Best Web/Software Application for VideoConference

Empathy works very fine with MSN in Trisquel 5.5. Works perfectly with audio and video (and I believe it works with XMPP too - with Gmail, Jabber or another). I was very impressed when it worked.

So far the only solution I found is Big Blue Button. You can host your own or pay a reasonable fee to a commercial provider. When paying it will include access to worldwide local phone conference gateways.

Unfortunately it requires Flash and it does not work with Gnash. I am not too happy about this but if I have to make an exception for this, I will.

For single-call video conferencing I hear ekiga and Jitsi are good.

Good luck with this, don't forget to share back your findings.

-------- Original Message --------
From: name at domain
Sent: Mon Oct 01 10:10:16 EDT 2012
To: name at domain
Subject: [Trisquel-users] Best Web/Software Application for VideoConference

Hello Everyone,

I would like to know if anyone here do VideoConference (Audio and Video)
using Free Software with anyone not using a Free Software OS. Because I
became 100% Free Software User, I used Skype and Hangout, but now that I
don't use those software I have a hard time founding an alternative (since
Empathy, kopete etc... don't have the Audio and Video working on the MSN
protocol).

So... What Application (or Web Application) are you using ?

Thanks in Advance,
Luis Da Costa

http://facil.magicfab.ca

Trisquel's default instant messager, Pidgin, works well. At least, video calls with the XMPP protocol (aka Jabber, aka Google Talk) work when the interlocutor uses Pidgin as well.

The most advanced software under active development is Jitsi - https://jitsi.org/index.php it's under LGPL.

There's also Ekiga Softphone but I have not had much success with it.
http://ekiga.org/

Now you all know why it's so important for not only WebRTC to be standardized and used in the browsers that matter, but also everyone settling on codecs.

BigBlueButton – http://www.bigbluebutton.org/ – version 0.8 already supports playback of recordings in HTML5: https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/ReleaseNotes#Major_Features

Also: https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/RoadMap1dot0#HTML5_client
"With the ongoing work in WebRTC project, it's now possible for an HTML5 browser to access the user's webcam and microphone. This means it should be possible to create an HTML5 BigBlueButton client (see 850)."

850 is that: https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/issues/detail?id=850 – the last commentary points to this: https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/HTML5 , which reads:

"This DRAFT document outlines some of our progress to-date, which has been to prototype a stand-alone HTML5 client that is integrated into the BigBlueButton platform, thus providing an additional entry point for users to join a BigBlueButton session.

[...] with the recent progress in WebRTC, an HTML5-based application can access the user's webcam and microphone without the need for plugins.

The long-term vision for the BigBlueButton HTML5 client is to enable users on all platforms supporting an HTML5 browser -- including mobile and tablets to -- to fully access to all of BigBlueButton’s features.

We’ve mapped out the strategy to achieve this vision in three phases:

1. Support viewing a live session using an HTML5 browser
2. Support broadcasting audio/video from an HTML5 browser using WebRTC
3. Support all presentation features of BigBlueButton in HTML5

The following describes our efforts to implement phase 1: viewing a live BigBlueButton session using an HTML5 browser. [...]"

Nice screenshots follow :-)

Some of these could be useful

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-software-replacement-for-skype