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Meeting Software For Video Conferences
For PC (MS/ Linux/BSD) programs, Smart Phone
& Tablet (Android & MacOS) Apps, & FreeBSD etc Servers
- This page was started to decide which server
software to host.
& expanded to consider client app software. & free
servers run by commercial companies (presumably funded by
adverts or to promote commercial fuller services), &
servers run by non commercials.
- Some clients run within browsers & thus easier than all
participants needing to install & familiarise with same
app.
As a PC needs a microphone & camera as well as sound
output & software drivers, rather than install all that
on PC, many may prefer to use a smart phone.
- This file is under rapid change at 2020-03
- (What started my interest: Lock down during
Corona Virus 2020-03: berklix . eu / corona)
-
2020-03 I posted this request for free public domain server
software recommendations
lists . freebsd . org / pipermail / freebsd - ports / 2020
- March / 118003 . html
If you have comments please post
-
List of video telecommunication services and product
brands
- Back To Index
-
- Join Our free Virtual Stammtisches even if
you are: Long distance in South Africa, Sweden,
or Singapore, Pollen allergic in Garmisch; In
Corona quarantine, Or just stuck at home.
- Any smart phone or PC will do. Any of
Android,
MacOS, Microsoft, Linux,
BSD. No
SIM card needed. No registration for you, your
computer, or app. No NSA or GCHQ it's a European
server. Non commercial.
- Shortly before event organiser will
private mail all who booked with the web address
of the live session. Not earlier, for security.
You will be able to move around conversation
sized sub groups as normal.
-
- Though smokers wouldn't affect
virtual events as such; Corona
confinement & Virtual sessions will end,
& normality will resume, smokers are not
permitted on Non-Smoker mail lists (that
announce virtual meetings), as it would
degrade lists we previously worked to purge
of smokers, lists the membership wants to
remain clean for when we later resume
announcing non smoking events after the Corona
shutdown.
- Disagree ? Go
Search elsewhere! Other sites have
humans funded by adverts or fees. Our
volunteers all unpaid, no time to be
wasted.
- Do a solo test session
before the Stammtisch, to check if your device(s)
work & are configured OK, or if you need a
download.
-
Questions? Ask on appropriate list after first
joining the list via one of
- Book your seat when you decide, &
organiser will confirm it. Don't book too late!
-
- Smart phones
& tablets shouldn't be really old: You
need a camera same side as the screen.
- PCs
should have sound & camera configured
- We
tested with smart phones, tablets, Android
& Mac, PCs with Microsoft & Linux,
FreeBSD
& will try more.
- Make sure you've turned off data via
expensive SIM card, & turn on your WLAN
(WiFi) connection.
- Pre-charge your device or plug in,
it's heavy on batteries.
- Some tablets have CPU processors that
do not support the Jitsi
Meet app. (you may have already noticed if
your device doesn't
support some other apps too). You can find your
device name on Android
under: Settings > General > About Device.
Then if you want Search Web
for what CPU your device has.
- PC & Android -
Jitsi Meet clients and
phone apps connect and work well, Chromium or Chrome browser also works. At
2020-04-10 Firefox is
blocked on server of meet . ffmuc .
net
(Firefox (on all OS's I
think) recently (March/April 2020) had a sound
problem, it was reported on a FreeBSD list)
-
-
The URL (web ref.) containing combined names of
the server & room
- is not here on the web, so the
world & gate crashers don't flood the
server or room).
- Might be announced to the Berklix mail
list,
- but as some of our mail lists have
200 hundred people, & we normally expect
10 to max 20, the mail list
posting may (just like a normal physical
meet) just invite you to sign up with the
organiser (`moderator' of the room) of the
room
- The organiser (`moderator') may
then private mail just signed up participants
the web ref. they need.
- We may use room names such as
xyz1, xyz2, xyz3, where the 1 will be the one
you should join first, then you can migrate
to side groups if too many chatting in main
room
-
Where we announce an event in advance by
mail as to be in Room XYZ,, if all
participants migrate from main room to
quieter sub rooms, then the main room XYZ
would close automatically when last
participant leaves the main room, &
latecomers would have no idea where to go,
so either &/ or both:
- Sub rooms should be created
with predictable names XYZ1, XYZ2, or
- The event organise should run
a 2nd device
keeping room XYZ open, & watching for
latecomers.
- Sign ups give the organiser a
head count, useful, as these are not chaired
moderated rooms, where 20 might acoustically
fit, but informal free conversations where
more than 5 or 6 breaks down into noise,
& people migrate to side rooms.
