GnomeMeeting 1.0 Videoconferencing/VoIP Released

Howard Vanbel writes "Apparently the developers of GnomeMeeting have released the final v1.0 version of the videoconferencing/VoIP software. GnomeMeeting started as a final studies work at the Department of Computing Science and Engineering of the Universite Catholique de Louvain and after 3 years of development, GnomeMeeting 1.00 is ready! GnomeMeeting is the most advanced Open Source VoIP and videoconferencing software available - there's more info in the project FAQ."

Seems like a cool project, but how is it research?

Or was it not meant to be a research project?

thank god ...

I hope to heck it has some option to avoid dynamic port mapping.

My BEFSR-11, she cannae handle it, cap'n!

Re:thank god ...

H.323 is a really difficult protocol to proxy. Windoze Internet Connection Sharing does it OK, and my Netgear firewall/router is supposed to be able to handle it, although I only got ADSL a week ago so haven't actually tried yet. Most of the little freeware proxies you can get from download.com can only do e-mail, HTTP and FTP if you're lucky.

Anyway, after RTFFAQ 7.12, it does appear to port hop but there are various suggestions to make this work through a firewall or router.

Re:thank god ...

Just use the GNU Gatekeeper [gnugk.org] as a proxy for your firewall or NATed network.

It's freely available on *iX, Windows and Mac.

dynamic port mapping

Most nat/fw/proxy's can be configured to work with h.323 without opening a bajillion ports to the world. The down side is that most methods only work for a single user at a time. Regardless, I would recommend the use of a gatekeeper on the edge somewhere to handle a multi-user h.323 environment. There are free ones (from openh323) and non-free ones (whitepine). There are even hardware based solutions, with features like multiple presence, conference management, and radius integration available.

Thank you for your time,

BBH

ESR was just mentioning this last week

Take a look at the screenshots of the configuration screens. While it might be obvious to someone who is an expert at these types of things, someone who just wants to have something that works will be confused.

There are no visual cues for the user that can show the user which audio codecs to choose, or what an ILS is, or even how to go about starting a session with a partner.

But it shore is purty.

Re:ESR was just mentioning this last week

I happened to have a quick play with GnomeMeeting yesterday, and I disagree with your comments.

Sure, the low-level configuration screens give you full control and look scary because of it -- but it's not the primary means for users to set up GnomeMeeting. Most users won't even go in here.

Instead, the first time you run the application it leads you through a very simple and well explained wizard which sets up your sound, your webcam, directory details and all the rest. Very straightforward.

Once through, you get the nice simple front-end where you can either tap in the URL for the person you want to call, use the main directory or (if you've got a GM -> landline bridge account) tap in a phone number.

It was astonishingly easy. And I'm not even using the 1.0 release.

This is one package where the user really can be ignorant of a lot of the underlying details and still use the technology.

I suggest people try this

I skipped by most mention of teleconferencing utils as it seemed faddish to me. No 'videophones' ever really worked or sold, most people just don't want them in a home environment.

But for internal workflow, after having used an ichat based system I'm really taken by the idea. Being able to jump into a quick conversation instead of emailing, then jumping back out to get work done clicks with me so much better. Maybe it's that I don't have to think about spelling grammar typing and formatting when talking face to face!.

I've yet to check out this version of gm, but seriously give it a go, especially if interemployee communication is a necessary part of business.

vidio grab bag [67.160.223.119]

But unfortuantely it's h323 only

And h323 is a dying dinosaur (basically ISDN over IP). SIP (& other more modern and lightweight *internet* (as opposed to telephony) protocols) is the way to go.

Re:But unfortuantely it's h323 only

Damien Sandras, the main developer of GnomeMeeting, stated [advogato.org] today that SIP-support is one of the main targets for GnomeMeeting 2.0, as well as better integration with the rest of the desktop (e-d-s, bonobo and dbus).

More interesting...

More interesting to me than GnomeMeeting is OpenH323, which uses the MPL. That will presumably allow other developers and existing chat programs to be compatible with it.

There's a plethora of standards for video chat. It's nice to see this product it based on an existing standard, and some code is available for that standard under a license suitable for commercial applications.

Re:More interesting...

