest.
2. One place to test the camera and the speaker. Test Camera and Speaker is at the top of the left rail, on the invitation itself and in the Video menu. One click shows what your camera sees; one click plays two notes through your speaker. It needs no call and no second person, and nothing in it leaves your computer.
3. No clock running. A call has no time limit, no per-call fee and no plan to upgrade to, so a lesson that runs long simply runs long. The duration you enter when you schedule a session is an estimate for your guests, not a limit.

A TRANSPORT FOR THE SUITE

VideoConnect is the transport for the AssistSuite™ shared applications. The call it carries is what a CalendarView, WhiteboardMath, PianoKeys or Rich Text Editor session runs over: VideoConnect places the call, hands each participant the key those applications use to find each other (CalendarView derives its own room key from it), and from then on those applications talk to each other peer-to-peer over that connection — the shared calendar, whiteboard, keyboard or document is theirs, and carrying it is VideoConnect's job. Nothing shared travels through, or is stored on, the signaling server.

ACCESSIBILITY IN TEXTS

Tools › Preferences › Accessibility in Texts sets the size, line spacing, letter spacing and sans-serif typeface of the text you read — this Help page, About, the License and the connection diagnostics. The same four settings are shared with every AssistSuite™ application on this computer, so setting them once is enough; a “Use Recommended Settings” button applies the British Dyslexia Association values in one click. The application’s own controls — menus, buttons, tabs — keep their size and typeface; this sets the text, not the interface.

Two of these work better here than in the suite’s other applications, because this one is a web page. Letter spacing applies to whichever typeface you choose — the browser spaces the letters itself, where the other applications can only deliver Wide and Extra Wide in the shipped AssistSuite Sans typeface, since Windows’ own typefaces may not be re-spaced. And line spacing reaches labels and headings, not only paragraphs.

One limit: these settings live in a file in your home folder, so they can only be changed from the desktop app. If you opened VideoConnect from an email invitation at call.russotlaw.com, the page keeps your choices in that browser alone and says so — a public server has no business holding one visitor’s reading settings for everybody.

NO GENERATIVE AI

This application does NOT use Artificial Intelligence (AI), defined as use of Large Language Models (LLM) to produce substantive content, as a source of generated content. Rather, much like a word processor or a spreadsheet, this application is an assistant to help organize and schedule video-conferencing sessions from one's own input.

Nothing shown to you here is generated, summarized, drafted or suggested by a language model. VideoConnect does not transcribe, caption, translate or analyze your calls, and no call audio or video is recorded or sent anywhere but to the other participants — encrypted in transit, peer to peer, with the signaling server carrying only call set-up. The same disclosure appears under AI DISCLOSURE in Help › About and in the License.

About VideoConnect

VideoConnect v1.00

Video calls, scheduled and placed from your own computer. VideoConnect does not record video or audio, require sign-in, or charge per-call fees.

The tutoring room. A video call shows a face; a tutoring room puts the work in both pairs of hands. A tutor and a student meet face to face and then write on the same whiteboard, play the same keyboard or mark up the same page, each from their own computer, one click after the call begins.

VideoConnect is a transport for the AssistSuite™ shared applications — a CalendarView, WhiteboardMath, PianoKeys or Rich Text Editor session runs over the call it places. Those applications exchange their shared calendar, whiteboard, keyboard or document peer-to-peer over that connection; none of it travels through or is stored on the signaling server. See Help › Help for the details.

What Zoom cannot do. Zoom can show the other person your screen; VideoConnect hands them the session itself. One click hands a WhiteboardMath or PianoKeys session across the call over the encrypted key exchange the call already has — the room key is sealed with the call’s own end-to-end key and relayed by the signaling server without being decrypted — and each participant’s own copy opens into the same board or keyboard: a tutoring room. See Help › Help.

Easier than Zoom: three examples.

1. No Guest sign-in obstacles, ever: a Guest clicks the emailed link, then Join Video from Email. No account, no download, no meeting number and no passcode.
2. One place to test the camera and the speaker: Test Camera and Speaker, at the top of the left rail and on the invitation, one click for each.
3. No clock running: no time limit, no per-call fee and no plan to upgrade to.

VideoConnect costs $99 for a lifetime license or $39 for one year, and nothing is locked without one.

NO GENERATIVE AI. This application does NOT use Artificial Intelligence (AI), defined as use of Large Language Models (LLM) to produce substantive content, as a source of generated content. Rather, much like a word processor or a spreadsheet, this application is an assistant to help organize and schedule video-conferencing sessions from one's own input. See Help › Help for the full disclosure.

(C) Copyright 2026 Thomas M. Russo III. Part of AssistSuite™: Assistive Applications.

License

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