- A password may be mailed out to
signed participants, just shortly before
appointed room start time, when organiser
creates the room. (The organiser cannot mail
it you earlier, as [some of/ the] free
technology & service providers do not
support room pre-reservation, just room
creation)
-
- To support 2+ sub groups
simultaneously we need some people eg organiser +
others to have & use 2 devices. Do not connect both
devices to same room
else you get feedback howl (Jitsi Meet on Android
does not allow volume turned to zero)
-
Arrangements may change, discuss at
- virtual meetings
-
Or on appropriate discussion list eg one
of:
- Now do a solo test run, Here's how to connect with Jitsi
Meet:
- Notes Common To
Users Of All Apps & Browsers
- Back To Index
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- Clean camera lens, turn volume up,
connect microphone
- Drop Outs & Poor quality: To avoid
drop outs or jittering frozen video: Turn off spare
Apps, Task, Processes running on your device. Turn
off auto update of apps. & bulky map data etc.
Turn off other devices sharing the same router that
may also present a load on your router. Stand nearer
the router, or use a cable data link between device
& router (a USB cable may not automatically
suffice, it may only do power, you may have to
configure your device to also use the cable for data,
plus configure the router & perhaps firewall to
allow data on that USB.
- Battery: Pre charge it to full, or leave
plugged in to mains, or have a spare USB cabled
battery. Camera & microphone & sound output
& processing can eat battery, you will notice
back of smart phone gets hot fast. Stammtisch
sessions can be longer than expected, draining
battery.
-
Chrome
is Google's product.
Chromium is the
open source browser
PS Naming differentiation seems partly scrambled
on FreeBSD:
- pkg info -a | grep chrom #
chromium-81.0.4044.122_1 Google web browser based
on WebKit
- chrome running reports: About
Chromium Chromium Version 81.0.4044.122 (Official
Build) (64-bit)
- which chromium # Command not
found.
- file /usr/local/bin/chrome
/usr/local/share/chromium/chrome
- /usr/local/bin/chrome: POSIX
shell ...
-
/usr/local/share/chromium/chrome:
ELF 64-bit ...
-
/ usr / ports / www / chromium / pkg-plist
installs bin/chrome
-
- Remove kids, pets, noisey machines
& human non participants from your room, or
remove yourself _& your microphone to us us_
from their room, close the door. You were invited
to join us, they were not invited: Same
attendance criteria as for physical meetings of
whichever virtual group you attend.
- Do not turn on your TV
radio or music, else you disrupt the group
& must leave.
- Mute your microphone while you do not
want to talk for a while, & while you have
extraneous noise eg open door to TV, radio,
music, clattering kitchen , kids, dogs, machines.
- You wouldn't bring those nuisances to our
physical events (or would be ejected), so do not
burden us with them.
- Give your normal first name to your
screen icon. Same as you would over a real table,
Same as you signed up with to organiser. Don't be
lazy & omit. Don't be a smart Alec with fake
moniker like Zombie123, You wouldn't do that in a
physical room. Don't make life hard for friends.
- Suggested: Place camera on a pile of
books at eye height, to avoid the classic bad
angle from camera on table: that you've seen on
TV interviews: All viewers look up the nose of
interviewee, or just their forehead each time
they lean back - not our best views, we normally
view each other at eye height, not table height
;-)
- Remember on a tablet in landscape
mode, the camera is off to one side, place tablet
a bit to the side to allow for that, face the
camera on the edge, your eyes can drift a bit
more to the middle of the screen.
- If you don't want people to see your
background, don't turn the camera off, hang a
towel or flag or poster picture etc on wall
behind your head. It is a video session, not a
phone call, we are virtualising a real meeting of
whichever group you are in & you would not
attend the real meeting with a blank bag over
your head.
-
- Extra For
Berklix People
- Back To Index
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Apps:
-
Asterisk
-
rec. by hps@ They all install OK with:
pkg install virtual_oss webcamd baresip zynaddsubfx
midipp obs-studio
-
- Public Domain Source with community
& commercial
support.
- bigbluebutton . org
- github .
com / bigbluebutton / bigbluebutton
- en .
wikipedia . org / wiki / BigBlueButton
- No FreeBSD port
- Vincent Defert <20.100@@defert.com>
wrote ports@ I'm using it to give trainings, it is simple
and efficient. I use it in conjunction with a VM served
through Apache
Guacamole for the labs.
The thing is: your contacts don't need to install
anything on their machines (= you don't have to do
troubleshooting over the phone), all they need is an HTML5
capable browser.
And unlike Skype, the quality of
sound and video is good and you don't have to register at
Microsoft.
-
http://mail.sf-day.org/pipermail/sfd-discuss/2020-August/003268.html
To: Open discussions about SFD
<sfd-discuss@sf-day.org>
Date: Mon Aug 10 00:50:44 UTC 2020
From: Maren Hachmann maren at goos-habermann.de
One of the Inkscape board members who works at
a university in Paris told us they're using it for
lectures.