FYI, GnomeMeeting 1.0 is based on the OpenH323 libraries. Later versions will build on the OPAL library (same develeopers as OpenH323) for SIP support.

Even more interesting...

... would be if a "meeting" could be initiated by a program (that I'd like to write, of course), and the program could participate as one of the parties.

Now I know you're thinking of games. In this case, the app is a program on a hospital's computer that wants to contact one or more people, send them messages, and collect their replies. One-on-one would be useful, but even more useful would be with N parties that could all talk.

Scenario:

Patient: Hello?

Computer: Hello, Mr Jones. Your surgery is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday at 9 am. Is this OK with you?

Patient: Um, no; I have another appointment at that time.

Computer: OK; I'll check with Dr Smith to see if we can reschedule. While I call him, what would be some other good times for you? (Starts dialing Dr Smith)

Patient: Any time that afternoon would be fine.

DrSmith: Hello?

Computer: Mr. Jones says he has a conflict with his 9am appointment tomorrow. Here's his comment ... (plays Patient's comment).

DrSmith: I'd have to reschedule my golf game, but I could do it at 4pm tomorrow.

Patient: That would be OK with me, too.

Computer: Mr Jones' surgery is rescheduled for 4pm tomorrow. Can you both verify this?

Patient: Yes, 4pm is a good time.

DrSmith: 4pm tomorrow is OK here.

Computer: Rescheduled. Good-bye.

So could GnomeMeeting support a "meeting" like this? If so, how might I find the docs and/or some sample code?

Yeah, I know there's some voice recognition in there that is non-trivial. The first tests would probably be somewhat simpler, involving a basic computer message and recording all the replies of the other parties.

The Open Source nature is fairly important. In the US and other countries, we're seeing some fairly extensive medical privacy laws passed. This emphasizes that we really must avoid closed-source, binary software, because you can't know what's hidden inside it. In the long term, such software must be completely open to examination and auditing. Any Open-Source tools that can do the job will be very interesting to a lot of people that I work with.

Encryption

I would very much like to see encryption of the voice stream added to its list of features! This would really set it aside from the competition...

Cheers,
Chris.

Re:Encryption

Beside that this would be indeed nice, encryption can be done on the transport level.
Setup a VPN or tunnel.

Of course for a large userbase a simple "encrypt session" button would be ideal.

What?!

Department of Computing Science and Engineering of the Universite Catholique de Louvain

The Catholic University of Lovin'?!

SIP, IAX, etc...

Linphone and Kphone both manage to handle SIP, such that they interoperate well with Asterisk and FWD. I should hope that Gnomemeeting has support for at least SIP in their next release.

http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/
http://www.linpho ne.org/?lang=us&rubrique=1

Hooray

Just when Microsoft start phasing out Netmeeting, we get something compatible :)

I guess we should put a bounty up for someone to reverse engineer the MSN Messenger 6.1 webcam protocol. (And yes, I know what GnomeMeeting is - and is supposed to do - and also know that an IM is not the same, but still, people just want to communicate with their friends and family.)

Congratulations!

A fine product. Great for personal or even corporate use. I've been following (and updating) this application since early 0.9x days. Best of luck, and hope you don't have any problems with M$ for the similarity in name between the project name and a M$ app.

Multi-Platform Solution Required

This really needs to be platform independent for it to reach critical mass. I can see the appeal, but until something compatible is implemented on Windows, OS X and Linux, etc. this will not be adopted.

Re:Multi-Platform Solution Required

H.323 is platform independant, that's the purpose of a protocol. There are several different solutions for Windows available already (openphone, sjphone, cuseeme to name a few)

Re:Multi-Platform Solution Required

It uses H323 so it's compatible with a lot of stuff. I use GnomeMeeting to chat to Windows users and OS X users. OpenPhone [openh323.org] and NetMeeting [microsoft.com] for Windows, OhPhoneX [sourceforge.net] for OS X.

Also I believe GnomeMeeting is now (just about) usable on OS X with Fink [sourceforge.net].

Oh, you're way too late

Videoconferencing was all the rage 3 years ago, which is probably why this got started in the first place. In 2001, all you could hear was 'Travel is over because of terrorism, it's time for videoconferencing!'

Except this trend never really took off. GnomeMeeting would have had an impact with businesses considering Linux 3 years ago, but now it's merely a 'catchup' product to a market that has already moved on.

