6 ms·

WebRTC is really cool. Is someone using for video conferencing (Eg Zoom) ? What are other example using webrtc?

by leoplct 6y ago

chefkoch 6y ago
Jitsi
Benmcdonald__ 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitsi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitsi Yes and it works well
- ourcat 6y ago
  Jitsi is very, very impressive. But their whole platform is also bound up with a lot of other tech in the stack. (jitsi-meet, jitsi-videobridge, jicofo and 'Prosody' (XMPP).
  - MattJ100 6y ago
    You hint at this being a downside, but (speaking as a Prosody developer) this is one of the things that makes Jitsi extremely powerful and flexible. For example, Jitsi delegates authentication of users to Prosody. Prosody already has a bunch of authentication backends ( https://modules.prosody.im/type_auth https://modules.prosody.im/type_auth ) and Jitsi benefits from these without needing to reinvent the wheel. I've seen the Jitsi+Prosody combo integrated into many kinds of platforms. People also implement things like custom access control, logging, notifications and provisioning at this layer. These things would generally be harder to customize in a monolithic off-the-shelf system. Meanwhile a simple self-hosted setup is still easy enough to pull off in a spare afternoon ( https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-start https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-gu... ).
    - ourcat 6y ago
      Not at all hinting at a downside. Just pointing out that 'Jitsi' is the sum of various parts ;) (I'm currently looking in to using Mediasoup for some WebRTC to RTMP ideas I've been mulling.)
    - gregoriol 6y ago
      While the docs you point to are quite easy to follow, most of the "going further" is really not well documented... But we are indeed integrating Jitsi into a game experience here and its open-source stack is really nice to deal with (after many days needed to really understand it).
fareesh 6y ago
It works well for 1-1, but once you start adding participants I think you have to route everything through a server if I'm not mistaken.
- deviantfero 6y ago
  I'd say many to many is possible for more than 2 participants, but it does get complicated, being a mesh and all, so you might opt for using an SFU to untangle that mess, but it has it's own disadvantages too.
  - ourcat 6y ago
    See: mediasoup for SFU. - https://mediasoup.org https://mediasoup.org
morsch 6y ago
I think Google Meet is WebRTC based, too. Presumably most browser based tools are? Though Zoom apparently isn't completely WebRTC: https://webrtchacks.com/zoom-avoids-using-webrtc/ https://webrtchacks.com/zoom-avoids-using-webrtc/ Fwiw, WebRTC doesn't imply p2p/serverless.
ourcat 6y ago
Skype has also used it for a long time. Also, aside from the obvious AV chat systems (eg: Jitsi. Zoom, etc.) 'cloud-gaming' platforms such as Google Stadia and Shadow use it. I've been monitoring and experimenting with webRTC for a few years now and one of the most exciting recent developments has been more or less full support in desktop and mobile browsers (even Safari, which dragged its heels for years)
kevsim 6y ago
Whereby.com (formerly Appear.in) has been WebRTC-based since day 1.
InAnEmergency 6y ago
You can video chat and play chess at the same time on https://room.ai/ https://room.ai/
kwindla 6y ago
There are a lot of use cases for WebRTC. Video calls are the biggest one right now. But anything you can imagine that needs low-latency (<200ms) video or audio is something you can potentially do with WebRTC in a browser, these days. There's a huge amount of interesting stuff going on. WebRTC is fundamentally peer-to-peer. But scaling up to larger calls, and doing things like recording, generally requires routing the audio/video through media servers that selectively forward, process, or transcode the media streams. <shameless-plug> I cofounded a company that makes it easy to get started with and scale WebRTC-based applications and features. [0] </shameless-plug> In addition to basic video calls, we're seeing rapid growth of online classes, games, fitness applications, live collaboration in productivity apps, e-commerce and customer support, and IoT and robotics streaming video. [0] https://www.daily.co/ https://www.daily.co/
amelius 6y ago
Any open-source solutions that make it easy to just slap a video conferencing tool into your website?
jokethrowaway 6y ago
webrtc is great for sending data as fast as possible to someone else, unless you need to synchronise data between multiple parties Zoom doesn't use webrtc (unless you count the browser fallback version which nobody uses), they use their own video codec - which notably uses a lot of cpu but requires little bandwidth. From my experience, zoom is the only solution where I don't experience bandwidth problems all the times.

