Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twilio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 107 posts

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

#91

Post by fersho311 »

nwsm wrote: post #89

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.

Let me try to take a stab at this:

If you have video chat with 10 people, then you have peer connections with 10 people. Each person will have connections with 10 other people, resulting in 10x10=100 connections.

With a streaming server, you would just need 1 connection to a server that would give you 10 media streams.

With a streaming server, you can also do recording and stuff.

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

#92

Post by lioeters »

nwsm wrote: post #89

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.

From what I learned, for production use of WebRTC, a specialized signalling server (STUN/TURN) is needed to reliably coordinate communication among peers - in particular, to deal with network address translators (NATs) and firewalls.

Most open-source WebRTC implementations I've seen use a list of semi-public STUN/TURN servers, notably including Google's, which I believe are explicitly for dev/testing purposes.

In addition to this "discovery layer" - and possibly handling reconnections - I imagine it's non-trivial to provide video/audio transport, compression, etc.

I'd love it if it were simpler to use WebRTC, truly peer-to-peer, in the vein of how early Skype used to work. Unfortunately, from what I've learned so far, there are still technical hurdles to self-host such a service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traversal_Using_Relays_around_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Connectivity_Estab...

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

#93

Post by ausjke »

kwindla wrote: post #67
tmpz22 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely has a lot of potential but nobody is going to re-assign a bunch of engineers to code up a solution to their immediate need for massive teleconferencing capabilities today - as I imagine the timing of this launch is heavily influenced by the Coronaviris and current demand of these tools. Where I think it does play in is that while Zoom is probably making a lot of sales right now, they are probably starti…

We're a startup that makes a video API that competes with Twilio. I can tell you that we're seeing a big increase in interest this week from both big companies and startups, across a big range of use cases. (Lots of telehealth and online education. Also lots of cool "distributed teams" experiments.)

what's your website? and what's your advantage to twilio?

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

#94

Post by ausjke »

spectramax wrote: post #24
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.

Zoom is owned indirectly by the Chinese government, not sure what that means to your company but FYI.

the CEO is from China yes, its major shareholders include VCs are from China yes, but that does not prove it's "indirectly" owned by the Chinese government, it's likely but we need proofs for claims like this.

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

#95

Post by ckdarby »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #55
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…

please share when you're done, we've started using Zoom and it's unusable for any non trivial feature on my linux machine.

You're running an LTS with latest packages & latest Zoom client?

Has worked out of the box on Ubuntu 18.04 for the last four months with screen recording, as host, as attendee, background replacement, chat, seminar mode, etc.

Yesterday I found one issue, the whiteboard share collab mode doesn't work but the app continues to function fine.

FYI: Get rid of unity if you're using that. It'll crash on it's own, not zoom. I'm using i3wm as a tile manager and everything just works as expected.

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

#96

Post by ausjke »

ptsneves wrote: post #63
aaronlifshin wrote: post #5

If this is backed by Twilio cloud webRTC API, I believe that does not support more that 50 people at a time watching the video

I have been using Janus[1] signaling server to broadcast live drone video on my website and it has worked flawlessly with multiple expectators. The drone video is captured through a Janus webrtc library in the Android phone connected to the drone.[3] With a TURN server from Xirsys[2], I have had live drone video recording as well as barely a second of latency. I disabled peer2peer video because I do not want a 4G con…

use a phone on drone for camera, how about its zoom functions? can it record far distance contents? per my understanding phone-camera is only good for relatively short distance objects which is not the use case for drones? Thanks.

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

#97

Post by ptsneves »

ausjke wrote: post #96
ptsneves wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Janus[1] signaling server to broadcast live drone video on my website and it has worked flawlessly with multiple expectators. The drone video is captured through a Janus webrtc library in the Android phone connected to the drone.[3] With a TURN server from Xirsys[2], I have had live drone video recording as well as barely a second of latency. I disabled peer2peer video because I do not want a 4G con…

use a phone on drone for camera, how about its zoom functions? can it record far distance contents? per my understanding phone-camera is only good for relatively short distance objects which is not the use case for drones? Thanks.

Hello auskje, maybe my post was not clear. The phone acts as a connecting point to the drone, through a manufacurer's SDK.

The camera of the phone is not used nor is the phone flying. Actually the phone is connected to a remote control. See [1].

The role of the phone is not only as a viewer of the live video being captured by the drone, but also as a 4G internet point and a hardware video encoder, that pumps the live video to my platform.

[1] https://developer.parrot.com/

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

#98

Post by ptsneves »

aaronlifshin wrote: post #69
ptsneves wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Janus[1] signaling server to broadcast live drone video on my website and it has worked flawlessly with multiple expectators. The drone video is captured through a Janus webrtc library in the Android phone connected to the drone.[3] With a TURN server from Xirsys[2], I have had live drone video recording as well as barely a second of latency. I disabled peer2peer video because I do not want a 4G con…

Wow @ptsneves, that sounds really cool. Could you give me a consultation on video streaming? I want to implement this into my product. If so, please write to my username at gmail. Thank you!

Hello @aaronlifshin. Thank you for your interest and compliments. I answered you by email.

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

#99

Post by ausjke »

ptsneves wrote: post #97
ausjke wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

use a phone on drone for camera, how about its zoom functions? can it record far distance contents? per my understanding phone-camera is only good for relatively short distance objects which is not the use case for drones? Thanks.

Hello auskje, maybe my post was not clear. The phone acts as a connecting point to the drone, through a manufacurer's SDK. The camera of the phone is not used nor is the phone flying. Actually the phone is connected to a remote control. See [1]. The role of the phone is not only as a viewer of the live video being captured by the drone, but also as a 4G internet point and a hardware video encoder, that pumps the live…

got it. Thanks for replying.

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

#100

Post by Jemm »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #90
crabasa wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same on iPad Pro ios13
Post reply on HN