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Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

twilio.com

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Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#11

Post by jgrowl »

gz5 wrote: post #8

The support for H.264 is interesting. It of course makes sense for iOS and devices that can support hardware acceleration, but device mix can change during a call. So, what happens if two iOS users start, but then they add a VP8 only device? How Twilio handles that use case will be instructive for understanding what use cases we can support with this service. It isn't likely they are transcoding since this intro sugg…

I can't speak with any real authority here but... WebRTC requires the two end points of the connection swap information for networking and things like what codecs they support. I don't believe the MediaStreams between a->b and a->c would have anything to do with each other. They only share a common VideoSource. That would lead me to believe that it would try to encode two different ways if that was the only option. More than likely you'd probably have the vendor select a preferred single codec instead of doing things differently for each user, though that would be pretty neat if it wasn't too resource intensive.

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#12

Post by andreyf »

jc4p wrote: post #10
andreyf wrote: post #9

> Provides multi-party authentication, registration and signaling, which can orchestrate up to 4-way calling using peer to peer mesh topology, across any combination of supported devices. Calls can be video or voice only. Peer to peer mesh topology? Anyone know of further reading on this?

"up to 4-way calling using peer to peer mesh topology" sounds like fancy names for regular WebRTC connections.

Interesting. I hadn't realized that WebRTC supported more than two clients talking to each other. My Google-fu is failing me, do you know where I can read up on how the topology of 4 connected callers is orchestrated without a central hub (i.e. how Hangouts does it)?

edit: https://www.webrtc-experiment.com/one-to-many-video-broadcas...

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#13

Post by JoeAltmaier »

gz5 wrote: post #8

The support for H.264 is interesting. It of course makes sense for iOS and devices that can support hardware acceleration, but device mix can change during a call. So, what happens if two iOS users start, but then they add a VP8 only device? How Twilio handles that use case will be instructive for understanding what use cases we can support with this service. It isn't likely they are transcoding since this intro sugg…

Transcoding is expensive, but with VP8, depending on the codec parameters, you can 'strip down' the stream for less-performant clients e.g. phones, while sending the full-fidelity version to other clients. Without decoding, just by dropping certain classes of packets. There is a loss of resolution of course. So anyway that's an option.

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#14

Post by lucaspiller »

Although it's great to see Twilio branching out into this space, with their recent product releases they do seem to be losing focus on their original Twilio Voice product. Compared to other prodividers their prices really aren't conpetitive, but Twiml is so much more flexible and easier to use than VoiceXML. What to do? :/

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#16

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jc4p wrote: post #4

I was really excited by the title but this seems a bit lacking. I've done a lot of WebRTC work -- we currently use Google Hangouts everywhere at Stack Exchange for internal team communication, but the 15 person cap hurts some bigger all-hands calls or our weekly remote parties. I don't think the hardest part of WebRTC is transcoding or TURN servers (what Twilio seems to be offering), multiplexing is where all the com…

Here at Sococo (I work there) we support 20+ clients per meeting. Audio, video, doc sharing, rich presence info, always-on but no bandwidth burden when you're not meeting. Free to try!

We use it ourselves for our Agile process, doing ad-hoc meetings all day in various bullpens; Scrum each morning with 20+ participants; all-hands meetings once a week with a shared presentation. And all day I can see who is meeting with whom in my group. Its really pretty performant.

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#17

Post by RobSpectre »

jc4p wrote: post #10
andreyf wrote: post #9

> Provides multi-party authentication, registration and signaling, which can orchestrate up to 4-way calling using peer to peer mesh topology, across any combination of supported devices. Calls can be video or voice only. Peer to peer mesh topology? Anyone know of further reading on this?

"up to 4-way calling using peer to peer mesh topology" sounds like fancy names for regular WebRTC connections.

Rob from Twilio here - confirming this is an accurate description. Each peer in the conversation has a connection to every other peer.

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#18

Post by RobSpectre »

lucaspiller wrote: post #14

Although it's great to see Twilio branching out into this space, with their recent product releases they do seem to be losing focus on their original Twilio Voice product. Compared to other prodividers their prices really aren't conpetitive, but Twiml is so much more flexible and easier to use than VoiceXML. What to do? :/

Rob from Twilio here - appreciate the feedback.

Have you had an opportunity to check out TaskRouter yet? We released it a few weeks ago - definitely my favorite recent product that works with Twilio Voice:

https://www.twilio.com/taskrouter

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#19

Post by JoeAltmaier »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #16
jc4p wrote: post #4

I was really excited by the title but this seems a bit lacking. I've done a lot of WebRTC work -- we currently use Google Hangouts everywhere at Stack Exchange for internal team communication, but the 15 person cap hurts some bigger all-hands calls or our weekly remote parties. I don't think the hardest part of WebRTC is transcoding or TURN servers (what Twilio seems to be offering), multiplexing is where all the com…

Here at Sococo (I work there) we support 20+ clients per meeting. Audio, video, doc sharing, rich presence info, always-on but no bandwidth burden when you're not meeting. Free to try! We use it ourselves for our Agile process, doing ad-hoc meetings all day in various bullpens; Scrum each morning with 20+ participants; all-hands meetings once a week with a shared presentation. And all day I can see who is meeting wit…

Connections are P2P for small meetings (We're distributed across 5 states and 3 countries. Everybody has an equal footing in the meetings since we're all on-line. Even people in the same office (we have several small offices) attend using Sococo - I can see other attendees in the background of some people's videos :)

Re: Twilio Video – Real-time WebRTC video infrastructure

#20

Post by jgrowl »

jc4p wrote: post #4

I was really excited by the title but this seems a bit lacking. I've done a lot of WebRTC work -- we currently use Google Hangouts everywhere at Stack Exchange for internal team communication, but the 15 person cap hurts some bigger all-hands calls or our weekly remote parties. I don't think the hardest part of WebRTC is transcoding or TURN servers (what Twilio seems to be offering), multiplexing is where all the com…

Thought I'd mention jitsi (https://jitsi.org) since it seems to aim to do what you are wanting. I am not sure how many connections it practically supports currently though.
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