Re:Oh, you're way too late

GnomeMeeting is not only for business, but also for people who live far away from friends and family and want to get the chance to see each other virtually. It also cuts down expences of long distance calls when you have broadband at home. Many linux users fall into this category and it is great that GnomeMeeting makes this possible, whatever the rage was in business 3 years ago.

Just tried GnomeMeeting myself and it worked very well, I was very impressed. And I assume that GnomeMeeting 1.0 will just improve on the experience.

iChat AV compatible?

Any change to get this compatible with Apple iChat?

iChat AV is standards based, using the industry-standard H.263 video codec, the telephone-quality QuickTime audio codec (PureVoice QCELP), and SIP--the nextgeneration protocol for signaling.

WebCam

Now all I need is some Video4Linux drivers for my webcam that work on the 2.6 kernel. Seriously why are these things so damn difficult?

Why the French name for the Uni?

Just curious, isn't Louvain in the Flemish part of Belgium? If so, wouldn't it be called "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven"?

Just nit picking ;-)

NAT and Firewall support

One of the main problems with most VoIP apps, whether on Linux or Windows, is that getting them to work through a NAT or Firewall can be an absolute nightmare, even for those for whom port-mapping is normally second nature.

This is the reason that Skype [skpye.com] seems to be succeeding where others have failed, despite using a closed and proprietary protocol.

NAT2NAT (establishing a direct connection between two firewalled nodes) really isn't that hard to do (just get both peers to fire some UDP packets at each-other for a few seconds to fool the NATs), so why are there no free and open protocols for low-configuration VoIP? (and if I have missed one *PLEASE* let me know)

Completely agree

I can't believe that in this day and age the authors of these VoIP applications don't seem to realize that the vast majority of Internet users are behind NATs or firewalls. Protocols like SIP and H323 simply aren't equipped to deal with this effectively. The result? A closed protocol like Skype is rapidly becomming the global VoIP standard.

Zero-configuration NAT circumvention is much easier than people think. You just get both NATed peers which want to send UDP packets to each-other to send a few packets to the other's NATs on the ports you want to use. Most NATs will then start to forward those UDP packets and hey presto! You have established a direct UDP link between the two peers and your user hasn't had to lift a finger.

All someone has to do is to combine this technique with somethink like Speex [speex.org], make sure you have both Linux and Windows versions, and we have a free competitor to Skype using an open protocol. I would do it myself if I had the time.

Re:NAT and Firewall support

I forgot the URL: www.gnugk.org [gnugk.org]

Pronunciation

Do you pronounce it "nomeeting"?

what I'd like to see

The problem is that products like these have just been cloning existing products already.. At this rate it will never take off enough to conquer the planet..

What needs to be done is something new.. a few ideas are:

-A framework which allows it to easily communicate with other apps.. Imagine programming something and having gnome meeting fully integrate into ur IDE allowing instantaneous updating of code on ur screen.. or allowing it to be easily integrated into stuff like dashboard with a easy framework (not sure if this is available)
-jabber support.. would make the product more future aware
- integration into firebird.. firebird supports extensions, imagine being able to accept calls on ur firebird window.. or integration into openoffice would be even better
-Webcam driver bounties (or big ppl forcing companies to make nix drivers for free).. unfortunately not many webcams work in linux, (in aus many ppl own swann opti-cam's which use a sonix chip which is unsupported).. Large linux companies like Sun could potentially use their influence to finally force the webcam companies to get up to speed with unix (not really gnomemeeting related).. the rest of unix drivers tend to these days be up to date except webcam drivers, because webcams are considered non critical by too many in linux, and up till recently weren't used much..

Not sure how the gnomemeeting code is though..

Instant messaging and applications

Here is an article by Steve Boyd about the importance of integration of IM and office apps: Real Time Revolution [corante.com]
It includes an interesting interview with an MS manager about what MS is doing with Live Connection Server and office apps.

Forget it! I don't want video!

I work from a home office, and if my clients videoconferenced with me I think the sight of me in my pajamas surrounded by Star Wars action figures might tarnish my professional image.

Who's the chick?

I love to see both sexes taking an active part in open source development. Particularly when it's ladies like this [gnomemeeting.org].

