[Babel-users] OT: experimental videoconferencing server

[Christof Schulze]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 01:30:58PM +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
>Hi,
>
>In case anyone is looking for more secure alternatives to the commecial
>videoconferencing offerings...
>
>I've been doing my lectures over BigBlueButton.  I'm very happy with it --
>it's rock solid, scales to 70 people with no problem, and the user
>interface is well designed for lectures.  Our system engineers say that it
>requires non-trivial server resources, though.
>
>One of the interns I'm working with recommends Jitsi.  I have no personal
>experience with it.
>
>For my own needs (chatting with my parents and drinking beer with my
>friends), I've written a very simple WebRTC-based videoconferencing server
>that requires virtually no server resources and is very easy to install.
>It builds a complete mesh between the participants in a group (which is
>why it requires little server resources), so don't expect it to scale
>beyond a handful of participants, but it works fine for small groups (the
>maximum we've done was six, including the cat, who of course had his own
>webcam).
>
>    https://www.irif.fr/~jch/software/chat/
>
>(I know, I know, I should get my act together and release babeld 1.9.2
>rather than hacking WebRTC.)
Very nice! I have been looking at jitsi, nextcloud and BBB. I admit to 
using skype as well.

My results so far:
* skype eats my CPU. Even when not videoconferencing one core is maxed 
  out. This is a no-go. I have no trouble searching for alien life on my 
  devices but for a chat-application not doing anything 100% CPU usage 
  is too much. However when in use it is pretty seemless if you don't
  mind throwing another CPU core when doing video conferencing. And of 
  course when using skype you mustn't care about privacy, FOSS et. al.
* nextcloud: seems ok, especially in the latest releases. However there 
  are connectivity issues and when the server is under load there is 
  lag. I also get disconnects. The desktop sharing window is rather 
  small on nextcloud too.
* BBB: the most sophisticated, feature-complete and stable solution so 
  far. I do recommend using that. The server-end is a bit involved as 
  you *have* to have ubuntu 16.04 LTS running underneath.
* When using it, VC works for 2-3 participants. From 5 onwards it 
  a) melts my CPU and b) there is multi-second lag between audio and video.

* nextcloud, bbb and jitsi have the benefit over skype of not using any CPU while 
  not using it.
* I have tried linphone as well - it needs to be manually compiled in a 
  recent version to contain the codecs required to participate in 
  converences hosted on the DFN. I couldn't get it to compile.

BBB is the clear winner here. Given integration into an xmpp client this 
would be even more interesting.

Christof
>
>-- Juliusz
>
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