When someone in our chat asked him about what
would be required for up to 200 (and a temporary
maximum of 350) persons, this is what he
replied:
"then I would recommend >= 1GB/s bw , 8
cores, 32G RAM are enough - disable webcams except
for *one* speaker at most, screenshare strongly
discouraged, disable chat when >= 200people, never
enable the "collaborative drawing over
slides"
you would probably not use up more than 16G ram
but it is better on the safe side rule of thumb is
that bandwith will be limiting, and bandwith usage is
n_attendees x (n_webcams+4 x screenshare) x 1MB/s if
you go for correct quality"
For occasional meetups, Inkscape project
members often use Jitsi, and it's mostly fine for
small numbers of people. With the free website, it
doesn't require any setup for trying it out. Last
time I used it, it only worked reliably in Chrome,
though, and people often had difficulties with the
audio. Development may have advanced, I've not been
in a Jitsi meeting for a couple months.
- Back To Index
-
- Proprietary Commercial. No Wikipedia page. blizz . com /
en-us "From TeamViewer"
- TeamViewer is or was the favourite for cold
call Indian criminals invading MS PCs "Sir, I am from
Microsoft, You have a problem with your computer ..
please install.." BTW
- Whether TeamViewer is itself secure if
installed & used properly I don't know (or care, I
live in a Free BSD world not an MS
world).
-
TeamViewer was used by a friend to support a relative's
MS PC, but now uses RealVNC. It's VNC but they have a
service to make it easy to get connected.:
- Back To Index
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-
-
-
GoTo-Meeting
-
Hangouts (Google)
-
-
Jitsi Index Within Page
-
-
The TABLE IS IN A
SEPERATE FILE as it's wide, that avoids
horizontal scrolling for the rest of this file, a
nuisance particularly on smart phones.
-
-
- The Admin/ Moderator Menu: If you
have Admin privilege (shown by a small star
in your face icon), if you hold a smart phone
in landscape mode, you cannot scroll through
extra settings to set a room password, You
have to rotate phone vertical to portrait
mode. This limitation was not apparent on
Athol's tablet with bigger screen (but which
way was he holding it?)
- User Interfaces Different between
Android
app and Linux/
Windows programs:
e.g. I only just now discovered where the
password can be set in the Linux/
Windows programs (It is under the "i"
icon -> "Share"! In the Jitsi Meet Android
app one clicks on the 3 dots (= "more
actions") which seems the more appropriate
place. Reporter: Athol
- Dropping Users, Gate crashers,
aka Zoom Bombers:
I've not seen Jitsi
Meet offers this ? Useful for gate
crashers or someone who wanders off &
turns on TV. Without it, we all have to drop
the session, & admin has to to mail a new
room name [& optional password]
-
Jitsi Notes from Athol
2020-05-03: good news for Jitsi Meet
moderators using "meet . ffmuc .
net"
After quite a lot of cross-checking
regarding adding passwords, muting
participants and kicking others out of
the meeting amongst other things using
Windows/Linux/Android via ffmuc.net packages for
Windows/Linux (Mac not tested because I
don't have one) or the Jitsi Meet app
from the Google Store, I got the
following results.
The standard Jitsi meet instance at
"meet.jit.si" assigns no specific
moderator/privileges to people joining
their meeting. If the first person
entering the room does not assign a
password, then anybody entering later can
add a password. Then only the person who
added the password can remove it during
the meeting.
In the standard instance, anybody can
kick any other participant out of the
meeting. There are no restrictions apart
from not being able to kick oneself out!
That is done by clicking the red hang-up
button. Also everybody can mute all the
microphones. OK, each can un-mute their
own mic.
In contrast, the "meet . ffmuc .
net" Jitsi instance has implemented
"moderator" functions, which are
independent of whether one is using a
browser (Chromium), windows/linux package
from their website, or Jitsi Meet App
from Google Store (iOS probably the same
but not tested). However, some of these
"moderator" functions don't seem to be
available via the App.
The first person to sign into a room
at "meet
. ffmuc . net" gets moderator
privileges (and a little star in his/her
picture)Â and only loses
these privileges on signing out. Then
another participant automatically becomes
the moderator. I think this allocation
follows the sign-in sequence.
These privileges are:
- a) Only the moderator can
add/remove a room password.
- b) Only the moderator can
kick people out of the meeting.
- c) The moderator can mute
all microphones (own microphone not
affected). [Function not available in
Jitsi Meet App, where only muting of
individual microphones is possible.]
- d) The moderator can select
one participant and mute everybody
else's microphones. Useful for running
meetings. [Function not available in
Jitsi Meet App.]
