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Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

twilio.com

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Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#81

Post by sandGorgon »

crabasa wrote: post #50
detaro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Twilio's SDK counts, but Jitsi's doesn't because ...? You can build custom interfaces with all your requested features with that too.

The difference in the ability of a developer to modify an open source software product (think: Gimp or Jitsi Meet) to suit their needs versus using a platform SDK that is designed to provide flexibility and to be used by devs is massive. I spent some time looking at the Jitsi Meet source to confirm this assertion: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/ It was quite clear that trying to use that code to execute my use c…

This is the react example - https://meetrix.io/blog/webrtc/integrate-jitsi-meet-to-react...

These are the React features supported, including chat/conference,etc https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/tree/master/react/featur...

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#82

Post by rahimnathwani »

Hitton wrote: post #80
rahimnathwani wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it trivial to write a backend that will replace the functionality in Twilio's backend?

Probably not, but it might be possible to write simpler "shim" which would go between this frontend and jitsi backend.

Yes, maybe. For that to work, I guess you'd need the concepts (rooms etc.) to be similar enough, so that you can convert the control messages in a way that makes sense, and you'd need the media formats/chunking to be close enough.

It's not going to work 100%, as the Twilio API can do stuff that Jitsi doesn't (e.g. the choice of video being transferred p2p or via the server).

But if you're going to do that, then you're using Jitsi mainly for media transcoding/multiplexing. So maybe it would be easier to use that code in Jitsi directly and write a new API layer, rather than writing a shim above the existing API.

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#84

Post by blago »

jka wrote: post #13

These are open source clients for a proprietary backend, which are no doubt still useful in a number of circumstances. If you are comfortable with a more proprietary stack, then Google Hangouts / Zoom / others are likely to provide a better supported user experience. If you would prefer a more libre end-to-end experience then Jitsi Meet may be an attractive alternative.

> Google Hangouts / Zoom / others are likely to provide a better supported user experience.

My experience with Google software is the exact opposite. The never-ending parade of new products, SDK versions, grand rewrites, non-existent support, and cancelations has served to remind me of one thing: that I am the product.

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#85

Post by newtoday »

kwindla wrote: post #66

Our company, Daily.co (YC W16), makes APIs that compete with these new Twilio offerings. A couple of lines of js code embeds a video call in a web page: https://docs.daily.co/docs Our focus has been on doing as much as possible to make video calls reliable, and helping developers get started with video as quickly as possible. Twilio is a great company. Jitsi is a great open source project. As always, there's room for…

How does Daily.co do ICE, STUN/TURN? Do you use a third party service, host coturn yourself, something else?

I'm currently a Twilio customer using their Network Traversal Service.

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#86

Post by chiefsucker »

jka wrote: post #13

These are open source clients for a proprietary backend, which are no doubt still useful in a number of circumstances. If you are comfortable with a more proprietary stack, then Google Hangouts / Zoom / others are likely to provide a better supported user experience. If you would prefer a more libre end-to-end experience then Jitsi Meet may be an attractive alternative.

Last year I’ve worked on an open source soft phone where the proprietary backends are abstracted away, and you can switch them depending on your desired infrastructure.

Twilio, PortSIP, and Abto are currently implemented as demo backends.

https://github.com/automat-berlin/afone

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#87

Post by ignoramous »

crabasa wrote: post #37

Disclaimer: I used to work at Twilio I'm seeing discussion below about fully open-source solutions (Jitsi Meet) vs. fully proprietary solutions (Zoom). What's interesting about using Twilio is that it is a programmable solution. Case in point: I am building a webpage where people can log-in to a virtual office, so that people working from home don't feel so lonely. I have certain requirements, such as: - All audio is…

AWS recently announced SDK for its Chime conferencing app, too: https://aws.amazon.com/chime/chime-sdk/

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#88

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

wideasleep1 wrote: post #72
crabasa wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to say it, but: Works for me ™ Was that an error on the webpage or in the JS console?

Yep..had to tweak Matrix, Origin, and NoScript before it worked, asked for javascript, then errored 5300 for a bit as I worked the extensions.

> it asked for JavaScript

I'm about 300% unsurprised that this uses JavaScript- correct me if I'm wrong- I don't think there's really a way to do this without it, if we aren't supposed to be using Flash anymore, either.

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#89

Post by nwsm »

Can someone explain why we need a Twilio backend to do WebRTC?

I've never done it so I don't know, but I thought the whole point was that it's peer-to-peer. I know there is some kind of "discovery" layer required, but this doesn't seem complex enough to warrant a SaaS.

Re: Twilio releases open source video conferencing apps for iOS, Android and web

#90

Post by gregsadetsky »

crabasa wrote: post #57
crabasa wrote: post #37

Disclaimer: I used to work at Twilio I'm seeing discussion below about fully open-source solutions (Jitsi Meet) vs. fully proprietary solutions (Zoom). What's interesting about using Twilio is that it is a programmable solution. Case in point: I am building a webpage where people can log-in to a virtual office, so that people working from home don't feel so lonely. I have certain requirements, such as: - All audio is…

Here is a link to my fork of the repo shared by the OP: https://github.com/crtr0/twilio-video-app-react You can try it out at: https://video-app-7758-dev.twil.io?passcode=7020447758 Just enter your name and the room "HN".

On mobile Safari, the mic & camera permissions pop up, but after clicking Join Room the page goes blank. Any ideas? It works perfectly using Desktop Chrome.
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