[Asterisk-video] Video Conferencing Solutions

[Nathan Baker]

>
> I can only speak about my Media Mixe (first Install libgsm ;)
>
> For my experience although it seems that multiconference solutions have
> great end user potential I have not seen any commercial interest on it.
> That's one of the main reasons I have not continue improving my solution.
>
> Anyone have a different perception about these kind of services?
>
> Best regards
> Sergio

Just a suggestion, but one thing that might help is adding more
documentation, and even (if possible) some packages to make it easier
to install.  I know that's not always a priority without having anyone
sponsor the development, but it would help get the software out there
and might spark further interest.  For example, I have been
building/compiling software on Linux for years, but I'm still having
trouble getting this built.  I think I got past the libgsm problem,
but now I seem to have problems linking against the ffmpeg library
(libswscale specifically), even though the ffmpeg library compiled
fine from source:

framescaler.cpp:(.text+0x158): undefined reference to `sws_scale'
/usr/src/mcumediaserver/media/build/release/framescaler.o: In function
`FrameScaler::SetResize(int, int, int, int, int, int)':
framescaler.cpp:(.text+0x373): undefined reference to `sws_getContext'
/usr/src/mcumediaserver/media/build/release/logo.o: In function `Logo::~Logo()':
logo.cpp:(.text+0x9f): undefined reference to `av_free'
/usr/src/mcumediaserver/media/build/release/logo.o: In function `Logo::~Logo()':
logo.cpp:(.text+0xcf): undefined reference to `av_free'
...



> Speaking as one of the people who worked on adding video support to
> appconference, the problem you encounter is not typical. Appconference
> does not mix video in any way, it just switches video streams
> according to various criteria.   My guess would be that your video
> streams don't have key frames at short enough intervals, so you're
> basically getting p-frames from the new stream, while your endpoint
> still thinks it is decoding the old stream.

Your guess sounds like it might be correct, when switching with DTMF I
often see the new stream "blend" into the old one before it completely
switches over.  Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I knew that appconference was not supposed to mix the video, but I did
see it show one video on top and another on the bottom at times,
although the video was mostly green blocks.  I also saw it put one
video in the top left corner once.  These problems only happened when
I had it in VAD mode I think, I can do some more testing if you're
interested.


> Anyways, appconference is very much alive, even though there were no
> significant developments in the past 8 months or so. It is used in
> several production environments, one of which I use on a daily basis.
>
> I would suggest that you forward any appconference-specific questions,
> concerns, etc to the appconference dev list at appconference-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> . We're always interested in hearing about bad (and good) experiences
> with the software
>
> Cheers,
> Mihai

I will gladly forward appconference questions to that list.  Do you
know where I can go to view that list, or is it restricted to
developers of that project?  I looked for it on the appconference
sourceforge page, but I couldn't find it.


I appreciate you both taking the time to respond to these questions.

Thanks,
Nate