Or do the developers just like hanging out in #SaucyTeens chat rooms?

SIP and linphone

Last time an article came up about SIP with freeworld dialup I tried both kphone and linphone. Kphone I could get working even behind my firewall but the quality seemed lacking. Linphone seems to have more codecs available to it and wanted to give it a try but I'm behind a firewall. Anyone have tips on configuring it? Or a user's guide somewhere?

cheap webcams

I haven't done much (OK, anything) with GnomeMeeting or Video4Linux. A bit of googleing (googling?) doesn't turn up what I'm looking for so I thought I'd post here while people are still reading comments because I think I have a common question/desire.

Ebay has tons of my favorite computer, Compaq Deskpro SFFs [ebay.com], with USB and PII/350-PIII/500 CPUs for <$100 every day of the week. I'd love to be able to buy one (or a lot of 10) and add a cheap USB webcam (Logitech QuickCam Messengers are $50 at Circuit City this week, with $20 in rebates, for just one example) and make, basically, a videophone appliance. Hell, I don't even care if it does sound (I'm happy to use a landline for that) but I'd love to have cheap, consistant, decent-quality, OSS, easy-to-use-with-a-firewall* videoconferencing solution. Just something that I can do a basic install of $DISTRO, add GnomeMeeting, an el-cheapo webcam, and have it work. Kinda like buying an eMac and an iSight but $800 cheaper.

So, I guess my question is, does anyone know of a cheap, readily-available USB webcam that works with GnomeMeeting? Following that, is there a distro that works well with the above, out-of-the-box or close to? And can all this be done with only a handful of open TCP ports? My #1 concern is getting video back and forth.

* as in, no "open ports 1024-65,535 [microsoft.com]" like NetMeeting wants.

(And please don't reply talking about how great iChat is. I know it's great but I can't to spend $1,000 on every member of my family just yet.)

1394

One of the best features of Gnomemeeting is that you can hook up your IEEE 1394 DV camcorder up as a camera. It works quite well.

-molo

GStreamer?

How will GNOMEMeeting fit into the GStreamer framework?

Nice Software that works with Win XPlers

Thanks for that, I really like it.

GnoMeeting?

Why don't they call it GnoMeeting instead. That's way more cooler.

For God's Sake

It's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Whe don't speak french in flemish belgium (yes, they do in walloon belgium), we speak DUTCH.

Protocols

Alright, so v1.0 supports openh323, v2.0 is going to add SIP, does that mean we have to wait for v3.0 for IAX/IAX2 [asterisk.org] support?

iSight?

So does anyone know offhand if there are drivers for Apple's iSight camera that will work with Linux and Gnomemeeting? I've got one gathering dust (it was the freebie at WWDC last year) and a Powerbook running Debian that might be able to use it.

--saint

Webcam support

While I do have GnomeMeeting installed on several machines, I've found that getting the video support to work can be a bit arduous. Thus far, I've not been able to get my Creative (Webcam Go) webcam to work.

One of the problems with this is the kernel-level drivers. While it's nice perforance-wise to have things compiled for the kernel, I think that to get Joe average in on this we'll need some sort of selector for common cameras that will build the appropriate module.

Despite scanning various sites, I have yet to find an easy way to determine the module required for my webcam, it's not as easy as finding a NIC driver etc.

Anyone know where a good site for howtos on this is? Perhaps we should be including a webcam installation reference with the software, or a link for such on the website?

Re:KDE port ?

Konference is afaik based on gnomemeeting.
http://developer.berlios.de/project s/konference/

Re:Does it require Gnome?

You can compile it without GNOME already. Rewriting to another toolkit doesn't make sense, there is not one unique toolkit that will please everyone.

Re:KDE port ?

Not a true port, but much of the working code has gone into konference. I personally wish that they would split out the guts into a server and then allow difering clients. Also, KDE has a nice sip with kphone. Perhaps, these will be merged together.

Re:GnomeMeeting

True, All the G"'s and "K"'s can really obscure the meaning of the name.

Re:GnomeMeeting

Like WinMX, Wincommander and what not?

Re:Cheers to Jonita...

The point is that you should be checking out the software not have "Cheers to Jonita". Which makes no sense.

sri