WebRTC is really cool. Is someone using for video conferencing (Eg Zoom) ? What are other example using webrtc?

chefkoch 6y ago

Jitsi

Benmcdonald__ 6y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitsi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitsi Yes and it works well

ourcat 6y ago
Jitsi is very, very impressive. But their whole platform is also bound up with a lot of other tech in the stack. (jitsi-meet, jitsi-videobridge, jicofo and 'Prosody' (XMPP).
- MattJ100 6y ago
  You hint at this being a downside, but (speaking as a Prosody developer) this is one of the things that makes Jitsi extremely powerful and flexible. For example, Jitsi delegates authentication of users to Prosody. Prosody already has a bunch of authentication backends ( https://modules.prosody.im/type_auth https://modules.prosody.im/type_auth ) and Jitsi benefits from these without needing to reinvent the wheel. I've seen the Jitsi+Prosody combo integrated into many kinds of platforms. People also implement things like custom access control, logging, notifications and provisioning at this layer. These things would generally be harder to customize in a monolithic off-the-shelf system. Meanwhile a simple self-hosted setup is still easy enough to pull off in a spare afternoon ( https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-start https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-gu... ).
  - ourcat 6y ago
    Not at all hinting at a downside. Just pointing out that 'Jitsi' is the sum of various parts ;) (I'm currently looking in to using Mediasoup for some WebRTC to RTMP ideas I've been mulling.)
  - gregoriol 6y ago
    While the docs you point to are quite easy to follow, most of the "going further" is really not well documented... But we are indeed integrating Jitsi into a game experience here and its open-source stack is really nice to deal with (after many days needed to really understand it).

fareesh 6y ago

It works well for 1-1, but once you start adding participants I think you have to route everything through a server if I'm not mistaken.

deviantfero 6y ago
I'd say many to many is possible for more than 2 participants, but it does get complicated, being a mesh and all, so you might opt for using an SFU to untangle that mess, but it has it's own disadvantages too.
- ourcat 6y ago
  See: mediasoup for SFU. - https://mediasoup.org https://mediasoup.org

morsch 6y ago

I think Google Meet is WebRTC based, too. Presumably most browser based tools are? Though Zoom apparently isn't completely WebRTC: https://webrtchacks.com/zoom-avoids-using-webrtc/ https://webrtchacks.com/zoom-avoids-using-webrtc/ Fwiw, WebRTC doesn't imply p2p/serverless.

ourcat 6y ago

Skype has also used it for a long time. Also, aside from the obvious AV chat systems (eg: Jitsi. Zoom, etc.) 'cloud-gaming' platforms such as Google Stadia and Shadow use it. I've been monitoring and experimenting with webRTC for a few years now and one of the most exciting recent developments has been more or less full support in desktop and mobile browsers (even Safari, which dragged its heels for years)

kevsim 6y ago

Whereby.com (formerly Appear.in) has been WebRTC-based since day 1.

InAnEmergency 6y ago

You can video chat and play chess at the same time on https://room.ai/ https://room.ai/

kwindla 6y ago

There are a lot of use cases for WebRTC. Video calls are the biggest one right now. But anything you can imagine that needs low-latency (<200ms) video or audio is something you can potentially do with WebRTC in a browser, these days. There's a huge amount of interesting stuff going on. WebRTC is fundamentally peer-to-peer. But scaling up to larger calls, and doing things like recording, generally requires routing the audio/video through media servers that selectively forward, process, or transcode the media streams. <shameless-plug> I cofounded a company that makes it easy to get started with and scale WebRTC-based applications and features. [0] </shameless-plug> In addition to basic video calls, we're seeing rapid growth of online classes, games, fitness applications, live collaboration in productivity apps, e-commerce and customer support, and IoT and robotics streaming video. [0] https://www.daily.co/ https://www.daily.co/

amelius 6y ago

Any open-source solutions that make it easy to just slap a video conferencing tool into your website?

jokethrowaway 6y ago

webrtc is great for sending data as fast as possible to someone else, unless you need to synchronise data between multiple parties Zoom doesn't use webrtc (unless you count the browser fallback version which nobody uses), they use their own video codec - which notably uses a lot of cpu but requires little bandwidth. From my experience, zoom is the only solution where I don't experience bandwidth problems all the times.