-
e) The moderator, after signing in,
can set three default features for
all participants [under "Settings"/
tab "More":
- Everyone starts muted
- Everyone starts hidden
[= no video]
- Everyone follows me.
[e.g. Moderator toggling the screen
from tiles to a single
selected participant toggles
everybody's screen. Useful function
for focusing people on a speaker.]
Despite these moderator functions,
anybody can still un-mute their own
microphone at any time or toggle back to
tiles view.
- Back To Jitsi
Index
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-
-
-
- Firefox Warnings: On
several web sites that would have allowed
a sign-in, the sign-in screen warned : Firefox created a bad
experience for everybody in that
conference.
-
Jitsi Servers -
Setting Up
|
-
Jitsi BSD Users of Jitsi Meet (Non BSD Users Skip This
Box)
|
- INSTALLING
A JITSI SERVER by Bob Eager
Announced on ports@
- If anyone wants a BSD client (other than
a browser), make a port for
github . com / jitsi / jitsi - meet -
electron
-
/usr/ports/www/jitsi-meet
-
/usr/ports/net-im/jitsi-videobridge
- FreeBSD:
/ usr / ports / net - im / jitsi
-
FreeBSD:
2020-03-23
cd /usr/ports/net-im/jitsi ; make on 2
systems with uname -a
FreeBSD
13.0-CURRENT #14410: Sun Mar 15 16:28:46
CET 2020
12.1-STABLE FreeBSD
12.1-STABLE #623: Thu Mar 19 16:41:59 CET
2020
both with ports/ .ctm_status ports-cur
13413 .svn_revision 528938
jitsi-2.10.5550 is marked as broken:
fails to start, missing requirement
pkg install osgi.native
No packages available to install
matching 'osgi.native'
echo /usr/ports/*/*osgi* # echo: No
match.
make TRYBROKEN=YES package # Succeeds !
-
FreeBSD:
Baptiste Daroussin
<bapt@@freebsd.org>
The port is about a previous thing from
jitsi (a SIP client)
when people speak about Jitsi c'est
speak about meet . jit . si
aka jitsi .
org
The video bridge is in java and the
front end is in javascript with desktop
apps iirc for those who do not want to
use a browser. Note
that on FreeBSD
desktops it works well in Firefox browser.
No login required, no dedicated required
it just works fine.
There is no port yet of the server part
on FreeBSD but
should not be hard to do as it is fully
opensource.
Kubilay Kocak
<koobs@@freebsd.org> wrote: Working
on it already
- NetBSD user Greg Troxel
<gdt@@lexort.com> wrote me, extracts
below: To be clearer about "Jitsi Meet" vs "Jitsi": There is
an old SIP client "Jitsi", that as I
understand it runs on regular computers via
Java, and there is "Jitsi
Meet" the new videobridge/ js-client
thing.
-
Back To Jitsi Index -
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Back To Index
NextCloud Talk and
Riot.IM with Matrix
rec. by Kubilay Kocak for AV/conferencing for various
use-cases including FreeBSD community oriented
stuff
- en . wikipedia .
org / wiki / Skype
- used with a web
client. since Microsoft took over the user interface has
got worse and worse
- 1 to 1 telephony over IP.
- Athol reports: (video) group calls are
possible. The limit is not clearly
defined but appears to be at least 25 (maybe 75) for
normal skype. ["Skype-for-business" has negotiable limits (the more you pay...) up to
1000+]
- Athol wrote: one can have several video chat
groups in parallel on one device.
- Back To Page Index
Vitero
-
en . wikipedia . org / wiki /
Zoom_Video_Communications
- App:
play . google . com / store / apps / details ? id = us .
zoom . videomeetings
-
Lots of criticism for security. Newest first.
-
jhs@ experience 2021-04-29
- Ensure your spam filter will allow mail from
From: "Human Name" <no-reply@zoom.us>
-
Join instructions for a session were in a horrible
format that if your mailer doesn't support 3D crap,
are a big problem (& you definitely wont want
to hand copy from a mail device to a browser
device) eg:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
href=3D"https://us02web.zoom.us/w/88451734555?tk=3DZzCZds +
200 or so more bytes
- Zoom App on Android is incredibly intrusive,
wanting all sorts of un-necessary access to private
data & device permissions. Lie when it asks eg
your date of birth. Just make a note of fake data, in
case you ever need it for them, maybe as a password
or proof of ID.
-
Other Comments
- Bir: The Sound ist quite lousy
- Chr: 8 people, I was surprised by the
good sound quality
- Back To Page Index
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- Limits might change as services overload
being busy with Corona virus extra
usage. Limits may include number of participants, session
times etc, reduction of bandwidth reducing quality etc.
- Back To Page Index
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Dead End Apps
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Search For More Apps
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Extra for FreeBSD Camera
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