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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

#271

Post by mixmastamyk »

enitihas wrote: post #210

I think it shows the sheer incompetence of Google product management that they managed to lose the strong hold Gtalk had. Gtalk worked. People liked it. Hangouts too worked well. I used hangouts in browser in 2013 and it worked very well. Somehow google decided to replace hangouts with allo and duo, and then deprecated allo, and moved to RCS. I never understand how such decisions get made. Do they think customers hav…

No compelling revenue stream, to a company the size of Google. Probably seen as a fun project that got boring once the hard work (of fixing bugs) started.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#272

Post by jasondclinton »

ronjouch wrote: post #262

Linux HNers, is there any video-conferencing software that is hardware-accelerated for us Linux users? Everything I tried (Jitsi on Firefox or Chrome, Skype, Hangouts/Meet, Zoom, Slack) consumes a full CPU all of the time (a.k.a. all no hardware acceleration), making fans spin and slowing down other work. Advice? I'm using Arch Linux & Xorg on a recent Thinkpad with Intel CPU & GPU, and the packages mentioned by the…

Hardware video decode is coming to Firefox on Wayland: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-...

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#273

Post by ronjouch »

jasondclinton wrote: post #272
ronjouch wrote: post #262

Linux HNers, is there any video-conferencing software that is hardware-accelerated for us Linux users? Everything I tried (Jitsi on Firefox or Chrome, Skype, Hangouts/Meet, Zoom, Slack) consumes a full CPU all of the time (a.k.a. all no hardware acceleration), making fans spin and slowing down other work. Advice? I'm using Arch Linux & Xorg on a recent Thinkpad with Intel CPU & GPU, and the packages mentioned by the…

Hardware video decode is coming to Firefox on Wayland: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-...

Thanks! So that means H264/VP9-based conferencing (-- EDIT but VP8 isn't mentioned, and that's what WebRTC uses, right? -- EDIT2 oh, VP8 is mentioned in https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D65536 , looks accelerated too, cool --) will be accelerated in Firefox on Wayland. Great, one more reason to move away from a wmctrl-dependent script I use, and switch to Wayland.

One more question, in case you know about it:

- Regarding Zoom/Slack/Skype/etc, okay, I'm not surprised: no one uses Linux, so from a money perspective, fixing this is ill-spent engineer time.

- However, I'm surprised that acceleration could be missing in Chrome+Linux too, because Google must have worked on it to ship a good Google Meet experience on Chromebooks. Am I missing anything? (Is there a flag / dependency / binary package I could need to enable it in non-Chromebook Chrome?) Is video acceleration really positively nonexistent on Chrome/Chromium on Linux?

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#274

Post by alharith »

tootie wrote: post #267
alharith wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you are defining "worth" here. They are the only devices "worth" their price as evidenced by how well they hold their value and how much consumers are willing to pay for them. They are not "worth" the high price if you are valuing the internals (what GPU, processor, memory, HD you get).

I've ended up with multiple iPads over the years despite my best efforts. They definitely do stop working after a while. I've also noticed MacBooks get burning hot doing a video conference for more than 15 minutes. And I'm not a hardcore gamer, but my kids play Minecraft and it's fine by glitchy. Compared to the Acer I bough for $700 with a basic Nvidia card and upgradeable memory that can handle everything I throw a…

Now do me this favor: take your experience and opinion, and compare it to others. How many people share this with you? If the Acer was just that substantially better in terms of value and build quality, why isn't Acer the #1 laptop in the US? Why do so many companies, organizations, and developers not share this take with you? What may you be missing?

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#275

Post by Naracion »

Quelklef wrote: post #269
claudeganon wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably the other poster meant it requires a lot of CPU for you to have a virtual background, not for other people. It wouldn't make sense for other people using the feature to take any more processing power--I assume the video is encoded and processed the same either way.

I think the OP meant that people using iPad and iPhone to call in also had virtual backgrounds, so concluded that it might not need as much CPU as the GP surmised.

Another poster mentioned though that Zoom required green screens for this feature on non-intel CPU machines.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#276

Post by dserodio »

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.

Tried it in Firefox with just 3 people in the room and the UI (mute/hangout/video off) UI is like 0.2 FPS

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#277

Post by FireBeyond »

vikramkr wrote: post #251
pugworthy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the backgrounds are goofy and non-essential, but it's been a huge positive icebreaker for the adjustment to all online meetings.

I'd be far more willing to turn the video on in my calls of people weren't going to see the messy room in the background, and the calls I'm in have an awful lot of blank screens that would be better if people turned on there video for some face-to-face communication. I think it's less non-essential than you might imagine, this is a really well thought-out feature, and probably pretty technically challenging to implem…

We moved from GTM to Zoom. One thing I like/miss from GTM is the camera options: "Everyone / Who's Talking / Active Cameras / No-one".

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#279

Post by kybernetikos »

wccrawford wrote: post #231
kybernetikos wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Xsplit VCam in hangouts. There are a couple of other programs that do the same.

I used this the other day in the free version. The text over the screen was annoying, and the background effect was rather glitchy, but it was effective at hiding the mess I was too lazy to clean up. However, as we were using it for work conference, I felt like I was adding some goofiness to the call and didn't like that. I ended up moving the camera to show less mess, and then eventually actually cleaned up my mess.…

I use it for a bunch of goofy stuff in meetings to lighten the mood. When I want to be serious, I change the background image to a photo of our office. If you combine it with OBS studio, you can overlay yourself on presentations or videos, which is also very useful.

Re: Jitsi Meet: An open source alternative to Zoom

#280

Post by swiley »

anon102010 wrote: post #180
swiley wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom’s privacy issues are more than minor, if my friends started using it and I couldn’t get the web version to work I wouldn’t do a conference call with them.

Can I ask if you are using video conferencing in a business setting? When folks are trying to get stuff done in tough circumstances NO ONE has ANY patience for the home built / funky / privacy enhanced multi-click setup. Especially not the top executives now dialing in from home who aren't tech forward. IT doesn't want to trouble shoot things either - all of a sudden you have 1000+ folks video conferencing. I'd be in…

We're using webex at work but I've used half a dozen different tools so far with friends (no FOSS ones unfortunately) and they all work about as well.
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