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Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

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Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#141

Post by lioeters »

Johnyma22 wrote: post #56
crazygringo wrote: post #41

I'm curious... between Whereby and Jitsi and I assume other browser-based video solutions relying on WebRTC... ...how big is the barrier these days to building a "videoconferencing platform" supporting millions of people... that runs on a single server? Because if you need to do is build a pretty website that essentially just keeps track of meeting names and the names and IP addresses of participants... ...while each…

I rolled https://video.etherpad.org out within 5 minutes. It's a single command once Etherpad is installed (npm install ep_webrtc). There is one complication most people don't realize -- Failed Reverse NAT traversal: For this you need a TURN server (I'm intentionally ignoring STUN for obvious reasons). TURN servers have to route the actual media (video / audio) from user a b c but only if the user(s) can't directly c…

Thank you for mentioning it. Found the source (no dependencies!) at https://github.com/ether/ep_webrtc

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#142

Post by tootie »

ISO-morphism wrote: post #61
tootie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't convince anyone to not use Facetime.

Facetime has the best audio/video quality of any conferencing software I've used by a mile. If free software, vendor lock in, excluding those without Apple products, etc. etc. aren't sticking points for you, Facetime is awesome for a family/group of friends with iDevices.

I try to avoid Apple products. They're not worth the high price.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#143

Post by HumblyTossed »

ISO-morphism wrote: post #26

I've tried Jitsi Meet and found it to be smooth. During a hangout call with a group of ~8 friends I introduced it as an alternative. User experience comparison: Onboarding: Jitsi: Click a URL. No accounts. Hangouts: Google account. Need to individually invite other Google accounts. Video Quality: Jitsi: Decent, slightly better than hangouts. Hangouts: Passable but grainy. Video Layout: Jitsi: Automatically big-screen…

Brand recognition?

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#144

Post by Bellyache5 »

cheald wrote: post #129

We switched from Slack to Mattermost internally, and while setting it up I noticed Jitsi integration offered. I've been really impressed by it, and we're working to move most meetings to it. Some teams are still using Zoom, but I don't think that's going to last very long! My Brazilian Jiujitsu academy is trying it out, too, for virtual classes during shutdown. We just held the first today, and a bunch of non-technic…

So the Jiujitsu academy is now practicing Jiujitsi!

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#145

Post by acidburnNSA »

fergbrain wrote: post #67
enriquto wrote: post #65

It's very disheartening that when you try to connect with firefox, it says you should use chrome. This is a direct stab in the heart of the people who would favor it over zoom because it is free software.

I use it with Firefox and it works just fine

It works on Firefox but does not have simulcast support so whenever someone on Firefox joins, other devices have to use vastly more CPU and bandwidth. My phone dropped 50% battery in 10 minutes with a Firefox user on.

It is being worked on [1].

Firefox was a supported browser but they took it off the list in January until this issue is fixed. [2]

[1] https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/4758#issuecomment...

[2] https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/pull/5017

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#146

Post by JeremyNT »

Nextgrid wrote: post #109

I looked at Jitsi recently as I was thinking about self-hosting it (I have the bandwidth). My concerns: It seems to be based on XMPP and require an XMPP server. They offer a quick-start guide on configuring it however I am not sure how secure the default configuration is - I'm worried the quick start guide is about "get it working", not "make it secure" and I don't have XMPP knowledge nor the desire to learn a compli…

I too balked at the stack required to self host jitsi, it felt overly complicated for personal use.

But given the interest in video chat now and the sorry state of affairs of the ecosystem, I gave it another go this week. It still seems convoluted, but they provide a docker compose file to deal with all of those complexities. I used it and set a server up using docker compose within a few minutes.

As far as I can tell, the annoying thing of self hosting is going to be user management. Realistically you shouldn't allow guests to create meetings, and that means you need an ldap server if you want more than a couple of users.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#147

Post by JonathonW »

monkeywork wrote: post #137
ISO-morphism wrote: post #26

I've tried Jitsi Meet and found it to be smooth. During a hangout call with a group of ~8 friends I introduced it as an alternative. User experience comparison: Onboarding: Jitsi: Click a URL. No accounts. Hangouts: Google account. Need to individually invite other Google accounts. Video Quality: Jitsi: Decent, slightly better than hangouts. Hangouts: Passable but grainy. Video Layout: Jitsi: Automatically big-screen…

>Has option to tile to equally size screens. Hangouts: Same. Where is the option in hangouts to tile equally? I've never found it and I hate the large speaker small others in some situations.

IIRC classic Hangouts doesn't have the option to tile.

Meet (assuming you're on the current UI, which I would presume has been rolled out to everyone by now) can tile, but only up to four videos (excluding yourself, so five participants). Once you go above that, in automatic mode, it'll drop back to the view with a single large video of a person currently speaking, and smaller videos of everyone else on the side, and, if you force it into the grid view, only four are displayed at a time.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#148

Post by P4u1 »

I've been using Jitsi for a while, even though my company uses GSuite. Not going into details about the corporate use since many have already, but the other day it was my daughter's birthday, being on a quarantine and all and having family in different countries, I sent a jisi link to the family groups on whatsapp so we could all sing happy birthday together, everybody got in, it went all very smoothly. Better than the usual business meeting "can you hear me, I hear you, hello" routine. Thank you Jitsi team!

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#149

Post by amikazmi »

neves wrote: post #34
neves wrote: post #28

We are using it intensely at my company and after some server upgrades it is working very well.

We've more than 500 simultaneous users.

When you write 500 simultaneous users, do you mean: 1. 500 users making multiple calls across our servers at the same time? 2. 500 users on a single call?

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#150

Post by pitchups »

tommoor wrote: post #19
xiii1408 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's P2P, like most videoconferencing. The server part is just for session management.

> like most videoconferencing Well, if there's only 2, maybe 3 of you – anything beyond that is going to use a server to host the call for reliability.

> Well, if there's only 2, maybe 3 of you...

Do you mean for more than 3 - the call/video is routed through the server and would consume server bandwidth? If so how is jitsi paying for all this if it is free?

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