First of all: very big thanks for the really great jitsivideobridge plugin, Dele! Great work so far!
But even the good can get better. Therefor hereās my wishlist for newer versions:
Increase stability. The jitsivideobridge plugin is quite new. Iām confident that stability will increase with each new version
Support of other browser like Firefox. On http://mozilla.github.io/webrtc-landing/ it seems as if newer Firefox versions are WebRTC capable, although I donāt know any details of implementation.
Reservation/Scheduled Meeting: more of a long term wish list. Maybe integration with iCal calendaring or such. Currently jitsivideobridge is a system for ad-hoc conferencing, but it would be nice to have something like ālet us meet in 3 days in this meeting room!ā You can already do this by creating a custom URL like r=testroom, but when another person guesses this s/he could hijack the URL. Using passwords might work, but what happens when I close my browser window?
Support of native Clients like Jitsi. Having a browser capable video conference is great, but of course it would be nice if you could use your already video capable XMPP client as well.
Configurable video image size/bandwidth limits: currently the standard resolution in config.js is ā360ā. Although this is a reasonable setting there might be cases where want to alter this setting without the need to change this setting to higher (=better quality) or lower (=saves bandwidth) settings per conference or even for every connecting user. This might apply to refresh rates as well.
IPv6 support: at the moment config.js says "useIPv6: false, // ipv6 support. use at your own risk". IPv6 is a well established standard today and every application should support it out of the box.
Increase stability. The jitsivideobridge plugin is quite new. Iām confident that stability will increase with each new version
I canāt take credit for jitsi videobridge plugin. That is for Emil Ivov and the jitsi.org project. I am just making their great work is accessible to us here at ignite realtime, ensuring that multi-user video is available to all our projects. As they improve the base software, you will see it in the openfire plugin.
I personally use ofmeet for video meetings and it is for most of the time, stable for me when used from my network at home. A lot depends on your network and the network of all participants in the conference. That is why Google hangouts is still usng a propietary system and not yet webrtc they created.
Support of other browser like Firefox. On http://mozilla.github.io/webrtc-landing/ it seems as if newer Firefox versions are WebRTC capable, although I donāt know any details of implementation.
As far as I know, Firefox does not yet support multiple SSRCs (video streams) in the same peerconnection.
Support of native Clients like Jitsi. Having a browser capable video conference is great, but of course it would be nice if you could use your already video capable XMPP client as well.
JitMeet is compatible with the the Jitsi client. They both use jingle to signal the conference and should work fine. Try it.
Configurable video image size/bandwidth limits: currently the standard resolution in config.js is ā360ā. Although this is a reasonable setting there might be cases where want to alter this setting without the need to change this setting to higher (=better quality) or lower (=saves bandwidth) settings per conference or even for every connecting user. This might apply to refresh rates as well.
As far as I know, bandwidth management is not yet implemented in Chrome webrtc implementation. When is is available then we can make use of the video/audio contraints set in the config.js.
IPv6 support: at the moment config.js says "useIPv6: false, // ipv6 support. use at your own risk". IPv6 is a well established standard today and every application should support it out of the box.
That is all down to the Google Chrome browser. IPv6 support for webrtc is still expermimental and not availble in production release yet.
We just started testing this and suggestions we got back from people are.
Video: Is it possible to have multiple video screens of the same size rather then 1 big one in the middle with the little ones at the bottom. example if 4 people are online it would be a 2 x 2 view of the cams or 6 people a 2x3 view. Or even make it so you can just move the video windows around to whatever placement you need.
On Join: When people join a video chat ask them for a name by default that would either be below their video window or as a overlay of the video. the same name could be used for the chatbox.
Other then those people like what they are seeing.
Yes, I do really like the jitsivideobridge plugin in the current state. But that doesnāt mean that I couldnāt like it even more when it gets even better.
For the layout topic: itās really a matter of personal likes and dislikes. At work weāre using Cisco Telepresence with the (voice switched) filmstrip layout in most cases because thatās the layout people likes most. Of course a quadview or so has its own advantages. But the more participants youāll have, the smaller the images will become and the harder it will get to determine the one who speaks. And with that it might be that the discipline of the users will get worse - except when you have some sort of moderation that is able to mute/unmute the people remotely.
Version 1.3 of Ofmeet in development does tag each thumbnail video with the name entered in the chat pane and saves it as a cookie for next time. The label only appears when the mouse hovers over the video. Not as elegant as Jitmeet which displays an overlay, but works for me.
I might implement the alternative video layout. I already have the logic to auto-arrange a 2/3/4 and 5 person video conference before releasing it.
Therefor hereās my wishlist for newer versions: