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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

#241

Post by qpiox »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #188
wenc wrote: post #60

I wonder if anyone (who also has Zoom) could comment on how Jitsi actually compares to Zoom for 20+ people with full video? (since the title pits it against Zoom) I'm seeing comments how how good Jitsi is, but can someone categorically say Jitsi is comparable to or better than Zoom? The advantages of Zoom are ease of setup, smooth simultaneous video experience (tiled) for 20+ participants, and breakout rooms. The exp…

Beyond a certain scale there's also Big Blue Button, though it was very lecture focused last I tried it

We started using BigBlueButton at the the University. I tried to teach and there is nothing in it that is specifically lecture focused, but if you just use it as videoconferencing tool with all microphones muted, it does the job for a one-way communication tool. Once students start asking questions it is too limited. The chat clutters soon, the option for raising hands or changing status is useless with large groups. I'd say that the whole interface is useful only for smaller groups up to 10 persons, definitely not above 100 persons.

I have not tried Zoom or Jitsi Meet in such settings and can't compare. They both have some useful options and slightly more options than Big Blue Button (like the Youtube streaming in Jitsi Meet that will save bandwidth).

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#242

Post by leshenka »

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.

And here I am, opening Chrome just so I can join audio in Zoom conference. For some reason it says "Your browser does not support using the computer’s Audio device" and recommends Chrome.

p.s. Discord has no problems with my audio

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#243

Post by qpiox »

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…

Bandwidth and processing power are limiting factors. Our department tried to run a large Big Blue Button instance to support a dozen of conferences at the same time, ranging from 10-150 participants, all day long.

The experience says: you need hardware (not virtual), starting from 32 cores and 64GB RAM, it turned out it was not enough, added another machine, then another machine, ... and more.

I can't give more details.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#244

Post by claudeganon »

eisa01 wrote: post #199
m_eiman wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It eats tons and tons of cpu though

Zoom requires a quad core processor for the virtual backgrounds, so I’m not sure it is any worse?

I don’t really like Zoom, but I was on a call the other day with 3 other people calling from phones and iPads, all using virtual backgrounds. You don’t need beefy specs to use the feature.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#245

Post by tatersolid »

InternetOfStuff wrote: post #189
ISO-morphism wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Facetime has the best audio/video quality of any conferencing software I've used by a mile. Out of curiosity: can you compare it to Google Duo? Because it has the best quality and stability of any 1:1 product I've ever tried (never tried Facetime)

WTH is Google Duo? They have a third video conferencing solution besides Hangouts and Meet?

Madness.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#246

Post by eddieroger »

fossTheWay wrote: post #139
tootie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't convince anyone to not use Facetime.

I feel bad for you. None of my friends use Apple products. But I imagine if your friends aren't nerds this is a real problem. My wife has to deal with it.

Many of my "nerdy" friends have iPhones. I am a nerd, but I don't have this problem.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#247

Post by hanoz »

Looks good but I am hesitant to recommend it to my children's friend's parents (who are all trying to settle on a platform at the moment) because of the ease with which the kids might enter a short room name and find themselves on the recieving end of an unwelcome 'chatroulette experience'.

It would be good if the app version could have some parental controls added and/or the web version could enforce a minimum room name length/complexity. Meanwhile, perhaps a browser plugin to enforce that wouldn't be too hard to knock up.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#248

Post by pimterry »

An interesting anecdote: they're installing Jitsi Meet in all Catalan prisons as we speak, as the go-to option now that visitors are no longer allowed, installed on the existing computers (i.e. prison libraries).

They're planning to have Whatsapp setup too as a secondary option, because it's the option with widest reach, but that requires buying a bunch of new mobile phones.

More details (in Spanish): https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2020-03-24/videollamadas...

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#249

Post by distances »

daffy wrote: post #225

I tried suggesting Jitsi for Zoom to a group. I didn't attend the first meeting, but they said they tested both and found that Zoom was ``much more stable'' and had ``much better sound quality''.

FWIW, I joined a Zoom meeting and the audio was all garbled, barely understandable. Don't know if it matters that one user joined with a browser. We switched to Jitsi and the session went very smoothly afterwards.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#250

Post by EGreg »

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…

The edge cases are hard.

Like SDP offers between browsers which support different codecs.

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